Alan Ball
Writing
Biography
Alan E. Ball is an American writer, director, actor and producer for film, theatre and television. He is particularly notable for writing American Beauty and True Blood and for creating Six Feet Under, work which earned him an Academy Award, an Emmy, and awards from the Writers, Directors, and Producers Guilds. Ball was born in Marietta, Georgia, to Frank and Mary Ball, an aircraft inspector and a homemaker. His older sister, Mary Ann, was killed in a car accident when Ball was 13; he was in the passenger seat at the time. He attended high school in Marietta, and went on to attend the University of Georgia and Florida State University, from which he graduated in 1980 with a degree in theater arts. After college, he began work as a playwright at the General Nonsense Theater Company in Sarasota, Florida. Ball broke into television as a writer and story editor on the situation comedies Grace Under Fire and Cybill. Ball has written two films, American Beauty (1999) and Towelhead (2007), the latter of which he also produced and directed. He is also the creator, writer and executive producer of the HBO drama series Six Feet Under and True Blood. He was showrunner for True Blood for its first five seasons. In 2010 Ball began work on a television adaptation of the crime noir novel The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston, to be titled All Signs of Death. In December 2010, after several months of pre-production, HBO cancelled production on All Signs of Death. He is also one of the executive producers of the Cinemax series Banshee. In January 2015, it was announced that Ball's period musical drama Virtuoso had had a pilot ordered by HBO. The pilot will be executively produced by Elton John. Confirmed actors to be starring in the show include Peter Macdissi, Iva Babic, Francois Civil, Lindsay Farris, Nico Mirallegro and Alex Lawther. For his work in television and film, Ball has received critical acclaim and numerous awards and nominations, including an Academy Award, an Emmy a Golden Globe, and awards from the Writers, Directors, and Producers Guilds.
Known For
Thanks to a Japanese scientist's invention of synthetic blood, vampires have progressed overnight from legendary monsters to fellow citizens. And while humans have been safely removed from the menu, many remain apprehensive about these creatures "coming out of the coffin." Religious leaders, government officials, and vampire fundamentalists around the world have chosen their sides. But in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the jury is still out.
True Blood
Banshee is an American drama television series set in a small town in Pennsylvania Amish country and features an enigmatic ex-con posing as a murdered sheriff who imposes his own brand of justice while also cooking up plans that serve his own interests.
Banshee
When death is your business, what is your life? For the Fisher family, the world outside of their family-owned funeral home continues to be at least as challenging as—and far less predictable than—the one inside.
Six Feet Under
An annual American awards ceremony honoring cinematic achievements in the film industry. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, that is better known by its nickname Oscar.
The Oscars
Cybill is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre, which aired on CBS from January 2, 1995, to July 13, 1998. Starring, Cybill Shepherd, the show revolves around the life of Cybill Sheridan, a twice-divorced single mother of two and struggling actress in her 40s, who has never gotten her big show business break.
Cybill
Grace Kelly is a tough woman with kids to raise. A recently divorced recovering alcoholic, Grace struggles with the pressures of being a single mother supporting three children. Grace doesn't always handle situations with, well, grace, but she does get results.
Grace Under Fire
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
American Beauty
A provocative and darkly comic meditation on the disparate forces polarizing present-day American culture, as experienced by the members of a progressive multi-ethnic family — a philosophy professor and his wife, their adopted children from Vietnam, Liberia and Colombia and their sole biological child — and a contemporary Muslim family, headed by a psychiatrist who is treating one of their children.
Here and Now
No description available.
Oh, Grow Up
An African-American woman becomes an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs when her cells are used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
In 1973, when Frank Bledsoe and his 18-year-old niece Beth take a road trip from Manhattan to Creekville, South Carolina for the family patriarch's funeral, they're unexpectedly joined by Frank's lover Walid.
Uncle Frank
A young Arab-American girl struggles with her sexual obsession, a bigoted Army reservist, and her strict father during the Gulf War.
Towelhead
A promotional short documentary on the making of the film American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball.
American Beauty: Look Closer...
A eulogy for the groundbreaking HBO series.
Six Feet Under: In Memoriam
Entirely made in California, the film brings together 30 American and European actors in an epic which crosses the mythical territories of that cinematic land from Zabriskie Point to Mulholland Drive. California is revisited through the movie memories incarnated by the very presence of famous actors and actresses. "The American Tetralogy" is a way of staging reality which questions the fictional nature of the movies.
The American Tetralogy
Centers on an inveterate twenty-something slacker who stumbles into a career as a crime scene cleaner, only to find himself entangled with a murder mystery, a femme fatale and the loose ends of his own past.
All Signs of Death
A behind the scenes look at the making of simulated corpses for the TV series "Six Feet Under".
Anatomy of a Working Stiff
No description available.
A Drop of True Blood
Join some of the most talented legends of the Horror Film genre for discussion of what scared us before, and what's going to scare us next! The film is a dissection of the various sub-genres of horror, and where new creative scares might emerge.
The Future of Fear
Based on the play by Alan Ball