Note: Dead Eyes transcripts have been generated with automated software and may contain errors. We advise you to listen to episode audio before quoting in print.
Dead Eyes, Episode 21, “Let the Mystery Be”
Connor Ratliff Hi there. If this is your first time listening to this show, I just want to say, I know there are a lot of podcasts out there, stuff that is maybe more catered to your specific interests, but it really means a lot to me that you stopped by. We're here at the beginning of our third season, and I find myself thinking about... endings.
(Plodding clarinet piece begins)
And expectations.
What did I expect when I started this podcast? What did you expect when you first heard about it? And where exactly are we headed? It's totally understandable if you don't have a detailed recollection of the inciting incident at this point, uh, I generally take it for granted that we've talked about it enough on this show, but it's been awhile.
The gist of it is that I was cast in a small speaking role in episode five of Band of Brothers. And the day before I was supposed to film, my agent's assistant called me and said, "Tom Hanks thinks you have dead eyes."
I was then brought to the production offices near the set to re-audition in-person, and, of course, was let go right after.
Ron Livingston That's terrible, Connor. Yeah, that's terrible.
Connor Ratliff Now, I talked to my agent from back then.
Hilary Gagan I'm sorry, "dead eyes?" Why do you say that to an actor?
Connor Ratliff I also talked to her assistant, the one who relayed the dead eyes comment.
Robert Styles It feels terrible Connor, but I—no, I don't remember it that vividly. Of course, you're on the receiving end of this and it must've been incredibly acute.
Connor Ratliff I tried getting in touch with Band of Brothers casting director Suzanne Smith, who was the one who gently broke the news to me after my re-audition, but she respectfully declined to talk to me. Even off the record.
I did talk to the actor who replaced me, Adam Sims. A couple of times, actually.
Adam Sims I get it. It's funny, isn't it? Talking about our failures and our successes. They have a weird place in our personal histories. Don't they?
Connor Ratliff A great guy, and, I'll reiterate here, as I've said before, ultimately I think the right person for the role.
I've also talked to dozens of other actors, writers, directors, about failure and other things relating to life in show business. Even Erik Jendresen, Lead Writer on Band of Brothers, who set us on a path to locating the living relatives of private John Zielinski, the real life soldier. I was cast as.
Erik Jendresen Oh yeah. He was a real guy. Everybody was, there's not a single invented character, you know, in the series.
Connor Ratliff It's been a crazy ride, one I really never expected. And yes, I do feel like I better understand what happened 21 years ago. But I still think there's something you and everyone else listening to this might be expecting. And it's a resolution I don't know if I have a ton of control over.
(Music ends)
Connor Ratliff There's a very quick way to end the show, which, uh...
Damon Lindelof Which I'm imagining that the finale of Dead Eyes is a conversation between you and Tom Hanks in which he gives the most satisfying answers imaginable. But any recollection that he has where he can say—
(Brooding jazz guitar piece starts)
Damon Lindelof "I remember this, I remember you. I remember what I was thinking. I remember what I said. I can contextualize it all." And that's the, you know, the resolution of the mystery, as it were.
Connor Ratliff That is the voice of Damon Lindelof, who I think you are probably familiar with. Or at the very least, you know of him and his work. LOST. The Leftovers. He reached out to me last year on Instagram. At first, I just thought I was reading a very kind message from some random guy named Damon until I looked up and saw it was the Damon whose work I had been devouring since 2004.
Damon, in particular, I felt would be able to relate to having a show with a mystery at its center, and the pressing need to solve that mystery.
Damon Lindelof However, is that what Dead Eyes is about anymore? Can Dead Eyes live beyond that conversation? Cause I think you answering that question really is central to where things go from here. And the other thing is...
Connor Ratliff Back when LOST was originally airing. I used to listen to the shows behind the scenes companion podcast. For an hour or so every week, I would have Damon's voice in my ears while he unpacked his TV show's various plot lines and theories.
It was therefore very surprising for me to realize that more than a decade later, Damon seemed as invested in the story I was telling on my podcast.
Damon Lindelof There's this narcissistic thing at play, where in Dead Eyes, I am grafting the Damon Lindelof experience onto the Connor Ratliff experience. And so the finale of LOST and you being fired from Band of Brothers are exactly the same. We both experienced success.
