Damon Lindelof only wanted a gig writing for "Alias" when he agreed to meet with JJ Abrams about "Lost" -- and the pair threw in lots of wild
elements just because they never expected it to get on the air.
One of the main calling cards of the show -- the flashbacks to characters' lives before they crash landed on the island -- was simply a way to cut away from the same old tropical locale. And the out-of-sync storytelling was inspired by Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction."
If it seemed like the writers were making things up as they went along, by the way, they often were. And also? Lindelof tried to quit the show, again and again.
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These were just a few of the admissions Lindelof shared about one of television's most beloved shows Thursday on the seventh anniversary of its first airing on ABC. (You can find audio here.)
He spoke during a keynote at the New York Television Festival, a gathering where independent writers and producers try to meet with executives and find homes for their pilots.
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Lindelof was an established TV writer himself, working on NBC's "Crossing Jordan," when he first met Abrams. He told interviewer Andrew Jenks, host of MTV's "World of Jenks," that he had been "stalking" an ABC executive friend for years to get a job on Abrams' spy series "Alias."
Eventually the executive, Heather Kadin, called him in January 2004 saying he could meet Abrams about a project. 
"The bad news is," he recalled her saying, "it's this ridiculous show idea about a plane that crashes on an island and everyone here doesn't think anything is ever gonna happen with it. But Lloyd Braun who was the president of ABC at the time, just thought he had lightning in a bottle: He wanted to do a drama version of 'Survivor.'"
Braun had told Abrams he had a script for an island drama but wanted him to "work your magic on it," Lindelof said. He said Abrams told Braun he was too busy, but would supervise another writer.
"So Heather told me, you meet with JJ, this pilot goes nowhere, but then you get a job on 'Alias'!"
But the pilot went somewhere. Lindelof came in with plenty of ideas, including non-linear storytelling and flashbacks.
"The biggest issue with a desert island show was the audience is going to get very frustrated that the characters were not getting off the island," he said. "My solution was, hey, let's get off the island every week. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to do these flashbacks.
