Damon Lindelof: A secret about his Twitter exit

When Damon Lindelof quit Twitter last October, the Lost and Star Trek writer-producer fans and haters had plenty of questions: Why did he leave? Was he feeling bullied? Is he coming back? And why did his last tweet end in mid-sentence?

At the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena on Thursday, Lindelof revealed the secret timing behind his exit strategy, and then gave us some behind-the-scenes backstory.

Lindelof was on hand to promote his new HBO series The Leftovers, which is based on the novel by Tom Perrotta about what happens to a small town after 2 percent of the planet’s population abruptly vanishes (details here). The event is called The Departure and many assume The Rapture has occurred.

“Twitter was something I enjoyed immensely,” Lindelof told the critics. “I just felt like it was a good opportunity to dive into and focus on the show.”

Then he revealed this:

“The date I left Twitter did correspond with the date of The Departure. That felt appropriately pretentious.”

And so it was the same date! Lindelof’s last tweet was on Oct. 14, same as The Departure date in the novel. The final tweet: “After much thought and deliberation, I’ve decided t.”

After the panel, Lindelof provided us with some more details: “I was sitting around with [The Leftovers] writers, it was our first week of working together. And I was in a place of feeling like Twitter was really consuming me in an unhealthy way. And Breaking Bad was ending and I was just saying, ‘I just kind of need to quit, I just need to quit, I just need to stop.’ As writers’ rooms often do, everybody starting pitching the best and most dramatic way to do this — if I was going to leave, I was going to have to do it in an incredible fashion. And somebody said, ‘Oct. 14 is in two days! You should just quit and then your last tweet you should cut it off right in the middle so it seems very abrupt. And then don’t tell anybody but later on it will become apparent.’”

“That said, me leaving Twitter was not a marketing stunt for the benefit of The Leftovers it was just a happy accident. I have no intention of coming back.”

Asked if anybody realized the significance of the date, Lindelof replied:  “If anybody picked up on it, I don’t know — because I’m not on Twitter.”

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For fans of The Leftovers novel wondering if the series will have the same ending, Lindelof told us after the panel, “I don’t want to say whether we’re going to do that ending … but the ending of the book is not the ending of the series. We’ll be moving past the ending of the book fairly quickly. The series extends beyond the ending of Tom’s book.”

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Julie Chen talks 'secret' reveal, 'Big Bro' finale

After The Talk posted its best premiere week ever, and Andy Herren won Big Brother, EW asked Julie Chen to reflect on the success of the daytime talk show, and why she thought it was best to not grill GinaMarie, Spencer and Aaryn during Wednesday’s finale.

When was the decision made to do the secrets during premiere week on The Talk? Late August the idea started bouncing around. The only caveat was our EP getting each host to agree with it, and he told each one of us that the other ladies already agreed. Peer pressure works with this group.

How many secrets did you consider but ended up NOT going with? Were the even bigger ones that were left on the cutting room floor? For me personally, judging by the surprising response, I don’t think I have any bigger secrets. I guess my ‘before’ photo was more hideous than I remember. In my opinion my eyebrows were the biggest offender!
 
Did you vacillate over wanting to talk about it on the show? Once I made up my mind, I embraced it and I also thought it might be freeing. I worked in a newsroom full of people who knew what I did and any of them could have leaked it. It might as well be me!

What do you make of the negative reaction? I definitely expected some negative response, but what surprised me was that people would start dissecting my face, and say that I had more done to my face than what I fessed up to. The good news is the negative press bonded me and my parents, my husband and loved ones even tighter, because they supported me and defended me. They were more upset than I was, which shows me how much they love me.

The Talk has really hit its stride. What do you attribute it to? It’s a combination of the chemistry of the five women at the table and the creativity and hard work of the executive producers and entire staff. This team knows how to make us look good. They know our strengths and weaknesses and know how to highlight our strengths. They make our job easy.

What’s different today about The Talk today versus its first year? We decided the panel didn’t have to be all moms because it limited the topics that we wanted to discuss. We couldn’t discuss every story through the perspective of being a mom. We learned that after only being on the air about three months, and once we made that decision, it opened up the playing field. The chemistry between me, Sharon, Sara, Sheryl and Aisha is like none I’ve ever experienced before in my career. It’s just magic.