(Theme music begins)
Damon Lindelof So you were cast. I created a show. It was working. And then Tom Hanks was like, "No, you suck. I'm firing you." And the audience, millions of people said, "You suck. You were making it up as you went along. I'm fucking firing you." The voice inside us told us that we sucked and then a voice outside of us confirmed it. And it sent us spinning.
The Voice of God This is Dead Eyes. A podcast about one actor's quest to find out why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.
Connor Ratliff My name is Connor Ratliff. I'm an actor and comedian. Twenty-one years ago, I was fired by Tom Hanks. The reason I was told at the time was that he had looked at my audition tape, and he thought that I had dead eyes.
Damon Lindelof You've created a paradox: Tom Hanks doesn't fire people. He's a treasure, he's a national treasure. Firing people, that's something that mean people do. Tom Hanks, doesn't fire people!
Connor Ratliff And that's the short version.
(Theme ends with eerie overtones)
Connor Ratliff When I was watching LOST, I had a feeling early on that I thought, what did I want from the ending? Like, what, what would I do if, if, if I had been cursed with a, "you have to end, you have to end LOST." I would be like, "Oh, I don't know." Like, I think my impulse, (laughing) my impulse would have almost been complete sabotage to just have someone turn to the camera and go, "Eh...It's only an island." You know, just like—
Damon Lindelof We considered it. (Laughs)
Connor Ratliff LOST, if you haven't seen it, was a drama series that aired on ABC for six seasons, 121 episodes. It was a massive water cooler hit about a commercial airplane that crashes on a mysterious tropical island where there are weird things happening. And the survivors of the crash all have secrets and surprising backstories that we see in flashbacks. Later on, we would also see flash forwards and eventually even flash sideways. There are polar bears and a smoke monster and a hydrogen bomb that needs to be detonated in order to reset the timeline, and if any of that sounds confusing to you, well, it was the kind of show that was constantly raising questions, and the viewers all had theories. And the longer it went on, the higher the expectations grew for the inevitable answers to all the show's mysteries. When that conclusion arrived, some people loved it. Some people liked it. And some people hated it. The latter group was especially vocal on social media.
(Music fades)
Connor Ratliff And I, and I'll, I'll say it. I liked the finale of LOST. So I'm part of the, I'm part of the, the people who were not angry when that show ended.
Damon Lindelof The resistance. (Laughs)
Connor Ratliff But I was braced for just enjoying the journey. And if the ending was unsatisfactory, not letting that ruin my experience of the overall thing. Obviously LOST had this amazingly successful first season. Begins with a question ends with a bigger question. You get to the end of season two.
Damon Lindelof Mhm?
Connor Ratliff How did you feel at that point, knowing that you had an unknowable amount of road ahead of you. narrative-wise, and you have continued to raise question after question.
Damon Lindelof To put it very simply, when you get onto a treadmill or an exercise bike, the first thing that the bike asks you is how much time do you want to exercise for. LOST was a treadmill that only had the infinity insignia. All we could do was keep running. You had some control over the speed. But you couldn't stop it. And when you slowed down and started walking, people started yelling at you that it was filler and that you weren't moving fast enough. That was the emotional experience... was sheer terror. But also, the exhaustion of running constantly. And the only way to generate more story was to ask more questions and bring in more characters and keep them on the island, at all costs. We had made a number of attempts in the second season to allow a couple of the characters to get off the island—
(Funereal cello piece begins)
Damon Lindelof —and ABC rejected them straight up. Because they knew what that meant. And we were begging for an ending, uh, pretty much from the moment that the pilot got picked up
Connor Ratliff A few years later, Damon returned to television with a show that had a lot in common with LOST, HBO's The Leftovers. It also starts with a big traumatic event that raises countless questions: 2% of the world's population suddenly vanishes, and no one can figure out why. One key difference between the two shows? It was made clear when the show premiered that the creators were not going to solve their big mystery ever. There would be no answers to be disappointed by. And I have to admit, by being upfront about this. The show was a very different experience.
(Music ends)
Connor Ratliff I found myself relaxing. Because I never meet anyone who's angry about The Leftovers. I, whenever I—maybe you do, I don't know. But—
Damon Lindelof Well, like, only 45 people watched it. Maybe 46. Like, it was a pebble versus a meteor in terms of how closely the culture was watching it.
