True Blood News - Issue #8

Saturday, August 15, 2009

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," August 14, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS GUEST HOST: It is not every day when a famous actor goes "On the Record." It's even more rare when he's a shape shifter. If you don't know what I mean, Greta, just sat down with Sam Trammell from HBO's hit show "True Blood." Here he is in action.
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Vampire-Con, a zombie soiree and a Serendipity garden party aimed at L.A.'s night creatures

A who's who of homegrown talent making inroads into network fall lineups

Aug 13, 2009 04:30 AM | Bill Brioux

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Sunday August 09, 2009, 4:00 AM

CLINTON -- It was a characteristically steamy July day, and the grounds surrounding the East Feliciana Parish Courthouse were strewn with trash and clothing as if the town's residents had gone crazy from the heat.

Jeans and blouses in the trees. Lingerie draped on the stone Confederate officer stationed in front of the same courthouse that previously served, appropriately enough, as a location setting for the 1958 film "The Long Hot Summer." "Bacchus Rocks" graffiti scrawled on the base of the 1909 United Daughters of the Confederacy statue.

The lascivious litter was the work of spell-casting party girl Maryann Forrester, a character in the hit HBO vampire drama "True Blood," which came to the Clinton area late in its second season for several days of location shooting.

"Sorry, people of Clinton," said Adam Davidson, director of the episode for which the streets of Clinton had been strategically messed up. "Forgive us."

Not a problem.

Clinton was officially delighted to become the physical manifestation of Bon Temps, the show's fictional small-town Louisiana setting, and not just for the midsummer entertainment the production provided townsfolk, several dozen of whom toted lawn chairs to watch the action from off-camera.

Baton Rouge was the production base for the long-weekend shoot, so much of the food-, beverage- and hotel-room budget for the cast and crew of about 110 wasn't spent in Clinton. But the town did well, and may do very well in the future, by "True Blood."

During filming, traffic had to be routed around Clinton's downtown, creating a minor nuisance for cross-parish travelers, but more than 50 Louisiana residents were employed by the show, including Audrey Faciane, executive director of the parish's Chamber of Commerce and a parish tourism commissioner, who got a small part as one of the Bon Temps residents turned crazy by Maryann's mood magic.

"I could see festivals out of it," Faciane said. "I could see a 'True Blood' festival every year. I have the feeling the sky is the limit with this.

"It certainly is something we need and embrace at this point in time, in the hard economic times."

Gregg Fienberg, the "True Blood" executive producer who supervised the location work in Clinton, also produced HBO's "Deadwood," loosely based on the muddy, bloody history of the real South Dakota frontier town.

"A lot of people didn't know that was a real town," Fienberg said. "And the economic impact of that show on the real town of Deadwood was astronomical."

HBO officially renewed "True Blood," a new episode of which airs tonight at 8, for a third season a couple of weeks after the show's Louisiana visit, and now that Clinton has set the visual template for Bon Temps, return production visits seem likely.

"I would expect we'll be in this town again, if they'll welcome us," Fienberg said.

This visit was the first to south Louisiana for several of the key cast members.

Their limited time off-set included a sightseeing day trip to New Orleans (highlighted by a cast-and-production-team dinner at Galatoire's) and an opportunity to soak up the humid atmosphere.

The series came to the Shreveport area for location shooting during its first season, and does an excellent job of faking its setting's swampy vibe in and on the Los Angeles soundstages and back lots where most of its production is done. But there's nothing like feeling (mosquito bites), smelling (crew-member funk after a day of shooting in the sun) and tasting (poisson meuniere amandine, brabant potatoes) the real thing.

"You can talk all you want when you're sitting in Los Angeles about the sweltering heat of Louisiana, but until you're here and experience it, you can't understand," Davidson said. "It's good for them to feel it."

Star Anna Paquin, who plays Sookie Stackhouse on the series, agreed -- with one caveat. "I'm incredibly grateful we don't work in (the heat and humidity) on a daily basis, for the sake of the hair and makeup and wardrobe departments, who are spending most of the time to make us look like we are not melting," she said. "The vampires-melting-in-the-heat thing would probably be kind of troublesome.

"The humidity and stuff is fine. It's not specifically any more unpleasant working in 100-something-degree weather with humidity than it is shooting night after night in the hills of Malibu (where the Stackhouse home is a built-from-scratch false-front set), where it's only 45 degrees and you're wearing clothes appropriate for 105 degrees.

"Not to say, 'Oh, poor us.' Most of the time as an actor you're not dressed for the weather. In this particular instance we are, at least when we come to Louisiana, dressed right."

Also helpful, for the whole production, was the opportunity to listen to Louisiana.

"I was talking to some of the actors, and they've been paying a lot of attention to how people speak here," Davidson said. "They've been listening to their accents and their phrasing."

