True Blood: Executive Producer Alan Ball Discusses Vampires and Sex

QUESTION: Are creating cliff hangers still a rule in TV shows? Was the season finale (season 3) something well planned or was it something that happened naturally?

ALAN BALL: It wasn’t intentional, it happened naturally. Every time we create stories, we try to look for what I like to call, a “what the [frick] moment” where basically whoever is watching thinks “What the [frick]?” I think that every episode needs at least one of those moments otherwise it’s not a worthy episode and it gets easy to let the viewer wonder whether he enjoyed the episode or not. That’s why I believe that as directors and writers, our job is to try to make a “WTF” episode with an emotional basis and within the story of that world. Now that the show keeps growing, I feel that when I work with scriptwriters is not enough to have an honest conversation about their opinions. I need to see some heads rolling.

QUESTION: Is it your main concern to reinvent the series at each new season?

ALAN BALL: I think we try not to repeat ourselves. We try hard not to. We use the books as the basis to the show but our story is different. The main contrast is between the vampires in the books and our vampires. The books are about Sookie, they tell her story. Whenever she leaves Bon Temps or does something else they only show her perspective. In the books we don’t see Jason or Sam…we need to get the story going and tell people who they are. I don’t have a plan, I just try to find the best story and hopefully, it’ll work.

QUESTION: Is TV something liberating or restricting?

ALAN BALL: I don’t know. I mean, we can pretty much tell whatever story we want as long as it’s not pornographic; that’s a boundary that has not been crossed yet. The limit is having a show in which if you lose, you die. As far as the reality shows are concerned, at least the ones I’ve been watching it wouldn’t be that bad if some of those people could actually die. If Bachelorette picked someone to shoot every week, you bet I’d be the first to watch it! [Laughs]

QUESTION: How do you separate pornography from sexual appeal on True Blood?

ALAN BALL: Pornography has to do with the exploitation of the human body. Art has to do with the soul. I’m not saying that True Blood is a work of art but I’m saying that it’s not about the bodies; it has to do with the connection that exists between people. Part of what I loved in the books was the great mix of horror, romance, drama, comedy and sex in Bon Temps. The vampires are pretty much a metaphor for sex: there’s penetration, body fluids…it’s a very erotic metaphor, in fact. And there’s lots of sex in Charlaine Harris’s books. I think that the sex life of the characters is something very interesting, we learn a lot about the mind and the soul of a person through sex. I felt that it was a very natural and important part of that world and it just had to be there. Jason is sexually compulsive because he is traumatized, this is a classic story. But in order to have a sexually compulsive character, we need to show the sex otherwise it doesn’t make sense, right? That’s what’s interesting about him, that’s his source of self-esteem.

QUESTION: Was balancing the sex scenes something difficult or did it occur naturally?

ALAN BALL: The sex is a part of the characters, of their lives and also a part of the show. Think, Sookie was a virgin when the show started and why couldn’t she have sex? Because she could hear the nasty thoughts of the men she was dating with. Then the sex between Bill and her become a major part of her story, an important part of her emotions; Again, Jason is sexually compulsive so the sex is a very important thing in his story. Basically, the vampires are the sex. Actually, what attracted me the most was the fact that this story was set in a small town in the south – and I’m from a small town in the south – when we have that puritanism which is a characteristic of small towns, the sex has much more emphasis. The Americans can’t feel relaxed when the subject is sex.

QUESTION: Is it because of that “explicit content” that True Blood has to be more visceral than, let’s say, Twilight?

ALAN BALL: Twilight fans are thirteen year old girls. I think that if thirteen year old girls who watch Twilight and the kind of sex scenes that are in Twilight, watched True Blood and the kind of sex scenes that are in True Blood, they would be traumatized. No, True Blood is for a different audience. True Blood is for adults. Period.

QUESTION: When did vampires stop being monstrous creatures and transformed themselves into romantic ones?

ALAN BALL: Well, a lot of people think that it started with Dark Shadows [gothic soap opera famous in the 60’s that is going to be transformed into a movie. Johnny Depp will be in the main role]. There were also Anne Rice’s books and the Broadway production of Dracula in the 70’s. I think there was a point in which they became romantic heroes.

For more of the interview, click HERE.