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If a scene is longer than three pages, it better be for a good reason.

Alan Ball

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Alan Ball
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 13
Director
Executive Producer
Film Director
Film Producer
Playwright
Screenwriter
Showrunner
Television Producer
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Alan Erwin Ball
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More quotes by Alan Ball

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The ego is kind of a big, unwieldy thing. It's not so easily tamed or subdued.
Alan Ball
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I was conveniently bisexual for a long time, and then I went, 'Come on, who am I kidding?' And I have to say, it was the single biggest step I took toward emotional well-being, to stop feeling like I had to hide who I am.
Alan Ball
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There is a fetishization of victimization in our culture. And I just am not interested in victimhood.
Alan Ball
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Death is a companion for all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we're aware of it or not, and it's not necessarily a terrible thing.
Alan Ball
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The difference between film and TV is the pace. You don't have the leisure of time in television.
Alan Ball
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Never underestimate the power of denial.
Alan Ball
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We live in a patriarchal culture. It's okay for women to be objectified but not for men.
Alan Ball
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In my own life, I think legends of supernatural, mythic things are really just a manifestation of the collective unconscious. So I don't really get freaked out. I mean certainly, you read about things people did to each other in the pursuit of some mystical or occult goal, and it's horrifying. But that's just human nature.
Alan Ball
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I am a little suspicious of industry paradigms. I feel like so many movies and TV shows feel so familiar because of over-reliance on these paradigms.
Alan Ball
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Television viewing has become for me a completely different experience, because I don't watch shows on a weekly basis. I wait until the DVD or I TiVo everything and wait until the end of a season and watch it all over a weekend. For me that's a really satisfying experience, like reading a book.
Alan Ball
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It's a lot harder to find fault with the mundane details of daily existence when you really, really know on a cellular level that you're going to go, and that this moment, right now, is life. Life isn't what happens to you in 20 years. This moment, right now, is your life.
Alan Ball
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I think it's very difficult, and it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual integrity and discipline, to not be a narcissist in a culture that encourages it every step of the way.
Alan Ball
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I am so spoiled. I cannot watch a show where it gets interrupted for ads. I have to TiVo it and skip through the ads, because the culture of advertising is so false and phony that I just... ugh, you know?
Alan Ball
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I guess in America we're so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I'm sure they do exist, but I never knew any of them.
Alan Ball
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I felt pride, wonderful pride, when I was captain. It was an honour to take over from Labby. Anybody who has ever captained a big club, which Everton are, will tell you it's a great honour.
Alan Ball
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I need to feel like the work I'm doing is not necessarily important, but meaningful, at least to me, because otherwise it just becomes a day job. It just becomes factory work and I get really frustrated.
Alan Ball
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I try to tell the best story, and the story that has some heart and some genuine terror and some social commentary and some comedy and some romance and some sex and some violence.
Alan Ball
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As a writer, it's fun to create. And once you get into a long-running show with very established characters and a very established tone and format, after a while it's a really great job, but that's what it is - a job.
Alan Ball
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I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me.
Alan Ball
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It's easy to look at the vampires as a metaphor for any feared or misunderstood group. It's also easy to look at them as a metaphor for a shadow organization that says one thing and has a completely different agenda on their mind, and anybody who gets in their way, they just get rid of them. Does that sound familiar?
Alan Ball