Connor Ratliff Mhm.
Damon Lindelof In many ways, The Leftovers was my Dead Eyes in that it was taking what was a very bad thing that happened when LOST ended. I think if the LOST finale was perceived as a triumph—
(Laid back bouncing guitar piece starts)
Damon Lindelof —who knows what I would have done next, but it definitely wouldn't have been The Leftovers, for sure.
Connor Ratliff I think the most common criticism of this podcast, or maybe it's not even criticism, maybe it's just advice for me personally, is that I need to "get over it." Which I think presumes that I've been obsessing over this long ago firing in an unhealthy or unproductive way. I would argue that I have been using this experience as both a comedic device and as a sincere avenue for genuine personal growth.
And both of those things I think call out for some kind of closure, ideally. Which means, and I assume you know where I'm heading with this, that a certain conversation needs to happen.
(Music fades)
Connor Ratliff When people say, "Oh, well, the one thing you don't want is for Tom Hanks to come on and say this or that." Honestly, even if Tom Hanks came on and said, "Look, I don't remember. I don't think I said it." I think that would be a very interesting thing to unpack in a very friendly conversation.
Damon Lindelof Of course.
Connor Ratliff Even if he doesn't remember, I think it's interesting that something that's so important to one person can be just one part of an afternoon and completely gone from his memory two decades later, for a very good reason.
Damon Lindelof I'm imagining Tom Hanks certainly doesn't want to think about anybody that he caused any degree of pain, even if it was just a very normal thing for a director to do. Nobody ever wants to think or revisit moments in our lives where we did shitty things.
I'm getting emotional, even accessing this memory. But when I was in high school, this guy, Richard Grace, like, fell down the stairs. It was between classes and I was like going to the restroom and he fell down the stairs. And I laughed because it looked really funny. And I think about it every five days.
And when Facebook became a thing, I, like, reached out to Richard Grace and was like, "Hey, I saw you fall down the stairs that time. And I laughed and I think about it all the time."
And he was like, "What?"
(Metronomic guitar piece starts.)
Damon Lindelof What are you talking about?"
Connor Ratliff Wow. (Laughs)
Damon Lindelof He's like, "Oh, dude, don't worry about it. Cool. Uh, I like LOST."
And I was like, "I literally opened a Facebook account to do this."
And he was like, "Okay, cool. You're forgiven." But Connor, I still think about it.
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Damon Lindelof He let me off the hook. It didn't even get uploaded into the cloud of relevant things that happened to Richard Grace. So why am I still thinking about it?
(Music fades)
Damon Lindelof I guess what I would ask you is, do you want to have the, that, the version of the conversation where he remembers this and gives you clarity? Is, is that the end of Dead Eyes?
Connor Ratliff I honestly don't know. I know for a lot of people that is the end. But when I think about like, the coyote and the roadrunner, I don't watch those cartoons hoping that one of them will end with him catching and eating a roadrunner. I like watching the attempt.
Damon Lindelof It's so interesting that that's the cartoon that you choose to identify with because on a certain level, one can empathize with the roadrunner because the coyote is trying to eat it. And on another level, you sympathize with the coyote because the roadrunner's kind of obnoxious. He seems to be enjoying watching the coyote suffer perennially. And I think that the other cartoon that comes to mind is Charlie Brown and Lucy, um, holding the football. I just wish she'd let him kick it. There's no joy in the continued suffering. And at a certain point, you actually start to get mad at Charlie Brown for trusting her.
Connor Ratliff Mhm.
Damon Lindelof And what's so fascinating about Tom Hanks is, we're not really talking about Tom Hanks right now. The living, breathing human man who woke up this morning in a pair of sweatpants and like went and took a leak and fixed himself breakfast. We're talking about the idea of Tom Hanks. The idea of Tom Hanks, wouldn't fucking ghost you. The idea of Tom Hanks would hear that there's, a, an actor out there who's suffering and he would immediately intervene. And say, "Buddy! Buddy, buddy. Oh my god. I would never say such a thing. This is what happened." That's not fair that the idea of Tom Hanks is in battle with the human being.
