Hydra Island Bonus: The 2009 LOST Comic-Con Panel!
To the end of its run, through its significant rough patches, LOST remained my favorite show, mostly because it was a major social event for my friend circle. Every time I considered dropping the show altogether (and it wasn’t often, but it crossed my mind at least once), 80% of the reason I kept pushing through its valleys was because I didn’t want to lose the ability to talk about it with my friends anymore. We had much to bond over in our formative years, but LOST was a major source of glue for us. We centered a lot of our early lives around it.
We even once planned a whole vacation around LOST.
In the summer of 2009, my friends and I bought badges to the 2009 Comic-Con in San Diego, with the express purpose of attending what would be the final LOST panel. As it happened, said LOST panel turned out to be quite a hot ticket, to the point where we ended up waiting in line for almost sixteen hours in advance in order to secure our seats. It turned out to be a very long weekend of sleeping on the street, spending an entire Saturday inside an aggressively warm exhibit hall, and flying back and forth throughout the weekend in order to accommodate other life responsibilities.
Even at the time, I thought to myself, “This is the kind of thing you can only do when you’re 21.” And so I did.
For the final bonus article of this LOST retrospective, as well as to kick off summer, I thought I’d take you through the 2009 San Diego Comic Con as I experienced it over the course of three days. Although the main event was that LOST panel (and we’ll talk about it), we ended up sitting through a lot of other weird shit along the way. I’m hoping the journey, both then and now, will be worth it.
Let’s do it!
(Imagine that Go-Go’s “Vacation” song is playing right now. I think it’ll help.)
ARRIVAL
For those unfamiliar, Comic-Con is an annual, well, comic convention that has been held in San Diego since 1970, and has seen almost exponential growth since its inception to become easily the most popular event of its type in the entire world. Somewhere in the early 2000’s, Hollywood started tapping into Comic-Con’s unique platform and visibility by sending the cast and crew of major productions to the convention in order to host panels and generate hype for whatever blockbuster or Next Great Television Show they were plugging.
There has always been a palpable tension in the air regarding this infiltration by more mainstream productions into the space for actual comic book creators, writers, artists, fans, and traders to connect with each other. But it was a turn of events that was undeniably wildly profitable and fruitful for both the convention itself and many of its big time promotions. One of the early winners of this new model was LOST, which was able to build up a significant amount of positive press by screening the first half of the pilot at the 2004 San Diego Comic Con. The show returned to the Con every year after, hosting panels of increasing scope, often with multiple surprise guests (whoah, there’s Harold Perrineau! Oh wow, there’s Matthew Fox!). There was always something to chew on, even if the main event inevitably turned out to be the comedic personas of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.
It is here that my friends and I began our travels in the summer of 2009. The plan was to drive down from Sacramento, CA to San Diego on Thursday night, hang out through Sunday, then take a couple of extra days to hang out in Los Angeles, culminating in a side quest in Burbank to catch a taping of THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O’BRIEN (boy, does that fucking datestamp this).
Two complicating factors. One was that, as it happened, the girl I was dating at the time (the same girl I would eventually marry!) was also going to Comic-Con with her friend group, and they were also planning on attending the LOST panel. Although both of our groups were on different travel schedules, and staying in completely different lodgings, I obviously wanted to make sure we could hang out and go to the panel together.
Second, as it also happened, I was performing as the lead of a play back home on that exact same weekend. This would appear to be a killing blow to our plans as, confession, I do not have the ability to be in two places at once. Luckily, the show in question was a part of a local Shakespeare festival*, where shows were being presented in rotation. Through a stroke of divine intervention (perhaps from Jacob himself), my production was dark that Friday and Saturday. My window was open, but I’d have to improvise on travel.
*What important production did I head as part of this Shakespeare festival, you ask? Why, an adaptation of Robin Hood, which is most well-known for not being a Shakespeare play. No, I do not know!
My new schedule for that week: perform the show on Thursday night, sleep for a few hours, leave on the first flight to San Diego on Friday morning, leave San Diego back to Sacramento by Sunday afternoon to perform the second show, leave again early Monday morning to return to Los Angeles and reconnect with my friends in order to attend the Conan taping.
