TIME at Comic-Con: True Blood and Other Suckers

Rebecca Winters Keegan reports on the Comic-Con session for HBO's upcoming True Blood, as well as vampire movie project Twilight.

Vamp/human affairs became a hot topic of discussion at the True Blood panel. "Apparently sex with vampires is really kind of great," said Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under and writer of American Beauty. "Think about it — if you had 100-200 years to learn how please your partner and you had the body of a 25-year-old, you'd be something of a catch."

Ball said he made a deliberate effort to avoid three big vampire cliches in True Blood: blue light, contact lenses and opera music. Otherwise, he said he was ready to dive into genre. "After five years of Six Feet Under, I was really tired of people talking about their problems and dealing with the fact that we all die and blah blah blah," Ball said. "I was ready for something fun."

Some day when I have more time I'll have to elaborate on my thoughts on the two episodes of True Blood I've seen. For now I'll just say that I'd rather watch the show Alan Ball is talking about than the show I actually watched.