ALAN
BALL

Ever since he burst onto the scene with a modern classic, Alan Ball has defined film and television with an open, brutally honest look at suburbia.

An Oscar winner with his first feature screenplay, AMERICAN BEAUTY, Ball started as a sitcom writer, and graduated to executive producer. His first show as creator, SIX FEET UNDER, was one of HBO’s biggest hits that defined the family drama by showcasing the inner turmoils of a family who runs a mortuary. He has returned to the network with TRUE BLOOD, which premiered last week on HBO, about vampires given rights as humans with the marketing of a synthetic blood meant to quench their insatiable appetites for humans.

Ball has also made his directing debut with TOWELHEAD, based on the novel by Alicia Erian about Jasira, a young half American, half Lebonese girl who comes of age emotionally and sexually in 1991 Texas. The film is gaining controversy not only from its title, but from the film’s extreme sexual content.

To promote TOWELHEAD, Ball took time to speak with a roundtable of reporters including the Crypt to discuss his film, TRUE BLOOD, being a first time director, and the differences of working on film and television in this Crypt exclusive.

Congratulations on TRUE BLOOD.

ALAN BALL: Thank you. It’s fun isn’t it?

It is but compared to everything you’ve done beforehand, it’s completely different. How do you go about doing project to project?

AB: I like to go from something different to something different. After SIX FEET UNDER ended, I wrote a play and went back in the theater. I produced my first play in eleven years. I did this movie and now I’m back to TV. I like being challenged. I like being challenged by material and also by the different parameters of the different media. I feel that it forces me to keep growing.

TOWELHEAD deals with a lot of subjects, one of them being molestation, and it’s presented here in a scene where usually you would see the initial start of the act, and then a fade out and we deal with the aftermath. You chose to show the scene intact which is a very brave decision. Why did you court controversy in leaving that scene in?

AB: I don’t court controversy. I felt like when I read the book and I read that scene of molestation, I felt that it was an important scene. It was so important what was happening emotionally and it was so important to see that it was such a complicated issue that Jasira as a character was curious that she was experiencing some physical sensations that were pleasurable. She was getting the kind of attention where she was feeling intimate with somebody which was lacking in the rest of her life. I did make a point to focus on the characters’ faces to see what was going on emotionally but that is such a pivotal point and it was so important to see how both of them were having this profound moment in two lives that are respectively devoid of profound moments and it’s one of the dynamics that allows this experience to happen on such a tragically regular basis. In a later scene, yes we cut outside of the house, but it was instinctive and I was trying to capture what Alicia captured in the book.

How do you know that you’re not moving into exploitation?

AB: I just trust my instincts. It didn’t feel exploitive to me. I can’t second guess what people’s responses are going to be. Once you do that, once you start writing to a perceived expectation, it becomes something other than writing. It becomes more like marketing.

Jasira goes through such awful abuse but it’s also one of the most sex positive films in a while. How do you get that? Girls are not allowed in the media to say that sex is great.

AB (interrupting): Absolutely.

Even on a show like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER where it’s the powerful feminine show yet every time someone had sex, they became a vampire or lost their soul.

AB: (Laughs) It’s instant punishment. It’s just like WHERE THE BOYS ARE where he goes all the way and then gets hit by a bus. (Laughs) The book TOWELHEAD was written by a woman. That’s all in the book, the sex positive aspect, the fact that this experience does not destroy Jasira. That she does not turn into an eternal victim is why I responded to the book. It felt so refreshing because a woman was not punished for being a sexual being and for liking sex. I think it is silly that it seems so unusual given how much as a culture we condition young girls and women to basically seek their self esteem from being a sexual commodity, by basing their sense of self on how desirable they are to men. I think there is a big disconnect there and I think Alicia’s book is very truthful and it felt so refreshing that I would like to tell this story or to be a part of transferring this story from this medium to that medium.

Going back to TRUE BLOOD, how involved are you on the show?

