Alan Ball Takes A Tour of the True Blood Set
True Blood creator Alan Ball took New York Magazine on a tour of the set recently, finding things even he didn’t know were there and revealing some cryptic clues along the way.
Alan Ball is in the dungeon underneath Fangtasia, the vampire-owned strip club on HBO’s True Blood, and it’s as cold and creepy as it looks on TV. It’s the place where the bad vampires chain and shackle humans they can torture, then exsanguinate; in one scene last year, a townie named Royce was ripped to shreds, literally. Ball is unsuccessfully trying to turn on the lights, but instead feels his way to a corner to study a mysterious piece of machinery—what looks like an antique boiler. “I’ve never seen this here before,” says Ball excitedly. “It’s gnarly. I’ve got to figure out how to use it.”
Whatever he decides to do, it won’t end well. Few auteurs are as comfortable with death and darkness as Ball, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for American Beauty; whose first series for HBO, Six Feet Under, was about a family of morticians; and whose current show fetishizes the undead. “After Six Feet Under ended, I wanted a change,” he says, “and True Blood seemed so fun and bright.”
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The stresses of creating another groundbreaking series for HBO have eased up now that True Blood is a hit. “My mantra is, ‘This is just a TV show. It’s not worth going crazy, getting sick over, or becoming a drug addict for.’ ” He pauses, perhaps reconsidering the rest of his day, which includes writing the season finale, editing three episodes, and shooting another. “Okay, it feels like I’m closer to the ideal of relative sanity, rather than a person who’s consumed by what is ultimately not real.”
Alan Ball, we heart you. True-Blood.net had our own set visit last year – sadly, Alan wasn’t on our tour – which you can read about here.
