Arthur Carlton Cuse is an American screenwriter, showrunner and producer,
best known as an executive producer and screenwriter for the American television
series Lost, for which he made the Time magazine list of the 100 most
influential people in the world in 2010. Cuse is considered a pioneer in
transmedia storytelling. Early life
Cuse was born in Mexico City, Mexico on March 22, 1959. His parents were
American. His father was working in Mexico for Cuse's grandfather, who had a
machine tool manufacturing business. Cuse's paternal grandparents were
Latvians, of Baltic German heritage. After a few years in Mexico City, his
parents moved to Boston, where as a boy, he instantly bonded with the Boston Red
Sox and began a lifelong love for the team. A few years after the move to
Boston, his dad took a job in Tustin, California. Cuse was raised a Roman
Catholic. Cuse went off to boarding school in 10th grade to The Putney
School in Putney, Vermont. The school was on a working dairy farm, and placed
a strong emphasis on an education in the arts, music and the outdoors. It was at
The Putney School, Cuse said, that he realized he wanted to be a writer.
Cuse attended Harvard University and was recruited at freshmen registration by
the freshman crew coach, Ted Washburn, and became part of the rowing team. In
his words, he became "a hardcore athlete". Cuse's original plan was to
attend medical school but he instead majored in American history. During his
junior year at Harvard, Cuse organized a test screening for the makers of the
Paramount film Airplane!. The producers wanted to record the audience reaction
to time the final cut of the jokes in the movie. Cuse said that was when he
started thinking about a career in film. Career beginnings
Cuse teamed up with a Harvard classmate, Hans Tobeason, and made a documentary
about rowing at Harvard called Power Ten. He convinced actor, writer and
fellow Harvard graduate George Plimpton to narrate the film. After graduating,
Cuse headed for Hollywood, and worked as an assistant to a studio head, then as a
script reader. By working as a reader, he said, he learned screenwriting.
In 1984, Cuse took a job working as an assistant producer for Bernard Schwartz
and then spent a year and a half working on Sweet Dreams, directed by Karel
Reisz, starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris. He described the experience as
his version of film school. Through a friend, David J. Burke, Cuse was hired
as a writer on the Michael Mann series Crime Story. In 1986, Cuse wrote two
teleplays for the series. Film
Cuse formed a partnership with feature writer Jeffrey Boam. Working with Boam,
Cuse helped develop the films Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 3, and Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade. Cuse wrote the screenplay for the 2015
disaster film San Andreas. The film was directed by Brad Peyton, starred Dwayne
Johnson, and was released in the United States on May 29, 2015. The film opened
with a dominant $53.2 million in the U.S., with a worldwide total of $113.2
million. With a global box office total of $468.7 million, San Andreas was the
fourth highest grossing film of Summer 2015, beating out Mission Impossible -
Rogue Nation. It was the second highest grossing film, for that period, based on
an original story. The film was also Warner Bros. second highest grossing
film of 2015. Television series
= The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. = Because of his involvement with Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade, an executive at Fox, Bob Greenblatt, asked Cuse and
Boam if they would be interested in doing a television version of the old
movie serials. Cuse said yes and wrote The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.,
about a Harvard-educated bounty hunter who wants to avenge the death of his
father, the most famous lawman in the Old West. Fox gave the go ahead for the
series. Brisco also had a science fiction element, in the form of a
mysterious orb which appears in several episodes. Boam went back to making
features, leaving Cuse to co-create and executive produce the critically
acclaimed series. Afterwards, Cuse gave much of the credit for the show's
success to actor Bruce Campbell who played Brisco County Jr., the lead
character. = Nash Bridges =
After Brisco, Cuse met Don Johnson, who had a commitment from CBS to make a new
series. With Johnson's blessing, Cuse went off and wrote the pilot for Nash
Bridges. Johnson liked it and CBS did too, ordering 14 episodes off the script
without making a pilot. Nash Bridges was the first series that Les Moonves
greenlit as the head of CBS. It ran for six seasons and 121 episodes.
