Openly gay director/writer Alan Ball's newest television series brings to life the Charlaine Harris Southern vampire mysteries. In True Blood we find characters both gay and straight; Ball says most vampires are bisexual.

“The vampires are, for the most part, pretty bisexual,” Ball says in an exclusive interview with OuttakeOnline.com's Charlotte Robinson. “They're more interested in blood and they're less confined by the need to be one thing or another.”

The highly anticipated series is Ball's second collaboration with cable channel HBO, the first being the Emmy-award winning, gay inclusive, Six Feet Under.

In True Blood, vampires have been freed from the tyranny of feeding on human blood thanks to a Japanese scientist's invention of synthetic blood. Overnight, vampires ascend from their coffins to participate in society. Will they be accepted or marginalized?

Ball is best know for writing the 2000 Oscar-winning movie American Beauty. Originally written as a play, the film version deleted an important gay plotline involving the homicidal Col. Fitt's loss of his male lover in the Vietnam War. While Col. Fitt's homosexuality is not directly addressed in the film, it is understood that his demented murderous rampage stems from a traumatic Vietnam nightmare, brought on by the unacceptable suggestion that his son is gay.

In the interview, Ball also says most movies today lack soul. “So many movies are not about anything, they're just about profit – you know, they have no soul. ... [computer generated movies] have nothing to do with being a human.”

True Blood premieres on cable channel HBO September 7th.

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