It's easy to look at the vampires as a metaphor for any feared or misunderstood group. It's also easy to look at them as a metaphor for a shadow organization that says one thing and has a completely different agenda on their mind, and anybody who gets in their way, they just get rid of them. Does that sound familiar?
— Alan Ball
Death showed up in my life very early on, so I'm aware of it. If you look at most of the things I write there's a sort of contemplation of mortality - although 'True Blood' doesn't fall into that. Even though there's such a ridiculously high body count!
Well, here's the thing with relationships on 'True Blood': Once they happen then you have to throw a monkey-wrench into them, because to have people be happy is not that exciting.
Somebody asked me, 'Why do people like vampires so much?' This was right after Obama had been elected and I said, 'Because we just spent eight years being sucked dry by one.'
The ego is kind of a big, unwieldy thing. It's not so easily tamed or subdued.
Vampires are total sexual metaphors; there's just no way around that.
Television viewing has become for me a completely different experience, because I don't watch shows on a weekly basis. I wait until the DVD or I TiVo everything and wait until the end of a season and watch it all over a weekend. For me that's a really satisfying experience, like reading a book.
I think there's a lot of interesting stuff on TV. I feel much more optimistic about TV than I do about movies. There will always be good movies but I think, for the most part, it's always going to be a huge fight to get those movies made. TV is the best place to be as a writer, I think.
I'd seen 'Interview with A Vampire' and saw Dracula movies growing up, but I never thought, 'I love vampires; I have to do a show about vampires.'
I'm at the point in my life where I don't want to work as hard. Actually, I've had to take a good hard look at workaholism and it's effect on one's mental health.
My own belief is that people can come back from anything. It doesn't mean that it won't come at a huge cost.
Happy relationships are boring. We all want them in our own life. But I don't want to watch them on TV.
I'm from the South, so while I personally find it impossible to live there, I still have a fondness for it as a geographical region.
I think all writers are armchair psychologists to some degree or another, and I think a character's sexuality is fascinating. It's a great way to really get at the root of their identity, because it's such a personal thing.
I will say that the environment I grew up in was not the most progressive.
Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.
'Six Feet Under' was about repressing our deepest, most primal impulses, and 'True Blood' is about giving full sway to them all the time. In a way they are like yin and yang.
As a writer, it's fun to create. And once you get into a long-running show with very established characters and a very established tone and format, after a while it's a really great job, but that's what it is - a job.
I guess in America we're so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I'm sure they do exist, but I never knew any of them.
I really feel like my goal, and I don't always achieve it, is to do the best work I can do, and stay out of the results. Because ultimately, the result is not what the work is about. There are other people whose jobs are to focus on those results and maximize them, and that's great. Let them do their job.
I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.
I'm a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, 'Everything changes, don't take it personally.'
I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me.
