True Blood creator Alan Ball reveals what's coming in season two

Thursday, June 4, 2009

True Blood creator Alan Ball reveals what's coming in season two

If you didn't see the first season of HBO's True Blood, you'd better pay attention if you want be able to follow the show's second season, said creator and executive producer Alan Ball in an exclusive interview with SCI FI Wire.

"Everything gets deeper," Ball said. "Everything gets more intense. It's a lot scarier. It's sexier. It's just really, really fun. I feel like each season is a novel, and the episodes are just chapters. Especially the way our show is. The episodes are not self-contained. You know, you gotta be involved in the story, and you gotta know what's going on."

True Blood's second season begins June 14 in its Sunday 9 p.m. ET/PT timeslot. The season is based loosely on the second book in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Series, Living Dead in Dallas, Ball said.

"Sookie [Anna Paquin] and Bill [Stephen Moyer] will go to Dallas to help find a missing vampire who is the sheriff of the Dallas area," Ball said. "And Jason [Ryan Kwanten] is going to become involved in the Fellowship of the Sun Church in a way that is really surprising. ... There's a very interesting relationship in the show between Rev. Steve Newland of the Fellowship of the Sun Church and his wife, Sarah [Anna Camp], and Jason, that just took on its own life as we were shooting, and it's hilarious. I can't get enough of the Newlands and Jason together."
And Sookie's hometown of Bon Temps will have some drama as well when Maryann Forrester, played by Michelle Forbes, "begins stirring up all kinds of trouble," Ball said. Last season Maryann appeared to offer Tara (Rutina Wesley) some goodwill and a place to stay. But "she's got an agenda, and it's not a good one," Ball said.

According to Ball, the vampire series will continue to explore the "terrors of intimacy, in that when you really, really open up and let another person into your life and your psyche, it can be terrifying—especially when that person is a vampire. ... And then there's just the whole exploration of the dark side of human nature," he said.

While Ball plans on incorporating many elements from the book, he admits he's taken liberties. He's expanded several of the characters' stories and added more of an African-American presence. And one thing you won't see in True Blood is Elvis, a character who ends up helping Sookie out in many of her adventures in the books. In the novel series, the real Elvis gets turned into a vampire; however, the process leaves him different. Elvis becomes Bubba, a slightly touched vampire whom the vampire community takes care of.

"We are not going to meet him," Ball said. "I just couldn't figure out a way to do it that would not be cheesy. I mean, not that it is in the books. It's great, because you can imagine that it's him. ... But the only way to do it [on screen] is to have some Elvis impersonator, and it just wouldn't [be] the same."

Ball added: "The challenges for me are to remain very true to the spirit of Charlaine's books and the world and the characters. To not just go, like, 'Oh, it's supernatural, so we can do this. Wouldn't it be fun?' without keeping it rooted in the characters' emotional lives. You know, I'm a big fan. I've read a lot of speculative fiction, and the ones that really work for me are the ones in which, no matter how outlandish or otherworldly the story is, the characters, I really care about them. I'm really invested, and I understand why they behave the way they do. I'm rooting for them, and so that's the challenge for this show as well. And in that sense it's not that different from Six Feet Under [Ball's first HBO series]. People did a lot of outlandish things on that show, but you had to remain invested in them. And this is pretty much the same thing. I do have to say that I've never worked in any genre-type format where you can really just open so many doors. There's a lot of ways to tell stories that are really fresh and exciting for me as a storyteller."

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Enjoy The Prologue From My Upcoming Book.. "Strolok"............by R.Goldberg

"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR RACE WAS TARGETED FOR EXTINCTION?"

The Sun is a powerful force in our Universe. It brings us light, warmth and a promise of a galaxy beyond the stars. Often we associate massive flashes of light with the reflection of our Sun's light bouncing off of another surface.

This is not always the case though, especially if you believe that we are truly not alone in the Universe. When we witness things that we can't readily explain we sometimes turn our heads and shrug our shoulders in a display of apathy.

A display such as this occurred on Friday January 29, 1982 at the Crater Lake National Park just outside of Chemult, Oregon. The snow had been falling steadily for a period of four days. The winds had been whisking about at 40 miles per hour.
Then there was one of those unnatural flashes of light. This created an eerie silence as a lanky boy, just nine years old, seemed to appear from out of that flash. If he had walked to this point there would have been a distinct trail in the newly fallen snow.
There was no trail and as a matter of fact the only tracks in the snow were the ones that outlined his feet where he was standing.

He began to trudge through the snow wearing what could only be described as dark brown long johns. He seemed dazed yet, at the same time, very clear about the direction that he was travelling. This boy with no identity or name seemed to be on a mission that would take him to places he had never been before.
His main goal was to reach Chemult, Oregon and he had no intention of stopping until he accomplished this. As strange as it seems the extreme cold seemed to have little or no effect on him at all.

Why Chemult? What was so special about this town located at an elevation of 4,758 feet above sea level in a frozen winter wilderness in Oregon?

The town of Chemult was first opened to the local traffic in 1926 and here in 1982, with its population of only 241, offered little in the way of comfort for a nine year old boy who was all alone. This journey, although prompted by something deep inside of him, did not provide a feeling of comfort and yet he had hoped that he would at least experience a feeling of accomplishment once he reached the town.

The wind was getting stronger and he noticed a small piece of yellow paper tattered and torn from whipping about in the snow. He only stopped long enough to
pick up this paper..........it read:

.....With the winter season here there was a lot of fun to have. Travelling miles of open trails on snow mobiles skiing or simply hiking, but there are dangers of doing so. Please remember safety first. Do not travel alone and be sure someone knows where you are and where you are going before travelling our trails, and please read the safety rules and codes of ethics before hiking the trails...

Nightfall was near and he had already walked 38 of the 40 miles needed to reach Chemult. He was just off of Route 97 when he spotted an old barn just about 200 feet NE of his present location. Making his way to the barn he went in and found it to be totally deserted, it was a perfect place to rest for the night.

Morning had arrived and once awake the boy started to look around the barn in the daylight light to see if there was anything that was lying in the barn that he could use to assist him on his trek.

Over in the far corner of the barn he found an old metal locked box that had long been forgotten. It was all rusted out and the key was nowhere to be found. After several failed attempts to open the box the young boy closed his eyes, sat back on his tired limbs and placed the palm of his right hand on top of the box. All of a sudden a dull red glow appeared from his right palm and the box lid flew open. Strangely enough once the red glow disappeared all that remained was a faint thin black outline where the outside of the red mark had appeared on his palm. Inside of the box he found several items all of which were unfamiliar to him and it was obvious that they had been there
for a very long time.

The contents included a tattered passport with the picture missing, a pocket knife, a compass, an antique pocket watch with a broken crystal, a time-worn souvenir porcelain coffee mug with the words; "Atlanta, Georgia, The Peach State, A Perfect Place to Live", on it and a frayed map of the Metro Atlanta Area It was difficult to make out the name on the passport but with a couple of light brushes with his fingers he saw the name Jason Tredmore. This is now who this boy would become.

Sci-Fi Blast

Thursday, June 4, 2009