Salon interviews Alan Ball, the creator of "Six Feet Under," regarding the end of his critically acclaimed HBO show about a family-run funeral home. In the interview, Ball talks about what it was like to kill off his main character, his current work adapting Alicia Erian's novel Towelhead, how he wrote "American Beauty" without an outline, and his thoughts on why L.A. is really, really ugly.
Definitely. Do you ever think that "Six Feet Under" is very much defined by Los Angeles? Sometimes I wonder if these characters are very specific to L.A.
I don't know. I mean, we tried very hard to capture the kind of surreal, hazy air, baked-out existential feel of Los Angeles instead of the palm tree one that you see in movies, but also all the back roads where the paint is flaking, and most of Los Angeles is really, really ugly. We tried to capture that, and just the weirdness of living in Los Angeles, especially the weirdness of living in L.A. if you're not in the entertainment industry. And I purposely chose Los Angeles to set the series in because, in a show about death, why not set it in the world capital of the denial of death, which has got to be Los Angeles? Los Angeles is where you come to re-create yourself and to become immortal.
What I've found fascinating about the show is how little it uses identifiable L.A. landmarks. Almost all of the action takes place inside a house or at the funeral home. When they do venture outdoors, it reminds me a lot of Michael Mann's work -- faded, smoggy suburban apartment sprawl juxtaposed claustrophobically with monolithic concrete/glass highrises. Unvarnished to the point of cycnicism.
susannah_breslin
I'm lost
June 2005
AUG 20, 2005 11:11 AM