Alex & Stephen get ready for Eric & Bill to be burned at the stake. (PC: HBO)
A new video from last season has reared its pretty little head. The video contains a roundtable of the True Blood Post Production crew and was posted by Souzan Alavi. Alan Ball(Executive Produce
r/Writer/Creator/Director) talks with Scott Klein (Colorist), Gary Calamar (Music Supervisor), Louise Innes (Editor), Bruce Dunn (Producer in Charge of all things Post Production), Nathan Barr (Composer). Jon Massey (Visual Effects Supervisor), John Benson (Supervising Sound Editor) and Gregg Feinberg (Co-Executive Producer).
In the video, you can see how they did a lot of cool visual effects from Season 4 like the fire scenes and scenes involving the witches. Enjoy!
The September 2011 issue of Australian AXN magazine features a picture of Alexander Skarsgård, but the interview inside the magazine is about True Blood’s creator, Alan Ball. Alan talked to the magazine before his first trip to Australia about sex with vampires, casting True Blood, and politics of the show as an allegory for the gay rights movement. Some of the other male stars are also featured inside the magazine, as you can see in the scans below.
Alan Ball: “I think there’s also something really sexy about the notion of being so incredibly intimate that you share your essence with someone. The idea of feeding on each other is kind of insane, but at the same time very alluring.”
Cinemax has ordered the “True Blood” creator’s latest project, “Banshee,” to series, and tapped a director for the maiden episode.
The series will center on an ex-con who arrives in a tiny town in Pennsylvania Amish country and poses as a murdered sheriff in order to inflict his own twisted form of justice.
Greg Yaitanes, veteran director of “House M.D.,” “Lost” and “Heroes,”‘ will sit behind the camera for the first episode.
Congratulations to True Blood creator Alan Ball! He’s been named by HollywoodReporter as one of the 50 most powerful showrunners in television. Long may he reign!
And for those of you who have been left devastated by the cancellation of stupendous HBO shows like Carnivale and Deadwood, fear not! The same fate will not befall True Blood. The AV Club, sister site of The Onion, has published an article speculating that no matter how low a show’s ratings dwindle, HBO is now taking the stance of not cancelling a show until it has come to a logical conclusion. Not that a show with ratings as healthy as True Blood is in any danger of facing the axe, but it’s nice to be reassured after the trauma of seeing the cliffhanger at the end of Carnivale that will never be resolved! And since True Blood is such a cash cow for HBO, perhaps the fans of other, less successful shows on HBO have the vampires to thank for their show’s survival?
Without a doubt, this will be a busy year for Alan. Not only he is supposed to be taking care of our fav vampires, but Ball is now also set to executive produce HBO’s hour-long medical drama entitled Wichita, about a Kansas abortion doctor caught at the nexus of a political, cultural and ethical conflict. The project is based on the life of Dr. George Tiller.
Wichita marks Ball’s third project with the premium cable network behind True Blood. He also is set to executive produce HBO sibling Cinemax’s Banshee, a project set in Pennsylvania’s Amish country that revolves around an ex-con and martial arts expert who poses as the small town’s murdered sheriff as he enforces his own brand of justice and uses the position to serve his own interest.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Alan Ball praises Ryan Kwanten, whom he cast for True Blood after seeing him in a movie called Flicka, a family movie about a brother and sister and a horse, where Ryan was the handsome, charming, not-so-intellectually developed brother. He also talks about his experiences with Death (a recurrent topic in Alan’s interviews as the “naked” is to our guys) and how he doesn’t understand the life without suffering. We don’t either, Alan. Why do we need to wait one whole year for a new season? ;)
How do you explain the popularity of vampires?
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.”
Were you surprised Six Feet Under ever got off the ground?
Before Six Feet Under premiered, HBO was concerned the show was very dark. Everybody would say the family in Six Feet Under is so dysfunctional. OK, but who’s abusing who? Who’s the crazy alcoholic abusing the mother and molesting the daughter? To me, that’s dysfunction. But 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. It wasn’t my idea to do a show about a family in a funeral home. That came from Carolyn Strauss at HBO. When she pitched it to me I thought, ”I’ve never seen that.” That was about 10 years ago and I’d certainly had enough experiences with death in my life with my family and being a member of the gay community, where people died very young.