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Damon Lindelof We talk about the Tom Hanks, who is winning Oscars and delightful and hosting SNL and recovering from COVID. He hasn't had an easy ride of it. I mean, reviews of Cloud Atlas were brutal to Tom Hanks. He's a much more nuanced human being who probably needs to protect himself to some degree. And I don't think that there's any version of Tom Hanks, not acknowledging that this is going to be an uncomfortable conversation.
Connor Ratliff Well, I never think of it as an uncomfortable conversation. The me that we'll be talking to Tom Hanks will be the me that has had a fun time making this podcast. But the person I am now is neither sad nor hurt about this. So to me, it doesn't feel like it would be uncomfortable and I would actually be going out of my way to make it as pleasant an experience as possible.
Damon Lindelof You just said that the person you are now is no longer sad nor hurt—
(Blues piano shuffle piece starts.)
Damon Lindelof —and I'm not calling bullshit on you. I'm just recognizing that I say that I'm no longer sad nor hurt about people's reaction to the LOST finale, but I am both. And so this isn't me saying you're not really over it, or I don't want you to experience catharsis, but like, are you truly no longer sad nor hurt? I mean, if that's great, then we don't fucking need Tom Hanks at all. Let's call it a day.
Connor Ratliff Do we fucking need Tom Hanks at all? I apologize for the blunt phrasing, but it's a question worth pondering. I would argue that, yes we do. But perhaps a more practical question is if we need Tom Hanks, how in the world do we go about getting Tom Hanks? I'm genuinely asking. I have no idea. When we return, I'll be talking with someone who might be able to help me figure out an answer.
We'll be right back.
(Music fades)
(Mysterious, sleuthy jazz piece starts)
Connor Ratliff One of the highest compliments that this podcast has received is any time someone compares it to Starlee Kine's Mystery Show. If you haven't heard it before, I think you would really like it. In each episode, Starlee would take on a minor mystery. Something like, "How tall is Jake Gyllenhaal" or "What's the story behind this belt buckle found lying in the street," and she would solve the mystery by the end of each episode, without using the internet.
(Music fades)
Starlee Kine I set up these rules for Mystery Show. I always referred to myself as a detective. I purposely would edit out any mention of audio. Like, one time I was interviewing someone and they, they referenced the headphones I was wearing and I cut that out and it was like, a hard edit, cause I didn't want it to break through the feeling of, this is a, this is a mystery. I'm a detective solving this. And I was really into how hard it was because it scared me so much. I, if I didn't solve a mystery. I couldn't do the episode. And it was a feeling that when you're making something and everything's just going right, and you're in the zone and everything you do leads to another idea. I really feel like if I, if I had kept going, I could have like, solved world peace or something.
I don't—I was so touched by something. And then when it stopped and then I had to start working on the second season—
(Somber piano piece starts)
Starlee Kine —that feeling of reconceiving the premise, the stopping and starting, was, was really difficult. And I was being told constantly by Gimlet that it wasn't a show that it wasn't sustainable. They just, they, they wanted it to die.
Connor Ratliff The last produced episode of Mystery Show ended with a playful remark about how it's just a season finale, not the end of the series, which is what it unfortunately turned out to be. Despite overwhelming praise from critics and listeners, Apple named it the best new podcast of 2015, gimlet media decided to cancel Mystery Show in 2016, as Starlee was producing season two.
It was the first show they ever canceled. In a press release, Gimlet stated that the show was "unsustainable to produce and publish on a consistent basis."
(Music fades)
Starlee Kine It was such a hard, horrible lesson. It was so painful to have done this thing that I knew was good, that I really cared about. And then the lesson being that that didn't matter in the corporate sense was really, really hard for me.
Like, I was just, I was, I was so naive. I had a complete crisis of confidence after.
Connor Ratliff Mhm.
Starlee Kine I have enough doubt in myself that—so if there's any outside doubt, it just really unmoors me. So after it got canceled, even though there was so much support from listeners, it's really a genuine mystery for me because there's so many brambles in the way of me finding my way back to how I felt while making that show. And at this point it's so in my head.
(Soft plucked string piece starts)
Starlee Kine Like Mystery Show didn't cost that much, like I could find a way. But now I feel like it's about me not being able to find that path back. So now it's me doubting myself, but also being discouraged by that lesson that seems to have led to the state of how things are now. That intersecting with a project that I poured my heart into, I think shattered something inside me.
