Lost in Hawaii

Behind the scenes of the spooky TV hit, is it all special effects or really just a supernatural set?

By Shinan Govani

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Illustration by Hellovon

It is an article of faith among those obsessed with the TV show Lost – quite a big group, indeed – that there is only one rule of law on the island where the characters presently languish: Murphy’s Law. If it’s not one thing, it’s a monster. And as if the challenges of basic survival weren’t trying enough for this bunch of spa-starved stranded folks, there’s all that supernatural hocus-pocus to get you down.

Don’t you see, people? I kept wanting to shout at that StairMastered Robinson Crusoe Matthew Fox and his peeps, when I recently had an inside peek at the Hawaiian island of Oahu where the hit series is shot. There is a mellower, easy-breezy, hibiscus-scented life just minutes away! There are freshly married gals accessorized by penguin grooms absolutely everywhere on the island. And a lot of those couples have come here to get married precisely because they saw how beautiful Hawaii was as an incognito backdrop for the gloomy Lost. Such joy coming from such sorrow!

Call it the funhouse mirror of both modern-day travel and pop culture. Places take on meaning and a context that they otherwise wouldn’t because of TV’s singular reach and influence. Yet the disconnect between reality and TV fiction can be even more jarring than commercial breaks.

Those poor Lost souls. I mean, should Hawaii really be so difficult for them? It isn’t for the rest of us. Nothing oh-oh at all about Oahu. There’s the don’t-worry-be-happy nightlife. Surfing that’s truly out of this water. And people so warm and so glazed with happiness that it’s like travelling into Diane Sawyer’s smile.

Take the beach near Makapu’u Point: It may as well be called Makeout Point, this spot where the famous beach boink scene took place in From Here to Eternity. “That’s it!” the woman who is the state’s film commissioner points out while I am out getting an exclusive tour of famous set locations on the island. I look down and see the very spot where a lonely sergeant (Burt Lancaster) and a restless wife (Deborah Kerr) once splayed about. The same rendezvous cove. Those same torrid waves. Sigh.

On the other hand, later in this day of cinematic sightseeing, she utters, this time solemnly, “That’s where Shannon was shot.” A place called Kuoloa Ranch by some muddy woods is where Lost’s dearly departed blonde, um, departed. “And this was where some of the Korean scenes were shot,” she says about an honest-to-goodness temple we visit that’s seen in flashback scenes. And the Convention Center in downtown Honolulu is the flashback stand-in for the Sydney Airport – the place where the doomed people of Lost started their journey.

For a teensy moment, I worry that our enigmatic-speaking guide is a member of the Others, those maddeningly mysterious inhabitants on Lost. After we drive round and round – so much so that I start feeling a little lost myself – the guide utters, “North, south, east, west. It loses meaning when you live on an island.”

Want some other island truths? The best time to land dinner reservations in Honolulu is between 8 and 9 p.m. on Wednesdays, when the ABC island drama is broadcast and all the folks are at home watching themselves as extras on TV. Television’s first love affair with the islands happened on Hawaii Five-0, the first show to be shot almost entirely on location instead of on a studio lot. (Remember in the 1970s, when it was trendy, even seemingly compulsory, for a lot of hot TV shows to do a “very special” Hawaii episode: Happy Days, Charlie’s Angels, The Brady Bunch?)

The final stop on this tour of locations for the spooky, more sophisticated present-day heir to Five-0 is, fittingly, the gorgeous, all-natural Waihi Falls in the Waimea Valley Audubon Center, where, early on in the show, the character played by shorts-wearing Canadian cutie Evangeline Lilly went swimming and, in the process, stumbled upon part of the debris that left them all stranded. As I stop to look at the falls in this proven paradise on earth, I take a moment to dip my feet. But just a little. In the foreground, I can hear one of the park custodians speaking.

The shooting of the show, he wants us to know, does not involve any special effects to enhance the mystery island’s scenery. “You can’t do this with lights,” he boasts. “It’s just the way God intended.” Forget reality TV – now that’s truth in television.

Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net

Shinan Govani is the Scene columnist for the National Post and frequently appears on television commenting on celebrities and the social whirl. Write him at sgovani@enroutemag.net.

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