George Lucas relates to ‘Lost’: ‘The trick is to pretend you’ve planned the whole thing out in advance’

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The executive producers of the ABC series “Lost” just got the Jedi stamp of approval.

The “Lost” team of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse opened their mail recently to find a letter from George Lucas, according to a report on Zap2It. “Congratulations on pulling off an amazing show,” Lucas reportedly wrote in that note. “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.”

But was it really all planned? Sure, in this final season, “Lost” writers have returned to and referenced landmarks from earlier seasons. There may be more, too, on Tuesday night, the last episode before the two-hour finale on Sunday.

ABC Studios exec Barry Jossen read the Lucas letter aloud last week at the Lost Live event at UCLA and it had one funny bit that Lucas probably never expected to reach an audience beyond the ABC staff room.

Lucas winkingly “confessed” that he too has some experience in using last-minute spackle to fix plot holes and then pretending that all of it was part of some grand master plan.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Lucas wrote, “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.”

After that, Lindelof was so moved that he practically declared himself a Jar Jar Binks fan. “I just want to apologize to Mr. George Lucas for everything I said about the prequels.”

-- Mark Milian (twitter.com/markmilian)

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