Location shooting "helps your audience believe it," said Brian Buckner, who wrote one of the three episodes for which scenes were shot in Clinton. (Titled "New World in My View," it's the season's 10th episode and scheduled to air Aug. 23.) "It just opens it up and makes it feel a lot more honest. And I'll tell you, for me, getting to meet some of the people here is going to help me going forward.

"I've never spent any real time in the South. We're writing about people from the South, and I'm just collecting stories and talking to interesting people in a way I wouldn't get the chance to do in Los Angeles.

"I've often wondered on our show, 'Are we OK on this show if all of our characters have slightly different accents?' I haven't heard any two accents that are exactly the same, so now I feel like we're more honest that way."

About those accents: Given the international makeup of the show's principals, it's a wonder they aren't more varied than they are.

Among the leads, Stephen Moyer, a native of England, might have the easiest task. His undead Bill Compton is a Confederate veteran (aging very well, the show's rabid fan base would attest) who gets to speak a formally paced dialect that mirrors the written word of his youth.

"Any time that he would say couldn't, can't, won't, shan't -- he does the long version of that," Moyer said. "And I really like that.
"It's funny, actually. It's kind of come into my speech a little bit with my kids, because now it has more power if you say 'I will not' than 'I won't.'

"It's a beautiful accent to do. I love it. I love the way it sounds in the mouth. I love the way, as soon as I get to the set and start speaking as Bill, I take on a different speed and a different rhythm. My voice drops. Bill is probably three or four notes lower than my normal register.

"The pace of life in the South is very different, and I was very infected by that. I like that there's no hurry."

Ryan Kwanten, a native of Australia who plays Jason Stackhouse in the series, said the accent is just one piece of perfecting his character.

"It's not (about) getting it down 100 percent," he said. "Obviously, I never will. That's for someone who grew up in the area. (Series co-star Sam Trammell, born in New Orleans, wasn't in scenes shot in Clinton, and so didn't make the location trip.) It's about getting within 80 percent, then the rest of it I can kind of sell with the acting and with the character. That is what has worked best for me.

"I've never had accent coaches. People say, 'Oh, it's a Southern accent.' I say, 'No it's not a Southern accent.' Even in Louisiana itself, there are four or five different accents. So I just ended up picking up on a style of that and definitely steered clear of the Cajun (accent). The Stackhouses aren't from that area, thank God.

"My character has never really left the town, so there's no other influence. A lot of the other characters are probably more cultured, traveled.

"And Jason really is somewhat of a redneck Casanova, anyway. He uses his mannerism and his words to get him places in life."

Paquin, on the other hand, did work with a dialect coach, and said series creator Alan Ball worked with the cast to achieve an acceptable accent uniformity.

"I'm from New Zealand, so I've never worked in my original accent," said Paquin, an Oscar winner as a child actor for her role in the 1993 film "The Piano." "The process is the same no matter what accent you're learning. You work with a coach. You go through the lines and chart different vowel sounds, what they are in your accent and what they become. You drill them. It's basically like any other good vocal training. You go through and practice the sounds over and over again, you listen to reference tapes of people who have similar accents.

"That's a pretty normal part of my work process. 'Did you hit your mark? Did you say your vowel sounds correctly?' (Sookie) is written in a way that is most of the time very conducive to the music and the speech patterns of a Southern dialect."

Of all the actors in the Clinton-shot scenes, the production's local liaison drafted for a small part, needed the least dialect coaching.

None, actually.

Faciane was on a location-scouting tour with W. Mark McNair, line producer for "True Blood," when he turned to her and said, "You'd be perfect for Aunt Shirley if you can run."

The character's name was later changed to Aunt Butch (apparently in honor of one of Alan Ball's favorite aunts), but a star was born in East Feliciana Parish.

"I said, 'I can run a little bit,'" said Faciane, who's 60-something. "They had me running across the street -- more like 50 feet, not 30 feet -- and it was 10 or 12 times.

"I had the time of my life, I'm not going to lie to you. I was so pumped up on ibuprofen, it was like, 'I'm going to do this!'

"I'm here to tell you that I learned that these folks work hard for their money. They work long hours, and to them it's not all glitz and glamour.

"It was just so interesting and enlightening to see it from the backside."

As for local economic impact, Faciane witnessed some of it firsthand while having zombie-like makeup applied before shooting her scene.

The production had discovered a local pie-maker, whose wares were being purchased for export back to Hollywood.

"I heard one of the makeup artists on a long-distance phone call to California, and it was her parents or brother or sister, and she was saying, 'They have blueberry, (so) what kind of pie do you want me to bring you?'¤" Faciane said. "I was thinking, 'Yes, this is what it's all about, for our little ma-and-pa shops.'

"I have had calls here at the office about, 'Do you know when they're shooting?' One lady called and said, 'I want to be in there. I look like a vampire and I want to be in it.' I thought it was a friend of mine and I said, 'Mildred, I don't have time for this.' She said, 'My name is not Mildred,' and sure enough, the lady showed up with this black Mohawk. I mean, you know?"

TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3429.