LOST LIVE: the Final Celebration Prepares Fans for The End

*NO SPOILERS*
Less than a week from now, it will all be over. Come Monday morning, you’ll trudge into work (probably after ending the night in bed, watching Jimmy Kimmel’s post-finale tribute show), head spinning and probably eager to discuss with coworkers what happened the night before on the epic series finale of Lost. Between your coworkers, friends, and family, there will likely be a broad spectrum of reactions to the experience. Some thrilled, some disappointed, and many likely still puzzling out what it all meant in the end. No matter how many plot threads, character arcs, and mind-bending mysteries they wrap up in the two and a half hour finale, Lost will be giving us lots to think about in the months, years, possibly decades to come. To be sure, there will be blood, tears, and (I believe) a pseudo-final triumph over evil or whatever it is our Candidates are really contending with.

But no era of this magnitude ends without a bang (or in this case, a bash), which is what the Lost Live: the Final Celebration event was all about. Held on Thursday, May 13th at UCLA’s Royce Hall, the cast, crew, and more than 1800 fans celebrated six seasons of the show, its themes, its characters, and especially its music, performed by a live orchestra and conducted by the Academy Award-winning Lost composer Michael Giacchino. If ever there truly was an unseen, otherworldly character on the show, with as strong a presence as any of the remarkable characters and the actors who portray them, it’s the music of Michael Giacchino. After the show, I got a chance to tell Mr Giacchino what his music meant to me as an avid fan of the show, confessing to more than a few tears that crept into the corner of my eye during the performance, especially during the song “Oceanic 6” (I have no idea why it does that to me, but boy does it ever). He made it clear to me that there was nothing to be ashamed of when something as good as Lost (a television show!) can actually affect you like that.

“Don’t be afraid to let it out. I was once told, ‘Babies make noise. Real men cry’,” he said after I told him I didn’t want the girl next to me to think I was some kind of wuss for getting all bleary-eyed.

But he warned me that we haven’t even touched the tip of the emotional iceberg yet. After bursting into tears more than a few times while recording the score to the series finale, he recalled turning to producer Damon Lindelof and asking “how many times are you going to do this to me?”.

As we parted ways, he revealed to me what every Lost fan will need to know in order to be prepared for the finale: “Bring tissues. Lots of them.”

As for the show itself, it was nothing short of astounding. A perfect night for any Lost fan. The evening started off with the reading of a letter of congratulations to executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse from a notable fan of the show:

Congratulations on pulling off an amazing show. Don’t tell anyone… but when Star Wars first came out, I didn’t know where it was going either. The trick is to pretend you’ve planned the whole thing out in advance. Throw in some father issues and references to other stories (let’s call them homages) and you’ve got a series.
In six seasons, you’ve managed to span both time and space, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I never saw what was around the corner. Now that it’s all coming to an end, it’s impressive to see how much was planned out in advance and how neatly you’ve wrapped up everything. You’ve created something really special. I’m sad that the series is ending, but I look forward to seeing what you two are going to do next.

         George Lucas

Damon later apologized before the packed house for ever saying anything bad about the Star Wars prequels.

Before the music could begin, Damon and Carlton thanked ABC, the audience, and Lost fandom in general for their support before introducing some of the cast members who played the characters that we’ve come to love and hate over the years. Twenty actors from the series, both featured and supporting throughout its six year run, appeared on stage to wild applause and more than a few lusty hoots and hollers from the fans, including: Sterling Beaumon (Young Benjamin Linus), Kim Dickens (Cassidy Philips), Lance Reddick (Matthew Abbadon), François Chau (Pierre Chang), William Mapother (Ethan Rom), Rebecca Mader (Charlotte Lewis), Daniel Roebuck (Leslie Arzt), Jeremy Davies (Daniel Faraday), L. Scott Caldwell (Rose Nadler), Sonya Walger (Penelope Widmore), Titus Welliver (Man in Black), Malcolm David Kelley (Walt Lloyd), Harold Perrineau (Michael Dawson), Ian Somerhalder (Boone Carlyle), Daniel Dae Kim (Jin Kwon), Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond Hume), Michael Emerson (Benjamin Linus), Jorge Garcia (Hugo “Hurley” Reyes), Nestor Carbonell (Richard Alpert), and Josh Holloway (James “Sawyer” Ford). Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the primary masterminds behind the show, introduced each of them with often humorous stories of how they came to join the cast and their contributions to the show as a whole. Later, they set the spotlight on the show’s core writers, producers, and the mostly unseen and unheard third man in their creative trinity, director Jack Bender.

Once the curtain was raised, the orchestra played through a selection of the series’ seven most distinct and recognizable themes while images and video from the six year run were projected onto the screen above them. Between each song, a different cast member took the stage to read a “message in a bottle”, which were essentially imagined letters from Oceanic 815 survivors we never got to know, punctuating the humor, fear, joy, and despair that many of the background characters were likely feeling upon finding themselves on a strange island at the mercy of fate while Kate, Jack, and Sawyer were off battling smoke monsters and Others. Giacchino then finished off his portion of the event by donning a Dharma jumpsuit with “Composer” stitched onto the back, treating the crowd to a selection from his Oscar winning soundtrack for Pixar‘s “Up“.

And to finish off the night, they presented to us the complete series’ penultimate episode, “What They Died For“. I will give no spoilers here, but I can almost guarantee you that this will become one of fandom’s all-time favorite episodes, even though it can in no way stand on its own, as it’s truly the first third of the series finale. It moves at a breakneck pace, surprisingly with a bit of humor, giving up a number of answers to some nagging mysteries, surprising us with the re-appearance of old faces gone too long, and what one actor I spoke to afterward described as a welcome “return to type” for his/her character. They may no longer be doing character-centric episodes anymore, but this actor more than makes this episode his/her own… with giddily terrifying results. It ends on a goosebump-inducing declaration that takes us full throttle into the finale with metaphoric guns a-blazing, letting us know that, one way or another, what’s to come will truly be THE END. It was exhilarating to sit amongst an enthusiastic crowd of fans that screamed and cheered in joyous frustration when the screen thudded to black with the all-too-familiar stark white “LOST” title emblazoned across it, making us desperately wish for a donkey wheel or a Delorean or something we could use to time travel ahead to May 23rd NOW!

Since we weren’t allowed to bring cell phones or cameras into the event, there is a dearth of actual footage available from the show. However, ABC did film the event for posterity, so expect it to show up on DVD or elsewhere in the near future (don’t hold out on us ABC!). Until then, here’s footage of the rehearsal, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, featuring the heartbreaking track, “Oceanic 6″. God, it gets me every time…