Tamara Palmer: Alan Ball: Towelhead and True Blood

TAMARA PALMER: Alan Ball: Towelhead and True Blood

Winning an Academy Award for writing the film American Beauty and creating the Emmy-and-Golden-Globe-winning television series Six Feet Under would be achievements on which any writer could rest his laurels, but Alan Ball’s creativity is seemingly boundless. Two projects are simultaneously consuming him: The coming-of-age flick Towelhead and the racy vampire series True Blood for HBO, both based on novels that caught his attention over the past few years. Down-to-earth and almost extraordinarily personable,...