Issue Date: October 26, 2008

Also this week: Which secret from "Lost" would you most like to be revealed?

TV

J.J. Abrams: He holds the secrets

Abrams, creator of cult favorites "Lost," "Alias" and the new hit "Fringe," offers revealing clues to his fanboy-inspiring mega-successes.

By Brian Truitt

We're all sworn to secrecy. We can't say anything."

This is the mantra for most any cast or crew member on a J.J. Abrams project. On the third day of the pop-culture extravaganza known as Comic-Con International in San Diego, it's coming from Simon Pegg, the British actor who plays Scotty in Abrams' big-screen "Star Trek," due out in May.

Secrets are at the heart of Abrams' most popular works, from the ABC hits "Lost" and "Alias" and his monster movie "Cloverfield" to his new series, "Fringe." The Fox drama's debut episode in September scored 9.1 million viewers; the second episode rocketed to 13.4 million, the biggest second-episode increase for a network series in at least 17 years, Fox says.

There is a reason Abrams, 42, came in at No. 29 on "Entertainment Weekly's" list of the 50 smartest people in Hollywood: He holds the secrets everybody wants to know.

Yet keeping them secret before the big reveal is about as hard as making his masterpieces in the first place. Somehow, Abrams kept his "Cloverfield" monster from leaking all over the Internet before the film reached theaters, but he also teased fans with viral websites. He does this, though, because of his fans, the ones who swarm him asking about the mysterious island on "Lost" or trying to get some "Star Trek" scoop. He is the geek deity, and waves of people part as he makes his way across the Comic-Con floor, security in tow.

Dressed in a white T-shirt, jeans and those trademark horn-rimmed glasses, he seems more a fan than a Hollywood ueber-producer. That's apropos, as the characters, story lines, plot twists and other riddles Abrams throws in are "all for the kind of viewer we are, which is insane puzzle solvers," he says.

Abrams met a riddle-loving fan during the third season of "Alias," when he sat down with an up-and-coming writer who was blogging on "Television Without Pity" and trying to figure out the spy series' secrets. That man, Damon Lindelof, became a co-creator of "Lost."

"He really is a fanboy. A lot of people say that about people like J.J., but he's a fan first," Lindelof says. "J.J. also is an incredibly secretive person."

Unfortunately, there are those out in cyberspace looking to reveal whatever of his secrets they can. A month before the "Fringe" pilot premiered at Comic-Con, an unfinished version was leaked online. It wasn't the first time Abrams has been burned on the Internet. In the fall of 2002, "Ain't It Cool News" posted a scathing review of a draft of a "Superman" script Abrams was working on, and pre-production was halted, he says: "That, to me, is the part that's the most frustrating -- having something that is not in a state to be seen, or publicly reviewed, getting out there. I'm keeping things secret ultimately for the audience." But still, as much as Abrams wants to keep those secrets, he says he wouldn't choose to go back to a pre-Internet time.

"You're taking things too seriously if you're losing too much sleep over plotlines getting out here and there," Abrams says. "A lot of people actually say to me, 'OK, what's going on with the island? What's happening?' And if I start to offer anything, they go, 'Ehhh, don't tell me!' It's a very interesting thing with people: They want to know, but "Lost" or "Fringe," they're not health diagnoses. This is entertainment, and I feel like at a certain point, entertainment needs to be an experience and not information."