Quentin Tarantino is notorious for talking up his projects and then continuously delaying them (if not outright abandoning them), but recent years have proven a refreshing change of pace. After announcing at Cannes 2008 that he would finally make Inglourious Basterds by the end of the year, he actually delivered. Then there’s Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which is finally seeing the light of day after years of promises. And most recently, there have been reports that he’s on track to finishing the script for his western within the next couple of months, and he may even get it in front of cameras before the year is out. For once, I believe him.
But there’s an unforeseen peril threatening to muck it all up: True Blood creator Alan Ball‘s obnoxious birds. Learn more after the break. Read More »
Alan Ball goes to the well once again, Judd Apatow makes a return to TV and Professor Dumbledore bets the ponies. Just another day on the cable powerhouse that is HBO.
Ball, the Oscar-winning show runner of Six Feet Under and True Blood just shot a pilot called All Signs of Death, based on Charlie Huston‘s book The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, which follows a trauma cleaning unit, much like Sunshine Cleaning, but less cute. Apatow, who made his name with TV shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, is executive producing a pilot called Girls, which was created by Lena Dunham, currently riding the wave off her indie film Tiny Furniture. It’s a more realistic take on the Sex and the City formula. Both shows are only in the pilot stage and neither has been picked up for series yet. It they do, Ball and Apatow will executive produce. (UPDATE: HBO passed on All Signs of Death.)
Finally, Michael Gambon has been cast as a recurring regular on the Michael Mann-produced series Luck, starring Dustin Hoffman, which is about the seedy underworld of horse racing. Read more about all three HBO nuggets of news after the jump. Read More »
Briefly: Alan Ball has quite a career as a writer and producer (Six Feet Under, True Blood, and there’s his Oscar for American Beauty) but a thinner resume when it comes to directing theatrical features. In 2007, his adaptation of Alicia Erian’s novel Towelhead was better than some narrow-minded controversy-stirring appraisals made it out to be. And now he’s going to helm a new feature, based on a pitch bought by Paramount.
Deadline reports that Alan Ball will produce and direct the ‘dark comedy with a twist.’ The script will be written by Elan Mastai, who wrote The F-Word, which is set up at Fox Searchlight after appearing on the Black List in 2008. In this case, the original story idea was concocted by the True Blood producer, and he and Mr. Mastai developed the pitch together. That’s all we’ve got at this point, but we’ll follow up as more info arrives.
(And calling Alan Ball the creator of True Blood may rile fans of the novels, but from the perspective of television credits, he’s the show’s creator. That’s all we’re getting at there.)
True Blood has quickly become my favorite summer show. With the airing of last night’s season two finale, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin“, I can already feel the pain of another year-long wait ahead of me. Just like Dollhouse, the first season of True Blood took a few episodes to truly get in gear—but once the series found its groove it became an intoxicating combination of sex, violence, and camp. (Anna Paquin’s increasing disregard for clothes was yet another plus.)
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The True Blood panel at Comic-Con was one of the bigger ones. Many cast members showed up alongside writer/creator Alan Ball and Charleane Harris, author of the books that led to the show. They seemed grateful for all of the fan response and the packed room. Apparently their panel was in a much smaller space last year since nobody knew about the show.
They showed a short teaser for the rest of season 2, but it was just a quick glimpse. We saw the Texas vampire contingent, Sookie getting into trouble (again), and Jason getting closer to the preacher’s wife he’s been eying.
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Academy Award winning screenwriter turned director Alan Ball (American Beauty) recently revealed details about two possible upcoming film projects:
He hopes to direct a screwball comedy/romantic farce he wrote right before coming across Towelhead, about two incredibly wealthy egomaniacal people “negotiating their sexual relationship within standards of that time, with that language, and with all the trappings of 1936.” Ball has said in other interviews that it is inspired by that era’s Hollywood comedies, calling it “very stylized but fun”.
But I’m far more interested in a film he hopes to produce, which he describes as “a dark, dark comedy” about “a woman who just gets fed up with being a doormat”. “She snaps and she decides to become a vigilante” and “it’s got a body count!”. Ball admits that the film is a harder sell.