AB: I am staying on as show writer/executive producer. I am sort of the overall artistic authority. I wrote the first three episodes of Season One. I directed Episode One, Episode Three, and Episode Twelve of Season One. I will be overseeing Season Two.

How many episodes have been shot?

AB: Twelve.

Are you going to write the season finale as well?

AB: I did not write. I directed it.

Do you consider the swamps of Louisiana, where TRUE BLOOD is based, to be in the same continuum as your other projects or do you consider them to be separate worlds?

AB: I think they’re both metaphors for the swamp of the human soul but I think New York City is that. I think China is that. I think Afghanistan is that. I don’t see them as the same thing but it’s still a world in which characters exist and make decisions but in a lot of ways they are very different.

Your projects all have fantasy sequences, in AMERICAN BEAUTY there were the rose petals to TRUE BLOOD with the dream sequence where there wasn’t sex but just the desire to be bitten. With the magazine sequences in TOWELHEAD, what’s the appeal for you in these sequences?

AB: I obviously have a very fertile imagination and a lot of times, this not being one of them, I would be somewhere but my mind would be a hundred and fifty thousand miles elsewhere. As a kid in school, I very quickly got bored because it seemed to me I learned things from Grades 1-3 and Grades 4-6 would get repeated over and over again so I would daydream constantly. I think that’s where my imagination goes and why I became a writer. I think it’s me personally I have a very vivid imagination and I just assume my characters do as well.

Being that TOWELHEAD is an adaptation from a novel, what are the challenges from adapting a script as opposed to writing a script from your own imagination?

AB: Well certainly they’re different. If someone gave me a John Grisham book and paid me $30 million to adapt it well of course I would take that job but I wouldn’t really know what to do. It would be like homework. It would be really, really hard. Alicia’s world and characters are very similar in sensibility to my own so that wasn’t difficult. I didn’t feel that I had to take this story that I think only parts worked and I would have to make it work better so in a lot of ways she had done all the heavy lifting. She created these characters, the world, and the story. It’s certainly a different process than sort of channeling whatever comes out of your own psyche and into a coherent story but in a lot of ways it’s similar. In a lot of ways it’s thinking about it as a movie. When you are writing a screenplay, you are writing a blueprint for a movie. Screenplays aren’t meant to just exist on their own and I’m very instinctive. Anytime I try to get academic or look at things from one perspective and it’s a weakness for me, I lose interest. It gets boring. As long as I’m in that story and I can see those images and I can see exactly how the camera is going to do this, then I’m in the moment. I need to see that movie as I’m writing the blueprint for it. Even though I didn’t create these characters or this story, there were cinematic moments in there already. I felt like the story that was happening was so vivid, dramatic, and compelling that it was easy to see it as I was writing the script.

In terms of the work of creating a film in the various stages, of writing, directing, editing, and even the marketing of the project, where do you feel your strengths and weaknesses are in all of those phases?

AB: I love all aspects, this aspect being my least favorite because it puts me as the performer. While I have certainly honed those skills over the years, I’m not that interested in myself. I love production. I love shooting. I love working with actors. There’s a sort of intimate relationship you build with this person that’s all about trust and all about helping that person share these intimate moments. I love post production because that’s where the movie really starts to get made. I hate fighting with the studio. I hate dealing with that stuff but it’s an important skill and an important part of it. My weaknesses I think in terms as a writer is I’m so organic although I’ve gotten much better over the years. I hate to admit it but I owe a lot of that to my years in sitcom in understanding that the structure of storytelling and the bare bones of storytelling and learning economy just because a moment is textured and interesting, if it’s not advancing the story, then it doesn’t need to be there. In terms of shooting, I’m very limited in my technical knowledge. I totally depend on my DP. I’m not one of those directors who go “Get me a 70 lens and a such and such filter.” I didn’t go to film school. I hire people who that’s their job and that’s their gift and I say to them that I really think in a scene that she feels claustrophobic and alone and he or she figures out how to shoot that and I trust them. I’m 51 years old. I don’t want to go back to film school. I like working with actors and I like working with cinematographers and designers who are really good at what they do. I feel like my job is to assemble the best team and get out of their way until I see things going in a direction that’s not working. Post production, I think I’m really strong with editing. I think I really have an instinctive feel if a moment is full or not. I still need to learn how to be more bloodthirsty in choosing what to cut. I eventually cut from the editor’s first cut of this movie 40 minutes out and it’s a much better movie because of it.