Connor Ratliff Starlee now writes for the TV show Search Party, another show which centers around the solving of mysteries and one on which I happen to have a recurring role. Given that connection, plus all the comparisons, and her level of expertise, she seemed like the right person to talk to about solving a mystery like mine.
(Music fades)
Connor Ratliff Is it obvious to you something I should be doing that I'm not doing, because you would have solved this by now, right? You would have solved this?
Starlee Kine Well, it depends. I mean, you know, the closest thing to this is the episode with Jake Gyllenhaal. And when I talked to Jake, you know, in that conversation, he kept it going. Like, it was supposed to be like, I had been told, like, "You're not going to ask any like, personal questions. You just want to know the height?"
And I was like, "I'm not really interested in hearing other stuff."
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Starlee Kine And that conversation ended up being... 70, 75 minutes or something.
Connor Ratliff Wow!
Starlee Kine He was the one who kept putting off answering, because he didn't want it to be disappointing. I could imagine something happening like that with Tom Hanks, where if he has heard about—I feel like he probably has heard about this by now—and he wants to do it, I feel like he'd want to do it the right way. That's out of your control, but that I feel like would be a genuine way that it wouldn't be solved yet.
Connor Ratliff Let's say, I, I brought you in and said, in one episode, we need to solve this. Like, it's an episode of Mystery Show.
Starlee Kine Mhm.
Connor Ratliff Like, we have to wrap it up, we have to solve it.
Starlee Kine Uh, if—it's hard. Cause I mean, like it, cause it's, it's the kind of mystery that can only be solved by one person. I guess, so, I think what you would need to do to assure that he's going to talk to you is you have to come up with a scenario that he can't say no. Like, that he just understands it benefits him at least as much as it benefits you, and he sincerely feels compelled to give you your answer.
Like he, it, it transcends the part of him that says yes or no to interviews. If he knows about this podcast, he must be thinking, How do I go on and not just apologize to this person? Or like, he must be thinking, What can I, how can I give this guy when he needs?
I feel like every time I've gotten someone to talk to me who's famous, it's because I asked a question that they really felt compelled to answer.
Connor Ratliff Mhm.
Starlee Kine There's an interview I did that's never been broadcast where I interviewed Albert Brooks. Um, and no one ever interviews Albert Brooks. And it was, it was for a, um, have you heard of Turn On?
(Playful electronic music starts)
Connor Ratliff No.
Starlee Kine Yeah, so—exactly. So, turn on was the fastest show ever canceled in, um, television history.
Connor Ratliff Turn On was a sketch comedy show that aired briefly on ABC in 1969. And when I say "briefly" it was canceled before it even finished airing on the west coast. Literally, it cut to a commercial break and never came back. And, Albert Brooks, age 21, was a writer on the show, which sounds like it was, in some ways, so far ahead of its time that it was originally rejected by CBS for being, in the words of one executive, "so fast with the cuts and chops that some of our people actually got physically disturbed by it."
(Music fades)
Starlee Kine And so I wanted to do a story about Turn On, and I wanted to talk to Albert Brooks, and I wrote his manager, Herb. And I said, "Would he talk to me?"
And he's like, "It's really unlikely. I—probably not, he doesn't really do interviews."
And I went to get a haircut. They were washing my hair. I had my dog with me and as they were shampooing my hair, I got a call from Herb saying "Albert Brooks ison the phone." And he, it was within half an hour. And I had to like, run out of the salon, my hair was dripping wet, grab my dog, go to what, at the beginning, what was still the unbuilt Gimlet studio and do this interview, um, which was a complete, complete delight. Um, he gave me life advice and career—it was incredible, but it's because I, I, I found, I found the key. I found it. And so that's what I, that's actually, my advice to you is you have to find the key.
Connor Ratliff Yeah...
Starlee Kine It's so funny to me, cause I've never once while listening to your show thought, it's, you're not going to get to him. Maybe cause I would get to him.
Connor Ratliff I have always felt like it was going to happen, and every now and then I'm like, "Maybe it won't?" But my belief was always, if the show is good, that is what will convince him to do the show.
Starlee Kine I mean, maybe the thing he wants to talk is about making you feel better. That could be a compelling reason, but then you have to—he has to know that he has that power. Like, I just feel that it's... He doesn't yet know why he wants to be on this show. It's not just about getting him, it's about wanting—him wanting to be on it.