Ball doesn’t do high concept, and I don’t expect any project by the writer to be “an easy sell”. Ball’s directorial debut Towelhead went virtually unseen by audiences, but is probably one of the top 20 films of the year.
sources: MTV, AWFJ
When I first screened Alan Ball‘s directorial debut at the Tonroto International Film Festival last year, it was titled Nothing is Private. In my review, I wondered why Ball had decided to change the title from that of the book it was based on – Towelhead. The obvious answer is political correctness. And a few months ago when it was announced that the film would be released under the same title of the book, I commended the Warner Bros for having the guts to be non-PC. But truth is, the name of the movie (and the book, for that matter) is so tightly connected to the story, and the struggle of the main character. If the story were to be released under any other name (Nothing is Private for instance), it just wouldn’t make sense.
The film is being released in September, and the Council on American-Islam Relations (CAIR) has asked that Warner Bros. and Warner Independent Pictures to change the name of the film. Warner Bros is not backing down, and has announced that they have no plans to change the title. The studio has asked that Alicia Erian (author, Towelhead) and Alan Ball (writer/director, Towelhead) explain the reasoning behind their decisions to give the novel and film its name. You can find these statements below.
ALICIA ERIAN – Author of Towelhead
As an Arab-American woman, I am of course aware that the title of my book is an ethnic slur. Indeed, I selected the title to highlight one of the novel’s major themes: racism. In the tradition of Dick Gregory’s autobiography Nigger, the Jewish magazine Heeb, or the feminist magazine Bitch, the title is rude and shocking, but it is not gratuitous. Besides the fact that the main character must endure taunting about her ethnicity (including being called a towelhead), so much of the novel’s plot is fueled by the characters’ attitudes toward race.
I was not contacted by any organization or group when my novel was released in 2005. I don’t know if this was because no one had heard about my book, or because they didn’t feel it would have as much of an impact as a film. Having lived in a world in which my book has existed without protest for the past three years, however, I feel I have at least some view onto what to expect from the public in terms of a response. The bottom line is, never once have I encountered anyone who didn’t understand the seriousness of the word “towelhead” and all its implications.
This is not to say that I don’t find these concerns legitimate — I absolutely do. We live in a racist society, one in which people continue to use ethnic slurs to delineate those who are different than they are. Realistically speaking, though, these people are neither the audience for my book, nor for the film. They will continue to use whatever language they wish whether or not a movie called “Towelhead” is released. For this reason, I am pleased that Warner Bros. is standing by the title.
Towelhead, like its many cousins — nigger, spic, gook, etc. — is an ugly word. The job of the artist, however, has been, and always will be, to highlight that which is ugly in the hopes of finding something beautiful. This charge, by necessity, will at times put the artist at odds with admirable groups such as CAIR. The solution, it seems to me, is not to force the artist to alter his or her work, but instead to use the occasion of that work as an entry point for meaningful debate and discussion
ALAN BALL – “Towelhead” is written for the screen and directed by Alan Ball, Academy Award-winning writer of “American Beauty, ” and creator of “Six Feet Under” and “True Blood.”
As a gay man, I know how it feels to be called hateful names simply because of who I am. Therefore, I felt it was important to retain the title of Alicia Erian’s novel, in which she so effectively dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language, something many people of non-minority descent never have to face. I believe one of the unintended consequences of forbidding such words to be spoken is imbuing those words with more power than they should ever have, and helping create the illusion that the bigotry and racism expressed by such cruel epithets is less prevalent than it actually is, which we all know is sadly not the case.
WARNER INDEPENDENT PICTURES
One of the ideas conveyed in the film is that we all make assumptions about each other, without knowing, based on racial stereotypes. It was our goal in releasing “Towelhead” to help make this point.
Some of our past releases, like “Paradise Now, ” were extremely controversial and elicited demands that the film not be released; “Good Night, and Good Luck.” drew criticism from some as well. Warner Bros. supported the release of these films then, as they do now of “Towelhead,” as a medium to create dialogue and support the expression of ideas, as controversial or as unpopular as they may be. We apologize for any offense that is caused by this title but support Alan Ball and Alicia Erian in this effort.
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