Any other changes we may look forward to this year? I like to say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but we are always looking for new ways to make our show edgy and fun and predictable. Like Big Brother I would say ‘expect the unexpected’ at The Talk!

Now that Big Brother is over, do you think the most deserving person won?
Yeah, I do. Andy played an incredible social game. He’s also a thinker. He left personal items in each room on purpose, just so he could enter at any time and work himself into a private conversation. He absolutely deserved to win and none of the Houseguests disliked him.

Why didn’t you talk more in the post-finale about the contestants who behaved badly and who lost their jobs? Fans really seemed to want that payoff. We wanted the finale to be a celebration of who won, and not have the spotlight moved away from that person. We didn’t want the whole show to be me scolding the Houseguests.

You spent time with Aaryn, Spencer and GinaMarie after they left the house. Who seemed the most embarrassed about their in-house behavior? I actually did not spend any time with any of the Houseguests after they left the house. But I did hear that Aaryn was very concerned with how she was received by America and was very quiet and shell-shocked.  As for Spencer and GinaMarie, I don’t think either realizes they did anything offensive. They’re probably finding out right now as they are combing the internet.
 
Does it seem time to change casting procedures? Do you think its important that the producers vet people better? Absolutely not. This summer may have been controversial and offensive, but it was real. You have to keep in mind people put their best face forward during the casting interviews. We didn’t see any of this behavior during casting.  And once the game starts you can’t predict how people will behave — that speaks to the unpredictability of the show.

Do you think MVP worked? Will they do it again? I do think MVP worked. Just to see the paranoia run rampant and take over that house, it was worth it. I doubt that we’ll do it again, because that trick has been done. I’m sure we’ll think of something more devious for next summer.

Why do you think America gave Elissa the $25,000? I think because there are a lot of Rachel Reilly fans, and Rachel rallied her fans to get behind the Elissa vote.

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How Romney picked Ryan and kept it secret

Ryan and Romney in Ashland, Va. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

CHARLOTTE--Just hours before word broke that Mitt Romney would name his vice-presidential running mate on Saturday, Paul Ryan waved to reporters camped outside his home in Janesville, Wis., as he headed inside for the evening—or so the media thought.

Just minutes later, the Wisconsin congressman quickly snuck out his back door, escaping into a forest behind his house where he had played as a child in hopes of eluding reporters who had trailed his every movement for days. "I grew up in those woods," Ryan recalled on Saturday. "The house I grew up in backs up to the house I live in now so I know those woods like the back of my hand."

Paul briskly walked through a gully, past the tree where he had built a tree fort as a child, and toward the driveway of his childhood home. There, waiting in a car, was Andy Speth, Ryan's chief of staff and his closest adviser. Within seconds, Ryan had jumped in the car and the two sped away, heading towards a tiny airport just over the Illinois border from Wisconsin, where his wife and three young kids were already waiting.

Soon, the family was boarding a private jet headed toward Elizabeth City, N.C., a town just an hour from Norfolk, Va., where Ryan would be formally unveiled as Romney's VP pick on Saturday morning. It was among the last steps in Romney's highly coordinated but intensely secretive search for a running mate. It was a quest that left even some of Romney's closest friends and aides in dark up until the final hours before Ryan's name was announced.

The search began in May, just after Romney unofficially clinched the Republican nomination. Beth Myers, the longtime Romney aide who led the GOP candidate's search, told reporters Saturday she and the former Massachusetts governor came up with a short list of potential candidates early in the search—though she declined to say exactly who. Romney then phoned each of the candidates to see if they would be willing to go through the vetting—a process all of those asked agreed to, according to Myers.

At Romney's direction, Myers moved quickly to get the vetting operation in place, as the candidate strongly considered going against tradition and announcing a VP pick early in the summer. She hired a team of lawyers and reserved secure office space in Boston, featuring a room with a safe where the campaign kept its dossiers of financial and other personal information provided by its VP hopefuls. According to Meyers, no copies were made of the material and the paperwork was not allowed to leave the room—not even when Romney read the material.

While Romney ultimately decided to delay his pick until after his trip to the Olympics, Myers continued full speed ahead on the VP search. She met with the potential VPs, including at a donor retreat in Park City sponsored by the campaign in late June, seeking "clarification" on issues raised by their dossiers.