= Martial Law = Cuse created and executive produced the
CBS series Martial Law, starring Arsenio Hall and Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, one of
martial arts legend Jackie Chan's closest friends and collaborators. Cuse
adapted the world of Hong Kong cinema to American television in a story about a
Shanghai cop who comes to the LAPD on an exchange program. A team of eight top
Chinese stuntmen and coordinators out of Hong Kong were hired. Stanley Tong, who
had directed many of Jackie Chan's biggest Hong Kong features, directed the
pilot. Sammo Hung became the first Chinese actor to star as the lead in an
American TV series. Cuse was running both Martial Law and Nash Bridges
simultaneously. The workload became creatively and physically difficult,
which led to him leaving Martial Law, and focus exclusively on Nash Bridges.
Another factor, Cuse said, were creative differences with Sammo Hung about the
future direction of Martial Law. = Lost =
Cuse was an executive producer and joint showrunner on Lost with Damon Lindelof.
They met in the sixth season of Nash Bridges. Cuse hired Lindelof, giving him
his first staff writer job on a television series. A few years later
Lindelof and J. J. Abrams wrote the pilot for Lost. Shortly after the Lost
pilot was shot, Abrams left the show to do Mission Impossible 3 with Tom Cruise.
Lindelof had no experience as a showrunner and called Cuse for
showrunning advice on the side. He then asked Cuse to come work on the show.
The Cuse/Lindelof partnership was very productive. They wrote roughly a third
of the episodes together as well as showrunning the series in tandem
overseeing all the creative work on the series, including all story
construction, rewrites, casting, production, editing, music and
marketing. Cuse said, "A great partnership can lead to great TV. In the
case of Lost it worked out great; I could not have had a better partner than
Damon." Reaction to the Lost finale
"The End" was watched by 13.5 million Americans and received a strongly
polarized response from both fans and critics. Reviewers from the Chicago
Tribune and IGN called it the best episode of the season and praised its
emotion and character. Negative reviews from the Los Angeles Times and The
Philadelphia Inquirer criticized the finale for answering so few of the
series' questions. Website Metacritic gave "The End" a score of 74 out of 100,
suggesting "mostly positive reviews", while The Guardian and The Daily
Telegraph reported mostly negative reviews.
The Future of Lost Cuse told Digital Spy, "Disney owns the
franchise, it made them a lot of money, it's hard to imagine it will just sit
there idly forever. Damon and I told our story in that world and I assume someone
will come along, hopefully having been inspired by our story, or our version of
the story, and want to tell their own story. It's like the Narnia chronicles.
There are seven books, they were all written by C.S. Lewis, but they all
visit Narnia at different times and different configurations and different
ways. Someone is going to come up with a way to tell another Lost story. I think
it's inevitable. I don't know what it is or how it would work, but I can't
imagine something else won't be done with the franchise."
= Bates Motel = Cuse is showrunner, co-developer, writer
and executive producer of the A&E series Bates Motel, along with Kerry Ehrin.
Bates Motel is "a contemporary prequel to Psycho, exploring the formative years
of Norman Bates as well as his relationship with his mother, Norma, and
the world they inhabit. The first season received critical praise, with Vera
Farmiga being nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2013. Season 2 premiered on March 3, 2014,
with 4.6 million total viewers and delivered 2.6 million adults 18–49 and
2.2 million adults 25–54. The third season premiered on March 9, 2015. The
series continues to be A&E's number one drama series of all time among adults in
the 18–49 demographic. Cuse and Ehrin have stated they will end the series
after five seasons. In April 2015, Cuse said, "I defy anyone to watch this show
and not really be completely connected to Norma and Norman. And now that bond
you have with these characters is going to completely inform the rollercoaster
ride of the last two seasons." = The Strain =
Cuse is showrunner, executive producer, developer and writer of The Strain, an
FX drama series based on the vampire novel trilogy by coauthors Guillermo del
Toro and Chuck Hogan. Del Toro co-wrote, directed and produced the pilot episode.