Connor Ratliff When I think of my skill set for this, and your skillset for this, I feel like, you know, there, there are superheroes who seem to have like, god-like powers and then other superheroes who are like, good at archery. (Laughs)
(Rolling string piece stars)
Connor Ratliff It's not, again, it's not making me hesitant. It—you know, I'm doing everything that I can. But there is the part of me that feels like, that fear. And I just have to keep focusing on the fact that like, as long as I am pursuing it sincerely there will be a future of some sort. But there—I do have that fear of everything going away.
Starlee Kine As someone who's had everything go away, it's a valid fear. But I think it's the inherent nature of mysteries because... (sighs) ...Mysteries mean there's a solution. And a solution means things must end.
(Music slows and ends)
Damon Lindelof We knew on LOST that once you start resolving mysteries, sometimes people will be satisfied. But most of the time, they're going to be unsatisfied. Because there's nothing more thrilling than Christmas Eve. It's thrilling as you're unwrapping your presents but then they're all open. And then like, that afternoon, you're kind of like... sort of sad and depressed. And we kind of understood that that's what we were steering towards, but at least it was going to be a finale that people remembered.
Connor Ratliff But I don't want to think about, Well, if we get to Tom Hanks, that's definitely the ending, any more than I want to think, Well, if I don't get the Tom Hanks, then I am condemned to perform this podcast for the rest of my days. We could have a perfectly cordial and kind of uninteresting conversation. But maybe that's not even the most listenable episode of the podcast, ultimately.
Damon Lindelof I mean, it's Tom Hanks. So it's going to be good.
Connor Ratliff It's going to be, it's going to be great.
Damon Lindelof At the end of the day, what's really going to matter is how you feel after you have this conversation with him, and how you relay that feeling to us. And that may happen the morning after. It may happen a month later. It may be something that's evolving over time. If he's Richard Grace, it's sort of like, it may not matter that much.
Connor Ratliff It's interesting because you talk about your experience and then Richard Grace's experience.
Damon Lindelof Oh my god, if you go and fucking find Richard Grace, I'm going to kill you. Don't—please don't. Leave Richard Grace in peace.
Connor Ratliff But he's fine. You're the only one who's—
Damon Lindelof He's fine.
Connor Ratliff —troubled about this. (Laughs)
Damon Lindelof Correct.
Connor Ratliff Because you feel like you had an experience together. He fell down the stairs, you laughed, it affected him, and you actually had two separate experiences: he fell down the stairs and it, you know, it was bad in the moment maybe, but he doesn't remember it all. He doesn't remember your laughter.
Damon Lindelof And that's exactly right, which is—this is the ultimate narcissism—which is Richard Grace really didn't have anything to do with it at all. I wasn't really even thinking about him. I was just thinking about my behavior in that moment. And even when he granted me the ultimate gift that one human can gift another, which is, you know, forgiveness or benediction or understanding, I'm sort of like, I have to give that to myself. Right?
And all this by way of saying is like, Tom Hanks ultimately is not really that relevant. It seems like he is, but he's not, he's not dissimilar from Richard Grace in terms of how much of an impact you getting fired from Band of Brothers had on his life.
(Lamenting guitar piece, picks up into a trot)
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Damon Lindelof I don't think he remembers it any more than Richard Grace does. But maybe he does. I mean, my construct of Tom Hanks remembers everything. My construct of Tom Hanks keeps a journal, and he'll just be like, "Oh, Connor, let me just check my journal that day. Yep. Uh-huh. Thought you had dead eyes. Sorry buddy." You know?
And we'll all be like, "Tom Hanks, you're so charming." The end. There. I wrote it for you. People are going to love it.
Connor Ratliff You have a Tom Hanks story that I did not want you to tell me before we were recording. And you insisted you would not tell me before we were recording. I'm fascinated by what this could be.
Damon Lindelof Now I feel like I, I've probably done the thing of which I am most famous for, which is building expectations for some sort of transformative moment and then falling short of them.
