Costco Connection

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JAIMIE TRUEBLOOD

True Blood stars Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer receive advice from director Alan Ball.l.

CC: So we’re not sweeping out the rugs or
tearing skeletons from closets here?

True Blood director Alan Ball enjoys supernatural success

Bloodties

AB: I grew up in a conventional family. It was kind of boring. [Laughs] Well-adjusted people who really get it and are able to capably traverse the highs and lows of life without any real upsets or surprises? Those are the people we aspire to be and the people with whom we want to surround ourselves, but, as characters, they are boring. If you look back at mythology and early literature and the narratives of different religions, it’s all about the big, crazy stuff and these wildly unconventional families. I’m just doing that.

By J. Rentilly

CC: Much of your work has been about dealing with mortality, and now True Blood is about characters who are, in many cases, immortal. Different stories for different times of life?

IN THE WORLD of Alan Ball, there will be
blood. It may be the blood spilled amid the
suburban ennui of his Oscar-winning 1999
film, American Beauty, or the mortuary runoff
in his acclaimed HBO show Six Feet Under.
Since 2008, it’s been a focus of the swampy,
Grand Guignol-ish delights of True Blood, a
wildly sultry, sardonic, hypnotic series whose
second season is just out on DVD, and jam-
packed with bonus features. (“We are creating
content solely for the DVDs at this point,” says
the 53-year-old Ball.) True Blood, based on the
bestselling supernatural Southern Vampire
romps of Charlaine Harris, deals with vam-
pires and werewolves and politics and sex, and
yet, for all its genre trappings, it’s a deeply
human, relatable allegory—a juicy chomp of
pop culture that’s playful and edifying. And
Ball’s having the time of his life.

still—and always will—exist within our psyche. We look to entertainment now to fulfill those needs.

AB: Doing five years of Six Feet Under really allowed me to explore my relationship with grief, with the impermanence of things—just the fact

“True Blood is
really the most
fun I’ve had
on a job.

”

Perhaps a show like True Blood fits in there somehow.

CC: What attracted you to this material?

AB: I love Charlaine Harris’ books. They’re funny, and they’re sort of sly and witty and really violent and scary, and they’re very sexy. I just thought they’d make a great TV show.

that we all live on the edge of the abyss. I don”t think the immortality aspect of True Blood is its appeal to me at all.

CC: How do you straddle the line between
faithful adaptation and keeping audiences
surprised and engrossed?

The Costco Connection recently had the opportunity to speak with Ball about his latest success.

Costco Connection: The time is right for a show about these Dionysian pleasures, apparently. True Blood is a huge hit.

AB: We try to walk that line. We try to remain true to the books. One of the reasons the books are so successful is because they actually do work. However, we’ve taken some liberties. You don’t want to simply give people what they’re expecting.

I see it like this: After five years of therapy with Six Feet Under, which was very good therapy, and I believe it was entertaining and moving for a lot of people, I was ready to go on vacation. And True Blood is really the most fun I’ve ever had on a job. Yesterday I was in a production meeting and someone walked in and said, “OK, I’ve got this severed head. Where do you want it?” I work in a fun house now, and I love it. C

For example, Lafayette dies in the first book, and I was willing to do that [on the series] until we were shooting the pilot and I realized that this character and actor [Nelsan Ellis] are so great, there’s no way we’re losing them. At the very least, we always plan to stay very close to the spirit of Charlaine’s books.

J. Rentilly is a Los Angeles–based journalist who writes for a variety of publications.

Alan Ball: We all have a primal need for some kind of connection to nature that our culture tends to not take care of, the way earlier cultures might have had festivals and get around the fire and beat drums and eat mushrooms and go crazy. We’ve civilized ourselves beyond that, though those needs

CC: Amidst all of the fun house, the emo-
tional core of this show transcends the genre.

The Costco Connection True Blood Seasons 1 and 2 are available on DVD (Season 2 on Blu-ray on May 25) at most Costco locations and at Costco.com.

AB: That’s what makes the show stand out. Each character is now its own character. They have reasons for why they behave how they behave. They are each wounded in very specific ways, and they’re very complicated and nobody’s perfect.