Hogan also helped write the screenplay for the first episode. The Strain
premiered on July 13, 2014. In the first book, "The Strain", a Boeing 777 lands
in Washington D.C. with all the passengers dead and signs that a strange
being had been aboard the plane. Then it is discovered that all this is the work
of vampires out to put an end to civilization. FX ordered a 13-episode
second season, which premiered on July 12, 2015. On August 7, 2015, FX Network
renewed The Strain for a third season. Cuse and del Toro also announced a five
year plan for The Strain. "From the very beginning, we...talked about the first
book being the first season, the second book being the next two seasons and the
third book the last two seasons," Cuse also said that the last three seasons
would be 10-episodes each. "We see [The Strain] as a closed tale, and [we'd]
very much like to keep it that way." = The Returned =
Cuse was showrunner, co-developer, writer and executive producer of The
Returned, based on the popular and International Emmy Award winning French
suspense series Les Revenants, adapted by Fabrice Gobert and inspired by the
feature film, They Came Back, directed by Robin Campillo. Raelle Tucker also
served as showrunner and executive producer. The 10-episode first season
premiered on March 9, 2015. It is filmed in Squamish, British Columbia Canada.
The series focused on a small town that is turned upside down when several local
people, who have been long presumed dead suddenly reappear. The Returned was
co-produced by A+E Studios and FremantleMedia North America in
association with Haut et Court TV SAS, the producer of the French series, for
A&E Network. FremantleMedia distributes the series internationally, excluding
the U.S. and Canada, distributed by A+E Studios. The show was cancelled after
one season in June 2015. = Colony =
Cuse and Ryan Condal are showrunners, co-creators and executive producers of
Colony for the USA Network, a co-production between Legendary
Television and Universal Cable Prods. Colony "is a family drama/thriller about
life in Los Angeles after a mysterious 'foreign' occupation, and the efforts by
the proxy government to crush the growing resistance movement".
Argentinian director Juan José Campanella, directed the pilot. Colony
stars Josh Holloway, who became good friends with Cuse during the filming of
Lost. It also stars Sarah Wayne Callies of The Walking Dead. The ten episode
first season of Colony is scheduled to start on January 14 at 10 PM Eastern.
= Jack Ryan = Cuse and Graham Roland are developing a
TV series based on Jack Ryan, the CIA analyst character, created by novelist
Tom Clancy in the 1980s, with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes, Paramount TV and
Skydance TV. Amazon Studios has given a series commitment to the project, rather
than going through the process of producing a pilot and soliciting viewer
feedback. The number of episodes is still to be determined.
Jack Ryan will not be a direct adaptation of the books but a new
contemporary take on the character in his prime as a CIA analyst/operative
using the novels as source material. Roland executive produces with Cuse and
Lindsey Springer of Carlton Cuse Prods. and Platinum Dunes’ Bay, Brad Fuller and
Andrew Form. Roland and Cuse worked together on Lost
and have stayed close, with Roland recently serving as co-executive
producer on Cuse’s A&E drama series The Returned.
Current work Awards and nominations
Cuse has been nominated for ten Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on
Lost and has won twice: first in 2005 for Outstanding Drama Series, then in
2009 for Creative Achievement in Interactive Media. Cuse, along with
Lindelof received three nominations for the Golden Globe Award including a win
for Best Television Series – Drama in 2005; five nominations at Producers
Guild of America Awards, with a win in 2006 for Television Producer of the Year
Award in Episodic Drama; three nominations and wins from the American
Film Institute; twelve nominations at the Television Critics Association,
including three wins in for Outstanding Achievement in Drama in 2005, 2006 and
2010, and a win for Outstanding New Program in 2005. Cuse received four
nominations from the Writers Guild of America Awards, including a win in 2006
for Best Dramatic Series, and five Saturn Award nominations with four wins
in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2009 for Best Network Television Series. Cuse also
received nominations from the NAACP Image Awards, the Hugo Awards and the
People’s Choice Awards. In 2007, Cuse shared the British Academy Television
Award for Best International Series for Lost. In 2009, he won the Peabody Award,
The Jules Verne Festival Award, The Roma Fiction Fest Special Award, and a GQ
2009 Men of the Year Award. In 2010, he was voted one of Time magazine's "100
Most Influential People in the World". He has also won the TV Guide Award for
Martial Law, which was voted the Favorite New Series in 1999. In 2015,
Cuse received Variety’s Creative Leadership Award, following past
recipients including Judd Apatow and Jerry Weintraub.
References External links
Carlton Cuse at the Internet Movie Database