I had to take a nap just writing that all out in the present. Rest assured, though, that even at the time, the predominant thought in my head the entire week was, “this is really fucking stupid”. The obvious answer would have been to just drop the show, with a runner-up solution being forgetting about Comic Con. As both are roughly equally as important as the other, in the sense that they aren’t at all, either solution would have sufficed. But, when you’re freshly out of teenage-hood and completely stubborn (bordering on dense), you’re capable of incredible feats.
So, I finished my play, slept for about four hours, then got dropped off at the airport by my extremely understanding mother. A quick ninety-minute flight later and the adventure officially began…
FRIDAY
It should be mentioned that in 2009, Comic-Con hadn’t yet become the humongous hassle it would quickly turn into. We were able to buy our July weekend badges around the middle of March; by comparison, 2010 badges were completely sold out by November, ending my Comic-Con era as quickly as it began. In 2009, though, by the time we arrived, our ability to attend multiple panels throughout the day was relatively unencumbered, depending on the profile of the movie or series being covered.
All this to say that our Friday at Comic-Con started off fairly routine. We were able to attend a lot of different panels! First up was a double feature in Room 6A. Our day opened with a panel plugging the upcoming DVD release of CORALINE*. Keith David, Teri Hatcher and Henry Selleck himself were on hand, and they were all reasonably engaging, although it had less of an effect on me due to the fact that I hadn’t yet seen CORALINE (Fun fact: I still haven’t!)
*Content warning: Neil Gaiman.
Next was the main event of the double-header, at least for me: a panel celebrating the upcoming new fall series FlashForward, which felt for all the world like the latest show trying to position itself as the new LOST. It had an intriguing sci-fi premise (the whole world slips into a coma and has premonitions about their future), a primetime spot in ABC’s schedule, and it even managed to snag a former LOST cast member, Dominic Monaghan. The first half of the pilot was screened (in what feels like an obvious nod to LOST’s first panel in 2004). Stars Joseph Fiennes and John Cho held court with creator David S. Goyer before Monaghan crashed the panel at the end. Fun stuff. As we all know, FlashForward went on to enjoy a nice big fat multiple-season run, and definitely isn’t most well known for the moment where they killed off Seth MacFarlane.
Next up in our day was spent waiting in line in Ballroom 20 to catch most of the 24 Season 8 panel. Kiefer Sutherland had only recently finished his stint in prison, and most of the audience Q&A’s were focused on congratulating him for getting through it (Kiefer was saying “god bless you” quite a bit). Kiefer was joined by co-stars Mary Lynn Rajskub, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Katee Sackhoff, as well as showrunner Howard Gordon. It was fine, if uneventful.
This got us to about 4:00 pm. Our next move was going to be sitting in on a Rifftrax panel that was starting at about 6:15. That’s when someone from my wife’s party ran up to us in line in order to tell us the horrifying news.
“They’re already lining up for LOST.”
For context, the LOST panel wasn’t supposed to be happening until 11:00 am the next day. To say that the revelation of a line already starting the day before had thrown us for a loop would be…well, accurate, I guess. So we did what any rational group of people would do: we abandoned all other plans and ran over to stand in line for 19 hours.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to stand in a line for 19 hours, well…imagine standing in a line for 19 hours. It’s a little bit like that. The good news is, if you had to do it anywhere, the San Diego Comic-Con isn’t the worst place in the world. There’s always something or someone to look at, and the threat of someone famous walking by to ask what the fuck you’re all doing (as Seth Green eventually did to us) permanently looms. Although you’re essentially cosplaying as homeless, the weather is agreeable. It’s not the worst situation to find yourself in. Hell, slightly generous place-holding policies even allowed for some of us to take off for their previously scheduled lodgings for the night.