(Ominous swelling noise)
Damon Lindelof And that is—
(All sound slows then stops)
Connor Ratliff Flashback, LOST style, to July 31st, 2010. The Television Critics Association Awards. The TCAs. Just a few months after the controversial series finale, and Damon knows in advance that they have one Outstanding Achievement in Drama. It's a tie, actually. Both LOST and Breaking Bad won that year,
Damon has a particularly irreverent speech planned for what he describes as a cool, fun sort of intimate ceremony. And the tone has already been set earlier in the evening when a certain two-time Academy Award winner opened his speech by noting how casually dressed some of the attendees were, saying, "Well, this is the last fucking time I'm dressing up for you people."
Damon Lindelof So I wrote a speech to accept our TCA Award, and the comedic premise of the speech was that I was going to read tweets that just excoriated the finale.
Connor Ratliff Right.
Damon Lindelof And so, I read out these very kind of like, nasty tweets and I'm—Connor. I'm telling you, I am not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination, I was killing in this speech.
Damon at the TCAs This is from Brian McGannon "Hey douche."
(Laughter)
Damon at the TCAs “Instead of backpacking in Europe or whatever the fuck you're doing, how about you just give me six years of my life back."
(Uproarious laughter)
Damon Lindelof The material that was killing was not material that I wrote. I had just picked out the meanest tweets, you know. And I think this was before Kimmel was doing that bit.
Connor Ratliff Yeah, you were curating the most, uh, hurtful things for comedic effect.
Damon Lindelof Correct. And it felt so good that everybody was laughing so hard. And in the front row at the TCA awards was Tom Hanks. And he was there for The Pacific and he was looking up at me, and he was—I'm not shitting you—he was slapping his knee he was laughing so hard. Like, the literal knee slapper.
And I'm like, I'm making Tom Hanks laugh. This feels so good. I'm just going to talk about how shitty the finale was now. Because if I can make Tom Hanks feel this way, then that's what I should be doing. I shouldn't be out there ignoring the negativity around the finale. All I should do is talk about how bad the finale was.
And I did it for two years. I didn't talk about anybody who liked the finale. All I did was talk about people who didn't like it. And lo and behold, that became the narrative. There was always going to be a narrative that it was divisive, but the narrative became, "the finale was overwhelmingly hated because that was what I chose to magnify."
(Odd rhythmic woodwind piece starts)
Damon Lindelof And I take responsibility for my own choices, but it's Tom Hanks's fault.
Connor Ratliff So you worked out some material in the room, and it went over so well with Tom Hanks that you took it on the road.
Damon Lindelof I'm almost scared to send it to you now because you're going to be like, you're not really killing here.
Connor Ratliff Don't goose it. Don't don't like adding, don't go in and add in uproarious—
Damon Lindelof I'm sure your crack Headgum team can run it through all the filters to determine whether or not I've, uh, I've sweetened the laugh track.
Connor Ratliff What we're more likely to do is, I'm going to see if we can isolate those knee slaps, so we can just hear the sound of the, of Hanks hand hitting his pants leg.
Damon Lindelof Oh, fantastic. Great. (Laughs)
Connor Ratliff I mean, if it, if, if we're able to get it clean enough, I could see people sampling it and using it as a rhythm track for decades to come.
Damon Lindelof Wow. (Laughs)
Connor Ratliff —that it could have a life of its own as its own element of a work of art.
Connor Ratliff So Damon sent me the audio recording and we did try, but we were not able to isolate any individual laughter or knee slaps. But we did hear something, right at the top of his speech.
Damon at the TCAs The nice thing about the TCAs is they can't play you off, and you can say, "fuck."
(Laughter)
Damon at the TCAs Hanks, Hanks did it first! Um... (fades)
Connor Ratliff If you didn't catch that, he says, it's cool that you can say "fuck" at the TCAs, and then follows up with "Hanks did it first."
Damon was not exaggerating. His speech killed, and deservingly so. But I have to wonder, when you're the person in the audience being called out, does that make you focus up? Do you feel the eyes of the room, checking to see if you're laughing? And if they checked once, maybe they'll keep checking throughout the speech.
Maybe there's an instinct, particularly for a public figure when even a little bit of the focus is thrown to you, do you feel compelled to be "on?" If you hadn't been called out, would you have reacted the same way? And that gets me thinking, if you're Tom Hanks—
(Music ends)
—how does this podcast make you feel? Did we put a spotlight on something you'd rather not focus on? Do I come across like some needy fan thirsty for attention? Or am I a kind of Richard Grace-like figure? Someone you think about every five days and this podcast is an additional unwanted reminder.
