Ball initially read "Dead Until Dark," the first in Harris' "Southern Vampire" series, five years ago. By the time "Six Feet Under" was filming its final season he was interested in doing something with the books on television. Sitting on a couch in his bungalow office on the Lot, Ball says the cultural clout of his broodingly dark funeral-parlor drama left critics and the public unsure of what to think of the zany, Saturday matinee movie serial that is "True Blood."
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'True Blood' devotees are thirsty for more
HBO's lusty vampires series begins its second season next week, and not a minute too soon for the largely female fan base that has made it one of the most popular shows on cable.
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"When people approach me about 'Six Feet Under' they say, 'Oh my God, that show meant so much to me, I lost my mother last year,' " says Ball, putting one shorts-clad knee up on the couch. "With 'True Blood,' it's more like, 'Dude, I love your show. It rocks!' "
Ball tries to ignore the prattle of the Web. (He used to Google himself before realizing, "I could just be enjoying life and I'm trolling the Internet to see what strangers think of me.") But he says he's learning more about, and coming to appreciate, the fevered devotion and lively debate among genre fans.
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Ladies choice
"One of my assistant directors is from Texas, and during hiatus she was there with some of her girlfriends. One of their husbands came up and said, 'Thank you for that show, because every Sunday night we all have the best sex we've had in years,' " Ball says, laughing. "I feel like, although the show appeals to all kinds of people, the real die-hard fans are not teenage boy sci-fi geeks, they're women."
Tosha Shelton, Kasandra Rose and Ollie Chong, the women behind the fan site truebloodnet.com (which HBO helps secure interviews for -- Rose was even taken on a guided tour of the show's set), agree, saying they rarely interact with male fans. The trio, who all have master's degrees and a healthy awareness of the enterprise's goofiness, met online through an HBO forum but have never met in person; they live, respectively, in Georgia, Michigan and Ontario, Canada. When asked what attracted them most to the show, they giggled over thousands of miles of phone lines.
"OK, should we all say our favorite character together ladies?" asked Rose. Then Chong started counting, "One, two, three," before the women yelled in unison, "BILL COMPTON!"
Bill: handsome, manly gait, antebellum-era manners and age and a self-tormenting appetite for human blood. As played by Moyer, a charismatic British actor, Bill is an honorable man imbued with an untouchable darkness.
