BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

Alan Ball is not one to shy away from difficult subject matter.

He won an Oscar for his screenplay for "American Beauty," a story about suburban dysfunction and unrest, and an Emmy for directing an episode of his landmark HBO series "Six Feet Under," a seriocomic drama about a family-run funeral parlor that each week contemplated themes like grief and mortality.

This week, he's venturing into his trickiest territory yet, with "Towelhead," the story of a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl's treacherous encounters with sexuality and racism. But he's also leavening the film's heaviness with "True Blood," his latest HBO show about the clash of bayou vampire and redneck cultures, a show he calls "pulpy" and "rowdy."

"There are some thematic similarities, but they're also worlds apart - `True Blood' is a different beast from anything that I've done before," Ball says of the show, which premieres tonight. "It's more like a fun amusement-park ride or a Saturday matinee."

"Fun" isn't exactly a word one would associate with "Towelhead," which is based on Alicia Erian's acclaimed novel of the same name and has spurred protest from the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American/Islamic Relations for its racially charged title.

The film stars Summer Bishil as Jasira, a normally ebullient girl with a neurotic mother and a distant father who have divorced. When her mother sends her to her father's Houston home during the first Gulf War, she's subjected to some virulent racist cant and the disquieting attentions of her neighbor, Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart), who, like Kevin Spacey's character in "American Beauty," is not a villain but a very troubled man doing troubling things.

"True Blood," on the other hand, is based on Charlaine Harris' "Southern Vampire Mystery" series, set in a sex-strewn world where vampires are attempting to enter mainstream society but meeting fierce resistance from the religious right and other tremulous groups. Anna Paquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse, a small-town Louisiana waitress who can read minds and finds herself in danger of being ostracized by her neighbors when she takes a liking to a 170-year-old vampire named Bill (Stephen Moyer).

"They're both the stories of young female outsiders who are struggling in their ways to connect with the world at large and also to connect romantically," muses Ball, who was battling a mean cold. "When I read the source material of both, I really felt that I was right there in the world the stories were taking place in."

In a pristine hotel room - the only personal effect in it was Ball's copy of a book about Dionysus, the god of wine and champion of madness and ecstasy - the writer/director discussed the yin and yang and controversy behind his latest projects.

Is it frustrating to be accused of racism for making a film assailing racism?

The dialogue about hate language in general and the word `Towelhead' in particular is a good dialogue to have. I certainly honor and respect their position. We screened it for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. It provoked a very lively discussion, and they came out on the side of the movie being on their side, dramatizing what it's like to be victimized because of one's beliefs.

My position is that to ban the use of that word in any context only gives the word that much more power. However, I understand that there are people who feel that the word should never be spoken, and I respect their opinion. I don't agree with it, but I certainly respect it.

The tone in Erian's book made it easier to absorb some of the awful moments, but seeing them in the film can be pretty difficult.

It shouldn't be easy to watch a character you care about have this happen to her - it's horrifying. But some estimates have it as high as one in three women had some sort of untoward sexual attention forced upon them by an older man when they're a child.

What I loved about this book was that it presented that in all of its messy, complicated reality, and it also allowed both characters in this dynamic to be human. It doesn't absolve Mr. Vuoso of any responsibility, and it doesn't victimize Jasira, and it doesn't suggest she asked for it.

But we had a screening and one man said, "Don't you think the movie's kind of one-sided? She was asking for it." This is a grown man, and literally the whole audience was like, "What?"

Vuoso is an adult; he knows it's wrong. Jasira is a child; you cannot hold her to the same standards as him. He's the one who should have stopped it. He's the one who committed a crime, not only legally but morally and spiritually, and he pays for it dearly.

She's just trapped in a life where she has no power and she's looking for something to make her feel good. That, I think, is a more interesting story than just a child who is victimized by a subhuman monster.

Your previous work mostly had morally ambiguous characters. What's it like working with flat-out bad guys in "True Blood"?

Certainly, in the source material, they're bad. That's part of the joy of it. It takes place in such a fantastic world where vampires exist. I think it makes me less inclined to seek the humanity in every single character. In "True Blood," it's pretty clear that these are bad people and you're not supposed to want to see them do well. There's enough moral ambiguity going on elsewhere.

You've said you weren't a big fan of vampire tales, but there's a cult addicted to the genre. Why do you think that is?

I only have my own half-baked theories. Vampires are certainly a huge sexual metaphor. At one point, Chris Albrecht, back when he was at HBO, asked me, "What is this series about?" And I thought, I can't say (in a dopey voice), "It's about a lot of vampires, 'cause I think they're real fun," so I said, "It's about the terrors of intimacy" (laughs).

But the more I think about it, the more I think that's true. It's about how terrifying it is to really let your guard down and open your psyche up to another creature. And with vampires, you're not only opening yourself up emotionally, you're opening yourself up physically - you could die.

We live in a world where emotion and the need to connect with something deeper and more profound has been distilled into these negative doctrines - "Feel bad about yourself. You have to behave; you have to be controlled." We live in a culture that wants people to be afraid and protect themselves from everybody else, which is the exact opposite of what the human soul wants.

We all have that part of ourselves that needs abandon. We all have a need for transcendence, so maybe people turn to this fantastic fiction for that.

"True Blood" pokes fun at intolerance by the religious right, and "Towelhead" likely will offend them. Are you ready for attacks?

I don't really care what they think. There's already been some vicious, kneejerk reactions to it. You know what? Yeah, this stuff punches emotional buttons, and some people are going to be able to see beyond that, and some won't. And some people are just going to flat-out not like it. And that's OK; I don't need to be liked by everybody. I think there's an audience for both of these; that's the audience I write for, and that's the audience I belong to. I'm not interested in people who are closed-minded; I don't care what they think.

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638 david.kronke@dailynews.com

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