The worst part about sitting in line all night, frankly, was being around other fans. Now, to be fair, it takes a certain type of person to try to be first in line for a Comic-Con panel, so this likely wasn’t indicative of the average LOST fan. All I can tell you was that the group ahead of us seemed uniquely obsessed with developing the perfect question to ask Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse during the inevitable Q&A, the kind of inquiry that would “make everyone in Hall H erupt with cheers”. I don’t recall what question they ended up asking, but I recall cheers being minimal. Just like their favorite show, they arguably failed to stick the landing, despite their best intentions.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. Speaking of the aforementioned Damon and Carlton, they happened to crash the line to say hi and take pictures with people. “People” ended up including me:
This is one of my odd little pieces of proof that we were, in fact, there. There is also video evidence of our presence in this godforsaken line. My friends and I make cameo appearances on no less than two YouTube videos that were filmed that weekend. The first one, “Dunlap Effs With the “Lost” Line at Comic Con” is from a YouTube channel called “Travis & Jonathan”, which, to my understanding, is the official channel for a redneck-themed comedy troupe called “Red State Update”. To their credit, they appear to still be chugging along over fifteen years later. Whether their stuff is actually funny, I’ll defer to others; I’ve only ever watched the one video my friends and I appeared in, and I’ve always vaguely resented Dunlap for unleashing what is clearly his worst material on us. His long story about White Lion isn’t great, but imagine him telling it to you to your face at approximately two in the morning, and tell me you’re not laughing as much as we were (a.k.a. not at all).
(To be fair to Dunlap, he gets some good lines in later. My favorite is his assessment of one guy’s rambling, non-committed answer as to why he’s in line: “Are you a fan or are you just homeless?”)
The second video is….an episode of The Official LOST Video Podcast! It’s a couple of blink-and-you-miss it appearances in the background right at the beginning, but we’re there! At the time, I was disappointed Kris White didn’t interview us for the actual podcast, but looking back, it was probably for the best; knowing my sense of self and ability to maintain composure on camera at the age of 21, I probably would have just said “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch” or shit my pants or something.
That’s us to the left, circled in red. Exciting!
SATURDAY
The midnight hours of Saturday morning were mostly spent chatting with my then-girlfriend now-wife, who I had only started dating maybe three or four months prior. And here we were, sitting on the carpeted floor of the San Diego Convention Center, having broken off to charge our phones. A spindly, goateed guy also juicing his cell rambled to us about the meaning of the stickers he had been distributing throughout the con (he was actually pretty nice, all things considered). Love remained in the air, despite these overwhelming obstacles.
After a couple of hours of restless sleep, dawn finally broke. My friend Jimmy and I stumbled over to a Von’s at, like, 6:30 in the morning to grab a donut and a thing of juice. What I remember about the walk there was how still everything seemed to be, how quiet the city could be after a full day and a half of non-stop action. I couldn’t help but compare this moment to our walk back, where the entire grassy area in front of Hall H had suddenly awoken all at once, a hive of activity replacing a cocoon of thin blankets.
I should note that, along with the LOST panel, which got going at 10 am, Hall H was also hosting a panel for the upcoming summer blockbuster IRON MAN 2 at 4 pm. Sweet! We can start our day with the cast of LOST, and end our afternoon with RDJ and Jon Favreau. Surely there can be no unforeseen catch to this! So our plan was really just to enjoy our cushy Hall H seats* all day.
*Cushy in terms of location to the stage, not in terms of actual cushioning on the seat, of which there was none.
The LOST panel itself was terrific, although to this day I suffer from a bit of “concert amnesia”, the same affliction that hit millions of Swifties the past two years who were so psyched to be at the Eras tour that they weren’t able to be in the present, subsequently being unable to remember specific moments. The same thing kinda happened to me during that panel. I recall there being in-person cameos by cast member Jorge Garcia and celebrity super-fan Paul Scheer. I remember them playing that YouTube edit video that inserted the Imogen Heap “mmm watcha say” song into the “Michael kills Ana-Lucia” death scene. I think I remember Dominic Monaghan also crashing the panel. But otherwise, pulling the panel up on YouTube feels like I’m watching something brand new.
