The Smoke Monster

'Lost' reflections + present ghosts

To mark the 25th anniversary of my long-running pop-culture blog, Pop Candy, I’ve been looking back on that time with a series of essays. Today’s piece, “The Smoke Monster,” is part of a larger project. Thanks to artist Christa Cassano for creating the fantastic illustration.

Art by Christa Cassano

THE SMOKE MONSTER

Thanks to you, our Q3 numbers—

We must act now, because together—

I’m grateful to the incredible creative team—

By leveraging our flywheel—

MRRRMMWWAHHH-CLICK-CLICK-RROWHHOOOO

Sometimes I’ll be sitting here typing, and I’ll imagine the “Smoke Monster” from Lost lurking in the corner. Has it come to warn me? Murder me?

But then, the twist: I’m not being tortured by the Smoke Monster, I am the Smoke Monster. As a ghostwriter, our jobs are the same: to possess any human form, make some noise, then quietly slip away. No one really knows who we are — but they also don’t ask too many questions. 

Lost premiered in 2004, right when viewers needed another watercooler show. Friends and Sex and the City had ended, and The Sopranos’ final season wouldn’t arrive for almost two more years. We coughed up hefty cable bills for the privilege of devouring TV in real time, and we sucked on candy cliffhangers for seven glorious days.  

On Lost, storytelling tropes were whipped into a cryptic stew: It was Gilligan’s Island meets Twin Peaks meets The Wizard of Oz meets Gulliver’s Travels meets The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald meets Dog Day Afternoon meets Robert Altman meets David Attenborough meets Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure meets Being There meets Alice in Wonderland meets Raiders of the Lost Ark … and I loved it from the get-go.

We hear the Smoke Monster for the first time in the tense pilot episode, as the plane crash survivors spend their first night on the mysterious island. Suddenly, a deep moaning comes from the dark woods. Who is it? What is it? 

Later in the season, the monster appears as a rush of black smoke. It sounds like an old printing press powered by a dinosaur. The smoke drags a character into a hole in the ground and then scoots away.

I fell into a ghostwriting rabbit hole several years ago, when I realized it had become impossible to support myself as a freelance journalist, especially with a small child at home. Fewer publications were accepting my pitches, and the ones that did paid much less than they used to. I was already doing some PR writing and consulting for film and television, so it wasn’t a stretch when someone asked me to invent a catchy quote for a famous actor that would appear in publicity materials about their new series.

That soon morphed into writing directors’ statements for well-known and up-and-coming filmmakers. I wrote talking points for performers to help them prepare for interviews. I wrote speeches for awards shows and fancy luncheons. I wrote social media posts with many exclamation points!!! I wrote essays about the causes and charities that famous people cared about — which appeared in the same publications that had previously rejected me. 

The gigs spread to entertainment executives, who needed help with their own speeches, op-eds, employee notes, newsletters, and emails to shareholders. I wrote for leaders of tech companies and nonprofits, finance execs, politicians, fashion designers, interior designers, video game designers, chefs, health experts and toymakers.

The same people who used to ask me to write about their clients now needed me to inhabit them. They needed someone to speak like them, only in a more polished and persuasive way.

They needed some black smoke.

Shortly into Lost’s run, it became apparent that this was unlike other shows. Each episode gave viewers so much to chew on that they were hungry for a place to spit out their thoughts and theories.

Every prop, character name and line of dialogue became a potential “clue” to unlock the mystery of the series. Was everybody dead? Was the island a time machine? Was the Smoke Monster a metaphor for the evils of technology?

On my blog, I began writing short recaps and asked fans to chime in with their analyses. The weekly posts exploded, racking up hundreds of long, intense comments. One woman took the discussions so seriously she printed and arranged them in binders, along with hours of her own research. 

I reported on Lost panels, parties and events (and hosted a few, too). I met people who made Lost-inspired art, played in Lost-inspired bands, organized Lost-themed charity auctions and cosplayed Lost characters. People who worked on the series told me they logged on each week to read the discussions. On days after Lost aired, my blog was usually a top destination on the national news website I worked for — ahead of, well, real news.

While I truly loved the show, the secret I always kept was this: I was never as interested in dissecting the episodes as I was in engaging the fans. No polar bear, hatch or magic numbers compared to curating and witnessing such enthusiasm among thousands of strangers — on the snark-spattered internet, no less. Through Lost, I learned that the generosity, creativity and community that fandom engenders have the power to turn good stories into great ones. 

I never intended to be a ghostwriter. No one does. But although it’s a strange and stressful pursuit, I do enjoy stepping into someone else’s skin from time to time. I like studying my subjects’ voices and little catchphrases. I dig gigs that amplify a cause or creative work that I support. I’m entertained by the weird notes I get with an assignment, like “She just wants to sound less like a robot,” or “This producer prefers to avoid adjectives relating to sex or food.”

I like that no two jobs are the same. And even if it’s terrifically boring, I try to remind myself that it’s affording me the time and money to hang out with my kid and make the things I want to make, like comics and plays and what you’re reading now. 

I’ve been lucky in that many of these jobs go well enough that they hire me again. But like any freelance gig, there’s always the risk that if you get it wrong once, they’ll ghost you forever.

After five seasons, Lost finally revealed the Smoke Monster’s identity. The full story is too complicated to explain, but in a nutshell, “Smokey” turned out to be just a regular, gray-haired guy in a black T-shirt. After an extraordinary event, he was doomed to spend eternity on the island, where he could manifest into different forms.

Some viewers were disappointed. This threw years of complex theories down the drain. Why did the person behind the curtain have to be such a letdown?

It was almost too realistic to believe.

Previously in this series:

• Life & Death of the Red Carpet

• Andy Warhol + The Early 2000s

Just announced:

• Buy TRUDY SELLOUT, my pocket-sized book of short fiction

Find me on Instagram and at whitmath@gmail.com. If you like what you read, please subscribe/share/comment/write it on a sandwich board.