Brad Smith of The Big Noob went to Hawaii for a vacation in January, and his Flickr set has a bunch of excellent photos from the set of Lost. He was there during the writers’ strike, so production was shut down, and he was able to wander into or near locations that have played a major role in the show, including Jacob’s shack, the main beachfront camp, and the pier where Kate, Jack, and Sawyer were captured at the end of season 2. Here is Mr. Eko’s church:

I hadn’t seen a single episode of Lost until last November, and then I watched the first three seasons in three weeks. It was fun, and now I’m all caught up. Here’s my little Lost obsession, and I haven’t seen any major analysis of this anywhere: What’s with the whole doppelgänger thing involving Juliet, Penny, and Jack’s ex-wife? They all look very similar, and it’s clearly not an accident. The resemblance has been noted in a few places, even on the show itself, in passing, but the larger issue of what this means has not been deeply explored, as far as I know. What does it mean?

On the set of the 1970 film Maidstone, Rip Torn assaults Norman Mailer with a hammer, and Mailer retaliates by biting off a piece of Torn’s ear:

Some backstory:

Norman Mailer created a film in the late 60s called MAIDSTONE. He played the part of a famous movie director who is considering a run for the presidency. Rip Torn played his potential assassin. At the end of filming, Rip appeared to get a little too far into his role, and he attacked Mailer on camera with a hammer, drawing blood. Mailer retaliated by viciously biting into Torn’s ear, drawing even more blood. This is the fight.

It’s debatable how “surprised” that Mailer was by the attack, but it should be noted that he still had the camera crew hanging around and filming, the day after production had allegedly “ended” on the picture. However, the blood from both men is undeniably real, as are the horrified reactions of Mailer’s children (his wife, on the other hand, seems to be overacting badly).

More backstory here.

[via iFilm.]

This short glossary of scriptwriter slang, from the blog of a longtime TV writer, outlines some behind-the-scenes terminology that scriptwriters use as shorthand for various situations and cliches:

“A Nokamura”: When a large number of jokes are all predicated on a single, earlier joke. This can entail great risk.

Based on a Cheers episode. A day-player was named “Nokamura”. A vast chunk of the second act’s jokes were based on people mispronouncing, repeating, etc. the name “Nokamura.”

But the problem was, on tape night — the first mention of “Nokamura” didn’t get a laugh. This meant the rest of the jokes wouldn’t work. The rest of the show was shanked.

The worst thing about a Nokamura is that when the first joke fails, you as the writing staff know what’s coming. All you can do is watch in horror as your show unravels, the Nokamura too deeply entrenched to require anything but a complete between-tapings rewrite.

(Note: We have recent e-mails suggesting the origin of this term was actually The Bob Newhart Show. We are investigating)

[…]

“a Squiggy” or “the ‘hello’ gag”: From Laverne & Shirley. Can only be defined by example.

Laverne (crossing to door): “What sort of degenerate freak would agree to that?” Squiggy (door opens): “He-looooo.”

This is a variation of but distinct from …

“the Gilligan cut”: When you cut directly from a character declaring there’s no way he’s going to do something, to him doing it, for comedic effect.

Also called “the flip joke”, but I’ve heard this usage, and it’s more interesting nomenclature. Thanks to Jacob at Yankee Fog.

(previously listed as “the red dress”, This name comes from the way it was always described to me: a burly guy saying”There’s no way I’m going to get into a red dress and pretend to be your wife”. SMASH CUT to … you get the idea.)