By Fred Topel | Image property of Warner Independent, TrailerAddict
From American Beauty to Six Feet Under, Alan Ball has explored some of society's damaged people. Again in Towelhead, he presents racists, hypocrites and pedophiles. Still, Ball sees the good in humanity.
Alan Ball Talks Towelhead
"Hopefully, even the characters in my work, people who do despicable things or who are terrible parents or who are unable to hold up their end of a committed relationship, I still feel for them," said Ball. "I still am sympathetic to them. I still feel like they're humans and they're trying to make sense out of their lives and they're trying to do the right thing. For whatever reason, they just can't. To me it's really heartbreaking. Yeah, 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."
Towelhead is an adaptation of Alicia Erian's novel about a 13-year-old Lebanese girl dealing with puberty and conflicting role models. "I loved how fearless it was and how unflinching it was. I loved how it told a story that usually is a story of victimization and turned it into a story of empowerment. I loved how the book did not judge the characters. It didn't do my thinking for me. It didn't tell me this guy's bad, this guy's good. It allowed people to be conflicted. It allowed Rifat to be abusive but at the same time really love his daughter. It allowed Mr. Vuoso to do a horrible thing but also to be coming from a place of tremendous neediness and insecurity and loneliness. It allowed Jasira to be provocative but not to condemn her for that and not to in any way make it seem like she deserved what happened. It felt very human and ultimately I would say redemptive in a way that felt really organic and not like a tacked on Hollywood happy ending."
Towelhead
Ball even re-enacted his reaction to the book three years ago. "It really made me feel. As I got towards the end of the book, I was thinking, 'This is not good. It's not going to turn out good. I'm really upset. This is going to make me mad. What do you mean Melina fell down the stairs? No!' Then when I got to the end, I had such a really genuine cathartic sense of relief and joy. That's pretty rare for me and I thought I would love to at least try to help transfer this story from the written word to the screen."
Audiences should expect the movie to be challenging, says Ball. "It is uncomfortable. It is unsettling. I think if somebody were to watch this movie and not be made uncomfortable or unsettled, something's wrong with them. But if you're a person who does not want to be challenged, you want a kind of movie experience where you go and you sit back and something washes over you and it's sort of predigested and you're told what to think and it's the same old mythology, do not come see this movie. You're not going to like it. But if you want to be challenged and you want to see something that will force you to confront some unsettling realities about the culture in which we live, about an experience that is way more common than it should be, and that's the kind of material you're drawn to, then you should come see it."
Tough talk from the master of familial dysfunction, but he's not demanding that anyone should partake in his preferred drama. "I myself prefer work that challenges me and so that's the kind of work I'm drawn towards creating. As to what should be, I'm a little mistrustful of the word should. Maybe that's a big copout but I think I'm being honest."
Towelhead
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