Do you dream of writing in your sleep and channel voices while sleeping?

AB: I think I do a lot of work on a subconscious level. I know that I’ll become aware of a character or situation and I’ll think about it for months, sometimes even years, and then when I sit down it’s as if I’ve been working on a subconscious level. I’m not aware of it in my sleep. I’ve certainly had dreams where I woke up and felt that it was really mythic and I wish I could remember them because they’d make great movies. There’s a mysterious aspect to the process that I don’t want to understand it. I felt that were I to understand it completely, I would lose it.

Are you surprised in today’s culture that if people were to make a completely racist movie, they wouldn’t call it something like TOWELHEAD?

AB: I’m not surprised. There are very few things that surprise me. I feel that TOWELHEAD is a very incendiary word, that was the point. I am surprised when I hear from people saying “Well I read the synopsis of the movie and I’ve about it online and you’ve obviously blah blah blah blah,” and I sort of feel that you should have a responsibility to see the movie yourself. Racism is such a complicated issue and such a hot button emotional issue. I’m not surprised that there are some people who disagree with the use of the title. I am also not surprised that there are some people who can’t get beyond their initial emotional response. Personally I believe that to forbid the use of such language in any context only makes those words that more powerful. It makes it easier to pretend that the hatred and the narrow mindedness behind that language doesn’t exist and we all know that’s not true.

Did Alicia work with you with input onto the film?

AB: She’s a total badass. Her influence on the movie was that I sent her the script. She loved it and she missed the scene where they go to the mall and get their pictures made and I thought “How could I make that a part of the movie and make it important?” because obviously my first judgment was that I could lose it and the story would still hold but then I thought it would be an opportunity to crystallize all the messages Jasira has been given. It’s because of Alicia’s note that the scene came back into the movie.

What were some of the issues involved during the the road to distribution and some of the challenges?

AB: When Warner Independent purchased the movie, it was twenty minutes longer. Working with them, of course we butted heads and there were some changes I refused to make and they did not force me to make them. A lot of the changes they suggested I eventually made and it did make the movie better. It was mostly tightening the movie so it didn’t take so long to get to the end. There weren’t cuts made due to the content. We adjusted the feel of Jasira and Thomas’ relationship where it felt more enjoyable to her and less like another guy taking advantage of her. We really condensed the front end of the movie so you got into the story faster. I resisted the note to take Maria Bello out of the movie entirely. I thought that would’ve been a big mistake. I resisted the note to not see Mr. Vuoso after he gets into the police car because I thought that would’ve been a huge mistake. I did make adjustments within those stories to make it more palatable to the people at Warner Bros and I think ultimately the collaboration led to the strongest version of the movie.

Will there be a director’s cut DVD or is this it?

AB: This is it. This is the director’s cut. There will be deleted scenes on the DVD because there are some scenes that were beautifully performed and shot.

There was a scene in AMERICAN BEAUTY that was cut out and not even on the DVD.

AB: Sam feels differently about it than I do. Sam felt like this was the movie and he’s not putting anything else on it. I feel that if people want to see these, then they should. I won’t put it back into the movie because my version is complete but I want to show these scenes because the actors still put in great work. The designers did a great job and the scenes were beautifully done. I don’t want them to end up in the garbage.

Thank you for your time Mr. Ball.

AB: Thank you and take care.
 

(Special thanks to Falco Ink)