The Alan Ball interview that LA.com didn't want you to see

This Q&A with Alan Ball, whose "True Blood" debuts tonight on HBO and whose directorial debut, "Towelhead," opens Friday, appeared in today's paper, though not online. Here it is, with some bonus supplemental material saved for the DVD at the end.

Alan Ball is not one to shy away from difficult subject matter. He won an Oscar for his screenplay for "American Beauty," a story about suburban dysfunction and unrest, and an Emmy for directing an episode of his landmark HBO series "Six Feet Under," a seriocomic drama about a family-run funeral parlor that each week contemplated themes like grief and mortality.

This week, he's venturing into his trickiest territory yet, with "Towelhead," the story of a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl's treacherous encounters with sexuality and racism. But he's also leavening the film's heaviness with "True Blood," his latest HBO show about the clash of bayou vampire and redneck cultures, a show he calls "pulpy" and "rowdy."

"There are some thematic similarities, but they're also worlds apart - 'True Blood' is a different beast from anything that I've done before," Ball says of the show which premieres tonight. "It's more like a fun amusement-park ride or a Saturday matinee."

"Fun" isn't exactly a word one'd associate with "Towelhead," which is based on Alicia Erian's acclaimed novel of the same name and has spurred protest from the Los Angeles chapter of The Council on American/Islamic Relations for its racially charged title.

The film stars Summer Bishil as Jasira, a normally ebullient girl with a neurotic mother and a distant father who have divorced. When her mother sends her to her father's Houston home during the first Gulf War, she's subjected to some virulent racist cant and the disquieting attentions of her neighbor, Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart), who, like Kevin Spacey's character in "American Beauty," is not a villain but a very troubled man doing troubling things.

"True Blood," on the other hand, is based on Charlaine Harris's "Southern Vampire Mystery" series, set in a sex-strewn world where vampires are attempting to enter mainstream society but meeting fierce resistance from the religious right and other tremulous groups. Anna Pacquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse, a small-town Louisiana waitress who can read minds and finds herself in danger of being ostracized by her neighbors when she takes a liking to a 170-year-old vampire named Bill (Stephen Moyer).

"They're both the stories of young female outsiders who are struggling in their ways to connect with the world at large and also to connect romantically," muses Ball, battling a mean cold after spending weeks on the road promoting his twin projects. "When I read the source material of both, I really felt that I was right there in the world the stories were taking place in."

In a pristine hotel room - the only personal effect in it was Ball's copy of a book about Dionysus, the god of wine and champion of madness and ecstasy - the writer/director discussed the Yin and Yang and controversy behind his latest projects.

Q: Is it frustrating to be accused of racism for making a film assailing racism?

Ball: "The dialogue about hate language in general and the word 'Towelhead' in particular is a good dialogue to have. I certainly honor and respect their position. We screened it for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. It provoked a very lively discussion, and they came on the side of the movie being on their side, dramatizing what it's like to be victimized because of one beliefs.

"My position is that to ban the use of that word in any context only gives the word that much more power. However, I understand that there are people who feel that the word should never be spoken, and I respect their opinion. I don't agree with it but I certainly respect it.

Q: The tone in Erian's book made it easier to absorb some of the awful moments, but actually seeing them played out in the film can be pretty difficult.

Ball: "It shouldn't be easy to watch a character you care about have this happen to her - it's horrifying. But some estimates have it as high as one in three women had some sort of untoward sexual attention forced upon them by an older man when they're a child.

"What I loved about this book was that it presented that in all of its messy, complicated reality and it also allowed both characters in this dynamic to be human. It doesn't absolve Mr. Vuoso of any responsibility, and it doesn't victimize Jasira and it doesn't suggest she asked for it.

"But we had a screening and one man said, 'Don't you think the movie's kind of one-sided? She was asking for it.' This is a grown man, and literally the whole audience was like, 'What?'

"Vuoso is an adult; he knows it's wrong. Jasira is a child; you cannot hold her to the same standards as him. He's the one who should have stopped it. He's the one who committed a crime, not only legally but morally and spiritually, and he pays for it dearly.

"She's just trapped in a life where she has no power and she's looking for something to make her feel good. That, I think, is a more interesting story than just a child who is victimized by a sub-human monster."