What has been seared in my brain was the parade of panels that came afterwards. Because here’s the thing I learned about Hall H on Saturday. What they do is they’ll kick the day off with a banger panel, and they’ll end the day with something extremely high-profile. In between is a non-stop parade of the strangest projects imaginable. Here was what my girlfriend and I sat through before Marvel took the stage:
A panel for a movie called SOLOMON KANE, a sword-and-sandals adaptation of a book character that spent a decade in production hell before finally getting their act together long enough to scrape together a cast led by James Purefoy and Max von Sydow. For the most part, the panel consisted of the cast and director trying their best to make it sound cool; they took great pains to highlight a sequence featuring “lions on fire”. However, as they kept talking about how much trouble they’ve had finding a distributor and how execs in this country just don’t get SOLOMON KANE, it finally dawned on me that oh my god, they can’t release this movie in the United States yet. Its American premiere wouldn’t be until 2012, at the ActionFest film festival, held in Asheville, North Carolina. The plan was for this to be the first part of a trilogy. SOLOMON KANE 2 is presumably still pending.
A panel for EXTRACT, a Mike Judge comedy starring Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, and Kristin Wiig, which was mostly notable for seeing Judge’s dry-as-saltines style of humor up close and personal. His answers to questions were so disengaged as to be nearly comatose. Oh, and although Bateman and Kunis showed, Wiig did not, despite her prominent placard placed in the middle of the table.
A panel for ZOMBIELAND, a film that people had heard of and with actual celebrity panelists! Woody Harrelson! Jesse Eisenberg! Emma Stone! Naturally, this was the one I decided to blow off to brave the restroom. Oops! I did make it back in time for…
The panel for the disaster film 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich! Oddly, this panel featured Emmerich hanging on for dear life all by himself. He had to spend half an hour fielding a non-stop Q&A with the audience featuring Q’s such as “Why are you always making movies about the world being destroyed?” (Emmerich’s A: “I…I don’t want the world to be destroyed! I like the world.”)
Then it was time for Marvel to take the stage. IRON MAN 2’s panel was easily the most star-studded of the day; besides Robert Downey Jr., director Jon Favreau and mega-producer Kevin Feige were on hand to introduce Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell. It was a good time! The panel was mostly RDJ fucking around, roasting the occasional dumb question (“you stood in line for an hour to ask me that?”), and they had to fill time by playing the trailer twice. But it did speak to the unique power of San Diego Comic-Con: there are very few places in the world where four or five of the most famous people in the world can enter a giant convention hall filled with thousands of people and then just…stand around trying to figure out what to do for an hour. It’s quietly thrilling.
CONCLUSION
The next day, I hopped a plane from San Diego back to Sacramento, did another performance of Shakespeare’s ROBIN HOOD, got some sleep, then hopped back on a plane to Los Angeles. A lot of the L.A. trip wasn’t massively entertaining, unless you want to hear the travails of a bunch of 21-year olds wandering around the Universal CityWalk (I might have had a drink with blue curacao in it?). I did want to point out that we were able to make it to the TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O’BRIEN taping, which was a lot of fun*. We braved the stand-by line, where tickets are somewhat scarce and not at all guaranteed. The eight of us had earlier made a pact establishing one rule: either we all got to go to the taping, or none of us did. If there weren’t enough tickets for all of us, then we’d figure out something else to do. This pact got directly tested when seven of us got through the line, leaving just one, my aforementioned friend Jimmy, behind. Naturally, we immediately started rationalizing why it was going to be okay that most of us made it in. We were bad people, what can I say?
*And, given the short-lived life of Conan’s iteration of THE TONIGHT SHOW, extremely timely.
Thankfully, they let Party Member #8 through, and a potential crisis (and eventual soul-searching) was averted. The guests were Heidi Klum, Steve Zahn, and comedian Jimmy Carr. One of the segments involved a back row dog show. As it happened, we were sitting in the back row. Another media appearance for Ryan Ritter and friends! You can find me in the exact bottom right hand corner at about 14:10 of this video.
“Ryan, did you write this bonus article so you could brag about being briefly, technically, on TV?” Guilty. However, consider that I’m also stalling a little bit before talking about Season Six, the final salvo for LOST. It’s a difficult season for me, one that I think concludes much better than its reputation suggests, but takes such a messy path to get there. It’s unfair to call it legacy-ruining, but it was a path messy enough that it tempered my appetite for another rewatch for a long time.
But, I didn’t know any of that in the summer of 2009. I was just happy to sit in a giant hall with people I loved having a blast with the creators of my favorite show.
And maybe those are the memories that are worth holding onto.