If you never watched LOST, it started with a mess of people flying from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles when the plane broke apart and crashed on a deserted (or so they thought) tropical island. Except this island has polar bears and an abandoned zoo and other people, creatively known as “The Others,” and a tape recorded by a French woman that’s been repeating non-stop for 16 years, and a monster made out of smoke that could beat the anything alive to death.
After that, it gets kind of strange.
One of the more iconic characters on the show is Hurley, otherwise known as Hugo Reyes, played by the non-svelte Jorge Garcia. In the series, Hurley was on two airplanes and both of them crashed on the island. You wouldn’t want to fly with him. Ever.
Except this guy did.
He finally gets to fly first class and he flies with a guy who’s oh-for-life in arriving safely on commercial flights. Just his luck, right?
Today’s exercise is a little frivolous. Imagine you, or a character, taking a flight with Hurley. Maybe he or she’s afraid to fly. Then they get on the plane and there’s Hurley. It’s like living out an Alanis Morissette song. Play it for humor or play it serious. Maybe the plane goes down, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe your character is nuts and doesn’t quite understand that some people are actors and aren’t the same as the characters they play on TV. Or maybe for some reason Hurley’s more afraid of your character than your character is of Hurley (hmmm, why would that be?).
If you’d like an alternate approach, just put your character in a situation he or she knows is going to turn out bad, but there’s not a lot they can do about it.
The point is to get the juices flowing and maybe this does it.
Time: 20 minutes.