Q: Your previous work didn't have bad guys, per se, but morally ambiguous characters dwelling in dark areas. What's it like working with characters in "True Blood" who are just flat-out bad guys?

Ball: "Certainly, in the source material, they're bad. That's part of the joy of it. It takes place in such a fantastic world where vampires exist. I think it makes me less inclined to seek the humanity in every single character. In 'True Blood, it's pretty clear that these are bad people and you're not supposed to want to see them do well. There's enough moral ambiguity going on elsewhere."

Q: You've said you've never been a big fan of vampire tales, but there's a cult addicted to the genre. Why do you think there're so many huge fans?

Ball: "I only have my own half-baked theories. Vampires are certainly a huge sexual metaphor. At one point, Chris Albrecht, back when he was [running] HBO, asked me, 'What is this series about?' And I thought, 'I can't say, (in a dopey voice) "It's about a lot of vampires, 'cause I think they're real fun,"' so I said, 'It's about the terrors of intimacy.' (laughs)

"But the more I think about it, the more I think that's true. It's about how terrifying it is to really let your guard down and open your psyche up to another creature. And with vampires, you're not only opening yourself up emotionally, you're opening yourself up physically - you could die.

"We live in a world where emotion and the need to connect with something deeper and more profound has been distilled into these negative doctrines - 'Feel bad about yourself. You have to behave; you have to be controlled.' We live in a culture that wants people to be afraid and protect themselves from everybody else, which is the exact opposite of what the human soul wants.

"We all have that part of ourselves that needs abandon. We all have a need for transcendence, so maybe people turn to this fantastic fiction for that."

Q: "True Blood" pokes fun at the religious right's intolerance, and "Towelhead's" subject matter is certain to offend them. Are you prepared for their attacks?

Ball: "I don't really care what they think. There's already been some vicious, kneejerk reactions to it. You know what? Yeah, this stuff punches emotional buttons and some people are going to be able to see beyond that and some won't. And some people are just going to flat-out not like it. And that's OK; I don't need to be liked by everybody. I think there's an audience for both of these; that's the audience I write for and that's the audience I belong to. I'm not interested in people who are close-minded; I don't care what they think."

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Now, the extras:

Ball on "Towelhead's" sex scenes: "It was hard in that what we were shooting was very intimate. It was hard also, technically, because the first scene with Aaron and Summer takes place in the foyer of that house, and his hands unzip her pants and then the camera tilts up to his face and while it's tilting up he's lifting his hand out so the makeup woman can apply fake blood to it. If you see it happening out of context, it's kind of ridiculous. But the actors knew what they were signing up for, and it was a hard day, but I had harder days on 'Six Feet Under.' It wasn't that difficult because they were really on their game and I didn't have to coax them to places they didn't want to go."

On his career: "At this point in my career, I'm aware that some people are not going to like what I do. I'm a victim of my own success - I get judged differently now than I did before 'American Beauty.' There's no way around it. My approach is to try to do work that I would really be entertained and moved by, and that's all I know how do. Anytime that I tried to think, 'How is this going to play?' I created a television show ("Oh, Grow Up") that was totally manufactured to appeal to as many demographics as it possibly could and it was an abject failure. I've been successful writing things that I have fun making."

On the suburbs, as depicted in "Towelhead:" "There's this great book I read a while ago called 'The American Replacement of Nature,' and it's about how as a society we seem to have a desire to control and replace nature with something manmade. I have nothing against suburbia - I live in suburbia. But it has a lot of growth and it's a lot different from a place that seems as if someone just added water and it just sprang up. When I drive to my place in Lake Arrowhead, I drive past acres and acres and acres of beige houses so close together and think if I had to live there I'd go mad."

On his favorite TV shows: "I love 'Mad Men,' just like everybody else. I was like a gushing schoolgirl to Matt Weiner when we were on the picket line. I'm still a huge fan of 'South Park' - it just makes me laugh like no other show. I love 'Flight of the Conchords.' I just started watching 'In Treatment,' and found it way more fascinating than I thought it would. I've not seen 'Damages,' but I hear that it's great."

- "True Blood:" 9 and 10:30 tonight, HBO.