Vampires that don't suck

Alan Ball explains that the undead in his new HBO series don't just embody our deepest sexual yearnings -- they represent both gays and the Bush administration.

Editor's note: Read more of our TV Week 2008 coverage.

By Joy Press

Read more: HBO, Drama, TV, Interviews, Vampires, Arts & Entertainment, Joy Press, Arts & Entertainment TV Interviews, Six Feet Under, TV Week, TV Week 2008

Sept. 3, 2008 | In "Six Feet Under," Alan Ball created a show about death that was exuberantly full of life. His characters were maddeningly self-absorbed, over-expressive and haunted by loss; they were also unforgettable. One of the best TV series of the last decade, "Six Feet" set mundane elements of life -- eating breakfast, bickering with a parent, taking out the trash -- against the creepy backdrop of a funeral parlor. Ball proved that he could weave morbid extremes into subtle drama: Whole conversations sometimes took place over corpses splayed on marble blocks, or with mourners sobbing just around the corner.

The family saga was widely celebrated for reaching places that few series even contemplated, which is why the stakes are so high for Ball's next foray into television. But instead of probing further into the territory he opened up with "Six Feet Under," Ball has chosen a more whimsical TV project: the oddball genre drama "True Blood," premiering on HBO Sept. 7. Based on Charlaine Harris' "Southern Vampire" books, the new show blends sly humor and gory violence, politics and the supernatural. This is a world where the living drink vampire blood to amp up their libidos, and vamps try to stay out of trouble by drinking synthetic blood (which might already be familiar to you from the show's hilariously ubiquitous viral ad campaign, found here, here and here ); where civic-minded bloodsuckers campaign for undead rights ("we pay taxes, we deserve basic civil rights just like everyone else," one activist tells Bill Maher) while their more brutal brethren stalk the streets of Louisiana in search of their next fix.

"True Blood" heroine Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin) is a virgin clad in nymphet's clothing. A telepathic waitress in small-town Louisiana, Sookie spends much of her mental energy blocking out the base, awful thoughts of everyone around her. While her horndog brother is stumbling into the dangerous world of fangbangers (mortals who chase the exotic experience of screwing the undead), Sookie meets Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who happens to be the most genteel, courtly vamp since Angel, or maybe "Twilight's" Edward. "I've been waiting for this to happen ever since they came out of the coffin two years ago," Sookie burbles, referring to the political changes that have allowed vampires to become part of mainstream society. But Bill is not the perfect boyfriend: He comes with a century's worth of emotional baggage. And through him, Sookie is thrust into an underworld riddled with sensuality and peril. It's a fantastical universe, and yet in some ways it's not so different from the one inhabited by the central character of "Towelhead," Ball's perturbing forthcoming movie about a teenage girl learning to cope with her burgeoning sexuality, and with others' interest in it.

Ball spoke to Salon by phone from Los Angeles about the appeal of fanged sex, vampirism as a political metaphor and how to have fun with death. As one of the characters remarks, "If we can't kill people, what's the point of being a vampire?" (Listen to the interview here.)

You've spent all those years on a show about undertakers and now you've moved on to a show about dead people -- or, that is, undead. Are you a secret goth?

I'm not! I just chanced upon these books by accident almost. I was wandering through the bookstore and I saw this book and the tag line was, "Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a good idea." I thought that was funny. They were so incredibly entertaining that I got really pulled into the world of the books.

The series is an interesting mix of light and dark. Clearly, there are funny elements, and yet it is literally ghoulish subject matter.

Oh, absolutely. It's incredibly violent, and there's a huge body count. At the same time, it's vampires, so you can't take it too seriously. There's something so fun about the pulpiness -- the genreness. It kept me so entertained and at the same time I thought there were really great, deeper themes. I ended up really caring about these characters.

Did you sit down and map out the mythology of this particular world?

Actually, no. Charlaine had done that. Instead of the supernatural being something that exists outside of nature, I wanted it to be something that was almost like a deeper manifestation of nature. Deeper and more primeval. Something that maybe humans, with our brain structures that we've created as a way to filter reality, can't comprehend or sometimes even perceive.

If you actually look at a lot of the more recent vampire movies and TV shows, that mythology is pretty fluid. We decided a lot of the myths about vampires were misinformation that the vampires themselves willfully disseminated so that they could pass. Like in the 15th century, if everybody believed a vampire couldn't be seen in a mirror, then, here I am, you can see me in a mirror, and so I couldn't possibly be a vampire.

So the vamps have just been scamming us all these years?

Pretty much.

In the opening episode you introduce us to "fangbangers" -- regular people who want to sleep with vampires. So I'm guessing that vampire sex is pretty intense. Is that part of vampires' appeal?

Well, they've had a lot of years to perfect their techniques, to learn things, and also as creatures who are more deeply connected to nature. Definitely within the books and within our world, usually vampires are pretty good sexual partners.

There must be some duds in there, though?

Oh, absolutely. We haven't gotten to them yet, but we will.

Also, clearly, the sexual encounters in this world are freighted with danger. That seems to be something that Sookie is drawn to.

I don't know that she's drawn to dangerous sexual encounters. I wouldn't say that. I think she's drawn to a man that she can relax and be herself around and not have to have this constant defense mechanism, wall, around her consciousness so she doesn't hear what people are thinking.

Right, because for some mysterious reason he's the only person whose thoughts she can't hear.

Absolutely. That is the biggest turn-on of all.

I was thinking about the sexual component because I just saw a screening of your forthcoming movie, "Towelhead." In the movie, a young woman is discovering sex in a way that feels quite chilling and a little bit out of her control. How does that work when you're making two projects in fairly close proximity; do the themes bleed into each other at all?

I'm sure that they do. I'm sure they're obviously themes that I'm attracted to because they have a certain resonance for me personally and psychically. However, "Towelhead" I shot and finished a long time before I even started working on the show. They feel like two very distinctly different worlds. It certainly wasn't conscious. I'm not that kind of writer anyway, where I sit down and say, I want to explore this theme, because that kind of academic approach is not the way my brain works. It's a much more unconscious, organic thing.

It also got me thinking about one of the most controversial episodes of "Six Feet Under," probably one of the most intense hours I've ever spent in front of the TV. It's the famous episode when David is held captive and brutalized by a man he tries to pick up for casual sex. It made me wonder, what do you try to achieve with TV generally, and what do you want to evoke with "True Blood"?

I learned a long time ago that moments when I'm successful are when I try to create television that would engage me as a viewer, or film, or whatever. I've certainly tried to do other things -- I wrote a bunch of screenplays and I thought, well, this is what will sell, or this is what the market is looking for now. I did a sitcom for ABC 10 years ago and thought, well, this is a nice hybrid of "Friends" and this and this, and maybe it will be really successful.

I think I just find the pop culture landscape so barren in terms of seeing things that excite me on an intellectual, emotional and entertainment level all at the same time. I don't want to just sit there and let something that is predigested wash over me and not really think about all of the weird, ambiguous and scary parts of life. I think trying to avoid those is ultimately self-destructive and also destructive in a global sense, because as a race we face a lot of really, really terrifying problems, and we live in a violent, irrational world. I like to confront that in symbolic ways through entertainment. I'm interested in things that reach down into your soul and your psyche and force you to confront the monsters that live there.

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