Q&A / ALAN BALL, creator of new HBO series "True Blood": Lust, blood, laughs

The posting was prompted by "Towelhead," an explosive, dark comedy Ball directed and adapted from the novel by Alicia Erian. The film is scheduled to open Sept. 19 in metro Atlanta.

It's one of two major projects from Ball this month. The other: "True Blood," a pulpy vampire series that begins at 9 tonight on HBO.

Ball described "True Blood" as "equal parts horror movie, romance novel, tongue-in-cheek thriller, love story and social commentary." Starring Anna Paquin (Oscar winner for "The Piano"), it centers on the mainstream appearance of vampires —- and the synthetic blood sold out of convenience-store coolers that dulls their taste for the human stuff —- in an itty-bitty Southern town. The sexed-up show is a kind of dead-to-undead progression from his Emmy-winning HBO series "Six Feet Under," and it already has spawned cultish buzz.

"Towelhead" arrives clutching more controversial baggage. Like 1999's "American Beauty," it's set in a spiritually flattened suburb. Its real subject: middle-class decay in a consumer-mad culture.

In "Beauty," the main character (played by Kevin Spacey) lusts after his teenage daughter's girlfriend to reignite deadened passions. "Towelhead" is told through the multicultural eyes of Jasira (Summer Bishil), an Arab-American 13-year-old whose sexual awakening amid her father's physical abuse leads to intimacy with a 36-year-old married neighbor (Aaron Eckhart).

The neat, unremarkable houses in both films could easily occupy the same cul-de-sac —- as could the Cobb County house in which Ball grew up.

Ball, 51, now lives in Los Angeles and hadn't been back to Atlanta since his mother died three years ago. One brother still lives in North Georgia. An older sister was killed while driving Ball to a piano lesson when he was 13.

Like everyone, he said, he grew up in a family with secrets. He talked about some of those secrets, "Towelhead" and "True Blood."

Q: The blogger put it about as straight-up as it could be put. What is up with the "American Beauty" writer's jones for getting in the head of middle-age guys who are trying to molest teenage girls?

A: It's obviously something that has personal resonance with me. Not so much from a middle-age man's point of view, but from the child's point of view. When this book came across my desk, it really spoke to me.

Q: You've talked in the past about growing up gay in Marietta and the outsider sensibility that gave you. But this sounds like something else. Were you molested?

A: It's hard for me to call it molestation.

Q: What would you call it?

A: (Pause) Experimentation. The difference in ages was not as extreme as in the movie, but there was a definite age difference. I'm sure a clinical psychologist would look at me and say, yeah, he was molested. But I don't consider myself a victim. I don't think I've been ruined. I know it was a complicated moment and not a black-and-white moment.

That's my answer to the question. I don't jones after teenage girls. But that's the way my psyche chooses to work out and explore those issues.

Q: Was Jasira molested?

A: Yes. She's 13. Any time an adult has sex with someone under 16, even if she wants to do it, it's rape.

Now, is she curious? Has she said some provocative things? Yeah. Does that mean she deserves it? No. You can't expect children to be held to the same standards as adults, especially when this young girl has no source of power or pleasure or self-esteem anywhere in her life.

So all of a sudden this handsome, charming guy, who's stuck in a life he hates, starts paying attention to her, and she discovers her sexuality and knows she has this power over him —- of course she's going to go there. It's Psychology 101.

Q: You're attracted to these characters.

A: I'm interested in people who [screw] up. I find that way more interesting than people who do the right thing.

Q: Ever drive through suburban streets and wonder what's going on behind those doors?

A: Not just suburban streets. Urban streets. I was in Shreveport with "True Blood," and every time I passed a mobile home on the side of the road I was like, "What's going on in there?" Then there were these McMansions with chain-link fences around them, people who just got all this money from their natural gas leases, and I was like, "OK, what's going on in THERE?"

Q: How'd "True Blood" come about?

A: I was early for a dentist appointment, wasting time at Barnes and Noble, and picked up this little paperback called "Dead Until Dark." And the tagline was "Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea."

I thought, "That's funny," bought it and got sucked into this pulpy crazy world where vampires made their presence known to humans because of the development of synthetic blood by the Japanese. And there's this telepathic waitress [Paquin] who meets this vampire, and because technically he doesn't have brain waves, she can relax and be herself for the first time.

Meantime, vampire blood is the hottest sex drug on the market; there's a whole subculture of people who want to have sex with vampires; a church wants to kill them and hang everything on them; and there are people who want to capture them and drain them and sell their blood on the black market. It's all in this tiny north Louisiana town of 2,700 people.

Oh, and there's a serial killer!

Q: Aren't vampires metaphors for ... something?

A: Granted, there are larger themes in there. How we treat the "other," whether it's minorities or gays or whatever. How simple it is to vilify people who are different, who you don't understand, who you're afraid of.

But it's the first time I've done something genre like this. I'm having a blast.

Q: Were you into vampires before this?

A: I knew what they were. I saw "Interview with the Vampire" when it came out. I never read the books. Now I know more about vampires than I ever thought I would.

Q: What's the South's role?

A: I tried to look at the supernatural not as something that exists outside of nature, but as a deeper manifestation of nature. That's easier to do in a show that takes place in the South and a rural setting. You're out in nature all the time. There's always the sounds of animals at night. There's bugs. People are wet because of the heat.

Q: What about the pitfall of Southern stereotypes, using the South as the dumb straight man?

A: Being from the South makes me more prone not to go there. Or to go there with a twist. We have a couple of really dumb characters, but they're not dumb because they're Southern. They're dumb because they've never had to become smart.