At the same time, Romney sought input from his senior staff and close friends about their thoughts on the VP process. Along the way, he campaigned with many of those on his short list, including Ryan.

But the presumptive Republican nominee didn't finalize his decision until Aug. 1—the day after he returned from his rocky overseas trip to Europe and Israel. In a meeting with Myers at his vacation home in Wolfeburo, N.H., Romney told his top aide he had settled on Ryan, with whom he had bonded when the two campaigned together ahead of the Wisconsin primary in April. He asked Myers to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the congressman.

On Aug. 5—the day before Romney began protective pool coverage with this traveling press corps, the campaign arranged for a discreet meeting between Romney and his then-potential VP.

"We gave a lot of thought on how to make this work," Myers said.

The campaign decided to fly Ryan from Chicago's O'Hare airport to Hartford, Conn.-where Myers arranged for him to be picked up by the person least likely to stoke suspicion among reporters trying to break the VP story: Her 19-year-old son, Curt. Driving a rented sports utility vehicle, he ferried Ryan, who was dressed in jeans, a baseball hat and sunglasses, to Myers' home in Brookline, Mass., pulling into the garage so the congressman could exit the car without being seen by the public.

The congressman then had lunch with Myers and her family—as a pared down Secret Service motorcade drove Romney from Wolfeburo to Myers' home. Upon arrival, the presumptive Republican nominee met with Ryan alone in Myers' dining room.

"We talked about the campaign and how it would be run and about how we'd work together if we get the White House, what the relationship would be and how we would interact," Romney told reporters on Saturday. "We talked about our families (and) what this meant for them, the challenge it meant."

Ryan accepted the job, and Romney headed back to New Hampshire, having successfully avoided media detection for 90 minutes. But before Ryan left, tragedy struck back home in his district, where a gunman opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek. Ryan quickly issued a statement on the shooting—not mentioning he was nowhere near Capitol Hill or in Wisconsin.

On Monday, Romney began reaching out to the VP hopefuls he rejected, including former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty-who was the first to learn from Romney that he was not his VP pick. At the same time, Romney aides began planning a vice presidential announcement in New Hampshire for Friday—plans that were scuttled at the last minute when Wisconsin officials announced a memorial for members of the Sikh temple shooting that Ryan couldn't miss.

According to Myers, Romney aides moved quickly to find another spot—settling on the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk—a site that was an obvious hint to the press corps, according to Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom, but failed to gain notice. On Friday, the campaign flew the Ryans into the Elizabeth City airport—hoping the airport was small enough that no one would spot Ryan and recognize him.

Both Ryan and Romney landed around 6pm--Ryan in North Carolina and Romney in Virginia. Myers, who was on the plane with Romney, told reporters she was going to visit family in the area, but instead drove to Elizabeth City, where she and the Ryans ate take-out from Applebee's for dinner in their rooms at a local Fairfield Inn.

Shortly after 11pm on Friday, the campaign publicly announced Romney would unveil his VP on Saturday morning. Her job finished, Myers turned off her phone and promptly went to sleep.

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Secret Service agents sent home over misconduct allegations

An undisclosed number of Secret Service agents with President Barack Obama at an international summit in Colombia have been relieved of their assignments and face an investigation over alleged misconduct, a spokesman for the Secret Service said late Friday.

Click image to view more photos (REUTERS/Claudia Daut)

The Associated Press, citing an anonymous tip, reported that the allegations involved prostitutes in Cartagena, the city hosting the gathering. The AP also said 12 agents were involved. The Washington Post cited the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Jon Adler, as saying that the allegations were tied to at least one agent being involved with prostitutes in Cartagena.

Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan declined to confirm that the conduct involved prostitutes.

"There have been allegations of misconduct made against Secret Service personnel in Cartagena, Colombia prior to the President's trip. Because of this, those personnel are being relieved of their assignments, returned to their place of duty, and are being replaced by other Secret Service personnel. The Secret Service takes all allegations of misconduct seriously. This entire matter has been turned over to our Office of Professional Responsibility, which serves as the agency's internal affairs component," Donovan said in a statement sent to Yahoo News by email.

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