Hola Raggs -

Family is excited that you are responding to the posts...And of course all the questions come back to essentially, "What is a writer's assistant and what does a writer's assitant do?"

Then I saw this weekend's WSJ article on Scott Rudin - AKA Boss Zilla, who apparently has gone through 250 assitants in the last 5 years....Some terrible stories about getting fired for bringing the wrong muffin, mispronouncing someone's name etc...

Apparently one of the assistants measured the length of the phone cord and created a safe zone so that he wouldn't get hit by a thrown phone...funny and tragic at the same time....Hope it isn't that bad on the island.

So if it's not too much to ask, how about a little bit of "Day in the life" of Writer's assistant, Raggs?

Is there anything that we have seen that is your direct or unique input into the show?
Like is there a line or scene that you were a significant part of? No spoilers please, just something that I can share with the tribe so we can say, "Hey, we know that guy!"

Hasta...

Being a writers assistant and being the personal assistant to Scott Rudin, thankfully, have nothing to do with one another. Although, in a previous life, I spent 3 years as the assistant to another producer - even more famous than Rudin and took my share of lumps, I assure you. Never threw anything at me. Not even once. But called me things on a weekly basis that would make a longshoreman blush. But that is another story...

There are two of us on this show, which is extremely rare, most shows only have one. Dawn Kelly and I switch off in "the room" on a per episode basis. While in the room, we are the TV version of a court reporter, typing everything (well, almost everything) that is being pitched while the episode is being broken. While out of the room, we take care of all the research for the show - - which is the part of the job I enjoy the most. I have been on the phone with some extremely interesting people about all manner of subjects and the things I get to learn are fascinating. Let's just say I won't lose a game of Trivial Pursuit anytime soon.

Things I have contributed directly to the show include: Using the radar from the Beechcraft drug plane on the raft; Using the sea urchin spines for needles in the blood transfusion to try and save Boone's life; making the body in the tree by the drug plane be that of a priest; most of the medical procedures that Jack has been thrown (the pierced pericardium that Jack needed to drain the blood from in this season's premiere); I lived in Australia briefly, so I catch all the questions about how things work down there (remember when Sawyer was deported) and all kinds of other stuff.

The staff here is VERY supportive and always happy to let us pitch ideas which makes all the hard work worth it. We also wrote the diary and the episode guides for the ABC website last year. I recently wrote all of the FAQs and the Character Bios for the new website www.oceanicflight815.com as well as helping to create and edit content in the soon to be released LOST magazine.

I hope that sheds at least a little bit of light on why I get spend so little time at home with my wife. Still, it's a great job and I couldn't be more happy to be on the team.

Thanks for being such great fans of the show.

All the best,

Raggs

Mil gracias....

Will share this with the tribe.....

We got the DVD's and have been going back through the eps and bonus features so this will make our reviews a lot more fun....

Again, many thanks....