I had the opportunity to interview Alan Ball, the genius behind HBO’s True Blood, over at TV Squad. Read the full interview here, and the condensed interview here.
- Get True Blood, Season One on iTunes, $34.99
- Get the HBO Podcast (free!)
- Get the Music from True Blood on iTunes, $12.99
- Get the True Blood, Original Score by Nathan Barr on iTunes, $9.99
- Buy True Blood, season one DVD on Amazon.com, $34.49
- Buy True Blood, season one Blu-ray on Amazon.com, $46.49
Some of my favorite Alan Ball quotes from the interview:
To viewers who feel the show doesn’t follow the books closely enough: “I don’t see any benefit of making a carbon copy of the books for TV.”
About the fabulous Deborah Ann Woll, who plays Jessica: “Now we have this crazy, formerly Christian, home-schooled, socially inept girl whose been turned into a vampire, which I think is a fantastic character.”
No explanation necessary: “Eric is a total alpha-dog.”
Eric vs. Bill: “It’s the classic good boy/bad boy. The good boy, he’s great, but the bad boy … you can’t stop thinking about him.”
More after the jump…
On Eric losing his long hair (which I liked): “It’s like the wig came off, and he blossomed.”
On the stellar casting: “I’m lucky because when you work with HBO, you don’t have a committee of casting people weighing in on every decision.”
The difference between True Blood and Six Feet Under: “As a story teller, I have so many different doors to open than I had with Six Feet Under.”
The Low-Down: “We really try to root the relationships and the characters and make them understandable and psychologically valid with behavior that we can recognize. But, you know, it’s vampires and guys that turn into dogs.”
Season Three spoilers: “Everybody is struggling with identity in season three – What am I? Who am I? What is my life? Is it what I want it to be? How do I make it what I want it to be? What are my real values? And some people are like, “Am I human? I always thought I was, but maybe I was wrong." In one particular case, its like, “Yes, honey, you were wrong.”
On Sookie possibly being a faerie: “I can tell you that Sookie is not 100 percent human. She is now aware of that.”
Yes, Godric is dead, but … : “Godric and Eric have a thousand years of flashback territory to be mined.”
Alan Ball’s thoughts on the supernatural: “I certainly believe that what we perceive as humans is just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t necessarily believe in vampires or werewolves or that kind of thing, but I believe there is definitely a realm we don’t necessarily have access to.”
Image: Amazon.com
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