Today’s HBO presentations for the Television Critics Association included Damon Lindelof’s new series “The Leftovers,” based on Tom Perotta’s book. Perotta is involved with the show and was on the panel with Lindelof to discuss the series. It is set three years after an event referred to as The Departure, in which 2% of the world’s population disappeared. However, rather than focus on the mystery of The Departure, Lindelof preferred to explore what life is like in a world where The Departure has happened.
“Hopefully what you’re going to care about when you watch the show more and more is how are these characters [are] basically dealing with this situation, living and interacting with each other, and less about where everybody went and why,” said Lindelof. “There will be characters who are concerned with such things. Other shows based on a massive genre premise, like ‘Flash Forward’ or even ‘Lost,’ built into the premise is a mysterious island or a mysterious event and you have characters actively engaged in determining why it happened and how, you’re promising answers. These character aren’t involved in The Departure. They’re concerned with what’s going on in their lives.”
The pilot opens with The Departure and then moves ahead three years. Perotta hinted that the pilot would not be the only time we see The Departure happen, implying flashbacks. “I wouldn’t say [the] only [time], but in general we’re more interested in what the world is like three years later,” noted Perotta.
That’s not to say there will be no answers. For example, there is a cult of survivors of The Departure who don’t speak, wear white and chain smoke. “I think we would be remiss in doing our jobs if we didn’t get into that a little more,” related Lindelof. “Again, the show is really focused on showing you these people’s lives in motion and less on delivering tremendous amounts of exposition. I would say that, again, as the show goes on, you’ll have all the information you need to answer that question. Cigarette smoking is highly addictive and bad for you so don’t do it.”
When Lindelof quit Twitter last year, he wrote an emotional essay about his experience on social media. Today he explained that he left Twiter for business reasons, and if you pay attention you’ll notice his departure’s connection with “The Leftovers” Departure.
“Twitter was something that I enjoyed immensely , particularly in the three years between the ending of ‘Lost’ and beginning of ‘Leftovers,’” Lindelof said. “When we started the writers room I felt it was a good chance to dive into the show. Twitter is entertaining, but distracting. The date that I left Twitter did correspond with the date of The Departure. That just felt appropriately pretentious.”
“The Leftovers” will have 10 episodes in its first season, said Lindelof, but he would consider doing as many as 13 in subsequent seasons, should it be picked up further. “This year we’re doing a total of 10 so we’ve shot the pilot and we’re going to start production on the remaining nine about a month form now,” explained Lindelof. “For subsequent seasons, my guess is we would keep the episodic range between 10 and 13 episodes if we get to do more of the show. Hopefully every episode of ‘The Leftovers’ will feel like it needs to exist, not just this fibrous branch that exists between two episodes, which as TV viewers we find frustrating to watch.”
A TCA member pointed out that last summer, Stephen King’s novel “Under the Dome” became an open ended series as well. Lindelof articulated the differences between “Dome” and “Leftovers,” as again a matter of focusing on the aftermath of the event rather than the event itself. Lindelof also knows “Dome” showrunner Brian K. Vaughn, who worked on “Lost.”
“In adapting ‘Under the Dome,’ he and I certainly chatted over this past summer, just as mutual admirers of what he was doing,” recalled Lindelof. “Ultimately what it boils down to is I think the primary difference between these two worlds – although there is a genre premise, it is insular and town based – is that ‘Under the Dome’ is set in the immediate aftermath of the dome coming down. Really all there is to talk about is the dome, at least in the first space of the first several episodes of the show. I really feel like the special brilliance of what Tom did and what we’re trying to recapture is there’s this elephant in the room of The Departure. Is it The Rapture? Who knows? But 140 million people simultaneously left the earth and God knows where they went. By starting the story three years after this event, people aren’t really talking about the dome. They’re at a point where we’ve spent 3 years talking about the dome and this is our lives now. That was the show we were more interested in telling, and the difference between shows.”
“The Leftovers” perhaps plans to follow Perotta’s book a little more closely than “Dome” followed Stephen King, but it will still be adapted for television. “I think that the assumption has to be that people haven’t read the book,” said Lindelof. “Even if it was a massive phenomenon like The Hunger Games where you’re selling 10s of millions of copies and it’s a pop culture phenomenon, it’s still six or seven years later the movie is coming out. You also as a storyteller don’t want to make people feel like they’re left out like other people who’ve read the book have an interior knowledge of the show. There was certainly an effort on our part in the storytelling to bring the audience in. While there will be people who read the book or started watching the show and may go buy the book, there are deviations from the book we have to do because we’re building a series that could go beyond the first season and extend well beyond the book. Then there are beautiful things in the book that absolutely have to happen in the series. As storytellers we just have to figure out when the appropriate time to do those things is.”
“The Leftovers” premieres this summer on HBO.
Photo Credit: WENN
