Alan Ball Says TV is More Grown Up Than Film

True Blood executive producer Alan Ball is in Australia for a pair of speaking engagements, and gave an interview to Yahoo! New Zealand  in advance of his appearance. In addition to addressing the now familiar “the show isn’t the same as the books” complaint, Alan talks about how much better TV is than film right now and what he looks for when casting actors for True Blood.

While he has worked in both television and film, Ball says the small screen is able to tackle more sophisticated storylines.

“Partially it’s because the economic models are different and partially it’s because you have hours and hours to tell a story where as in a movie you just have two hours and you have to simplify everything down to its pure essentials.

“I also feel that in America, at least, movies are all targeted at 15-year-olds and there’s nothing wrong with that, they’re the ones that are buying tickets, but as an adult I feel that TV is a much more welcoming place for complicated, adult writing.”

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“I tend to gravitate to more towards actors who have stage experience and who have technique,” he says.

“If an actor can come in and make a character come alive in a way that surprises me and plays the beats of the scene then that’s gold.

He says it’s a rare thing in Hollywood, where often people are cast because they’re beautiful and charismatic rather than good actors.

“If they have a day to shoot a scene then they can do take after take, then these moments happen accidentally, then I could edit together a performance, but in TV the schedule is so quick that I don’t have time for that,” he says.

“A lot of these people become movie stars but I look for people who know what they’re doing and who can keep a clear delineation between themselves and the character.

“Not say ‘this scene doesn’t make sense to me because I would never do that’ and I’d say ‘you’re not actually a vampire’. You’d be surprised at how many people say things like that.”

(Read the full interview here…)

Alan Ball is scheduled for a conversation with Wil Anderson: Vampires, Death and the Mundane, on Thursday, September 8 at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, and with Alan Brough on Saturday, September 10 at the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne.