Alan Ball
Alan Ball
Alan Erwin Ball is an American writer, director, and producer for television, film, and theatre...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Producer
Date of Birth13 May 1957
CityMarietta, GA
CountryUnited States of America
certainly continue fortunate gets good guy work
I certainly feel fortunate in my career to have been able to continue to work in different mediums. I don't ever want to be the guy who gets really good at one thing and just does that over and over and over again.
felt suffered
Everyone on the show has suffered so much, I felt like you want it to be hopeful.
bored exactly number
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.
wrote
I had no idea where I was going to go when I wrote the pilot,
although aware death early fall high life mortality sort
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!
burn crash depending directing great happens movies people permission stop wait
Depending on what happens with my directing career, I don't think I'll stop writing, even if I crash and burn in movies and TV. I'll go back to plays. Even if I crash and burn there, I'll write a novel. That's the great thing about writing is that you don't have to wait for people to give you permission to do it.
cannot hold
You cannot hold a child accountable to the same standards that you hold an adult accountable to.
best fight good huge movies optimistic stuff tv
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.
buy death forever hard ignore interested marketing pretend stories
It's hard for me to get interested in stories that ignore death, which is what American marketing culture would like to do: pretend that death doesn't exist, that you can buy immortality; just buy these products, and you'll be forever young and happy.
becomes defines hide saying secret time
I'm not saying that being gay is what defines me, but at the same time, if you feel like you have to hide it, then it becomes what defines you. You keep it hidden, and the secret becomes you.
achieve best focus great jobs maximize people result results stay whose work
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.
basically directing except intimate love people
I love to direct! I get really jazzed by directing, but directing is not the same kind of personal expression, the same kind of personal intimate expression that writing is. Because when you're directing, you're basically managing, basically getting out of people doing their job, except when you see them going astray.
asked obama people somebody spent sucked 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.'
bites infinitely life seems simplify sound work
Life is infinitely complex, and I feel like we live in a culture that really seems to want to simplify it into sound bites and bromides, and that does not work.