(Lighthearted woodwind piece started)
More likely, I assume my firing was something that was forgotten almost immediately, right? I mean, realistically, what would persuade you to say, "I should talk to that guy."
Starlee Kine He needs to know the texture of it, I feel, to want to do it. Cause the logline is, is—I think will—would, I could see making him nervous.
Connor Ratliff Maybe we need to make like, an episode that's just like the one episode that like, a sampler that is everything that Tom Hanks needs to know.
Starlee Kine That's a good idea. A primer for Tom Hanks. That, that could be the one that people recommend to him if he doesn't listen to the whole series. I like that idea. That's important. A lot of pressure on that one...
Connor Ratliff Yeah.
Starlee Kine But I like pressure. I think pressure is good.
Connor Ratliff It is is good, isn't it
Starlee's right, it would be a lot of pressure on that one episode. Unless... we sort of hit the episode in plain sight.
(Pleasant music fades out, rising suspenseful music)
Connor Ratliff Like, it seemed like a normal episode, but maybe there was something a little bit off about it in parts, and then at the end, we reveal that the whole time, whenever I was addressing the listener as "you," in fact that wasn't just a generalized "you," as in the generic listener of the podcast, a generalized "you," no, it was a very specific "you" the entire time I was speaking to one specific person.
(Music builds to a climax, then an echoey thud)
And I think... (sighs) I think that's all you need to know, Tom Hanks.
I've been thinking about what Starlee said about finding the key, something that would make it impossible for you to resist coming on this show. And if I'm being honest, I don't know that there is one, aside from just the existence of this podcast. I know I'm not entitled to a conversation with you. But my hope is that I can make something that's good enough to legitimately earn your participation.
(Aimee Mann's "Today's The Day" begins)
If I'm not there yet, I'll just keep trying. And if all this isn't enough, I will say that I think you'll at least be interested in our next episode.
Starlee Kine Have you talked to Aparna Nancherla for this?
Connor Ratliff I haven't yet, no.
Starlee Kine Do you know, one of the only tweets Tom Hanks has done has been about Aparna and how she's funny?
Connor Ratliff Really?
Starlee Kine It's surprising, cause it's isolated.
Aparna Nancherla: I think it was the closest I've come to really... the way people are like, oh, I went viral in my life exploded.
Connor Ratliff A comedian who has made Tom Hanks laugh out loud. Aparna Nancherla, next time on Dead Eyes.
Dead Eyes is a production of Headgum Studios. It was created by me, Connor Ratliff. It's written by me, and it's mostly me that you hear talking. Including now.
The show is produced and edited by Harry Nelson and Mike Comite.
Special thanks to my guests, Damon Lindelof and Starlee Kine. And thanks to Aimee Mann for letting us use the song that's playing in the background. It's called, "Today's the Day," and it can be found on her 2002 album Lost in Space.
If you like Dead Eyes, please do all the things that podcasts tell you to do: subscribe, rate, review, follow us on Twitter @deadeyespodcast, and talk about us nicely on social media. If you want to reach out, the email is deadeyespodcast@gmail.com.
Please tell your friends about this show, especially if you are friends with Tom Hanks, whose movie Cast Away I have talked about before briefly at the end of our Wilson episode. I was determined not to ever double dip with these post credit sequences, but I have to, for a couple of reasons. One is that Cast Away is so clearly the most relevant Tom Hanks reference for LOST it predates the show by several years, it involves a plane crash on an island, and the main character grows a great big beard. For a second, I considered talking about Joe Versus the Volcano instead, but no, it had to be Cast Away because the other reason is this: I recently had a realization about this film that never occurred to me before:
This was the first Tom Hanks movie to be released after I was fired. And the title, coincidentally, describes both what Tom Hanks did, and what happened to me. Think about it, Tom Hanks flies into London for Band of Brothers, after all the main roles have been cast, and they'd been filming, but he's the producer and the director, so if he doesn't agree with any of the smaller casting choices, it is up to him. "Go ahead, sir. Cast away."
And then, I was "cast away," he cast me away. I don't know why I never thought about this, but I think it might've been some kind of breakthrough.
Anyway, welcome back. Thanks for listening. Be smart and stay safe.
(“Today’s The Day” ends)