Your older sister died in a car crash when you were 13. How did that affect your family?
All of a sudden my family’s entire life started to centre around a very Gothic, grief-centred religion. My mum got into the whole school of thought that we were living in the end of times and the rapture was coming. It was not really helpful to anybody; it was not helping us process the grief. It seemed to be a sort of latching on to some weird obsessive mythology in a way to avoid actually going through the grief itself.
But you turned to Buddhism?
Life is suffering. We have desires and expectations and egos and we compare the reality we have, which is miraculous and wondrous, with this reality we desire. That somehow distances us from actually taking part fully with the reality we do have and that creates suffering. For me, the thing that I love is that it’s all about the present moment. It’s not about processing something that happened 20 years ago over and over and over again, and still carrying it with you, or not living today because you’ve put all your eggs in one basket for these goals down the road that may never happen.
Is Tara dead? "How can she be NOT dead?" asks creator Alan Ball
Writer Raelle Tucker and Executive producer Alan Ball talk to TV Guide about True Blood’s Season 4 finale and some hints about what will be happening in Bon Temps in Season 5.
Will Tara (Rutina Wesley) Survive? “I can’t say whether she will be back in her present form, but we’ll continue to tell Tara’s story,” says Tucker.
Are Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) marked men after killing Nan and her guards? “They’ve been fighting witches all season, and now they will have to fight the power elite of their own kind,” says Ball. Adds Tucker: “For once in their lives they need to rely on and trust each other. They team up to face a common enemy.”
Is Russell Edgington (Denis O’Hare) really back? Yes confirms Ball–and with “an interesting new alliance,” teases Tucker.
Will Werewolf Alcide (Joe Manganiello) finally win Sookie’s (Anna Paquin) heart? “They have a deep friendship and chemistry that we’ll continue to explore,” Tucker says. “But Sookie will be trying to stand on her own two feet next season.”
Will ghosts from Terry’s (Todd Lowe) past threaten his wife, Arlene (Carrie Preston)? “The ghosts will come back, and he and Arlene are going to be challenged by that,” Tucker confirms. “Terry’s PTSD comes from a particular incident we’ll learn more about. Scott Foley’s Patrick Devins has a huge part to play.”
What kind of vampire will former fang-hater Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian) be? “He will do what he believes is the righteous thing that God wants him to do, although it will be altered by his new condition,” Tucker says.
Any exciting new characters coming up? “There are a couple of new roles that will be very sexy,” says Ball. One in particular is “a strong, mysterious female at the center of one of our main stories,” Tucker says. “She’s fierce, one of the strongest women we will have seen on the show, a force to be reckoned with.”
Source: TV Guide Magazine, issue dated September 26-October 2, 2011
The September 2011 issue of Australian AXN magazine features a picture of Alexander Skarsgård, but the interview inside the magazine is about True Blood’s creator, Alan Ball. Alan talked to the magazine before his first trip to Australia about sex with vampires, casting True Blood, and politics of the show as an allegory for the gay rights movement. Some of the other male stars are also featured inside the magazine, as you can see in the scans below.
Cinemax has ordered the “True Blood” creator’s latest project, “Banshee,” to series, and tapped a director for the maiden episode.
Without a doubt, this will be a busy year for Alan. Not only he is supposed to be taking care of our fav vampires, but Ball is now also set to executive produce HBO’s hour-long medical drama entitled Wichita, about a Kansas abortion doctor caught at the nexus of a political, cultural and ethical conflict. The project is based on the life of Dr. George Tiller.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Alan Ball praises Ryan Kwanten, whom he cast for True Blood after seeing him in a movie called Flicka, a family movie about a brother and sister and a horse, where Ryan was the handsome, charming, not-so-intellectually developed brother. He also talks about his experiences with Death (a recurrent topic in Alan’s interviews as the “naked” is to our guys) and how he doesn’t understand the life without suffering. We don’t either, Alan. Why do we need to wait one whole year for a new season? ;)
