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Article on The News Tribune by Denise Martin

When it comes to HBO’s swampy Southern Goth horror story, “True Blood,” about a feisty, telepathic waitress who charms the fangs off a Southern gent cum vampire with excellent sideburns, Emmy voters might not want to cry “camp” too quickly.

The Charlaine Harris book series, as re-imagined by “Six Feet Under” creator Alan Ball, is a political satire, romance and murder mystery set in a world where vampires don’t need to feed on humans – but sometimes do – and where the buxom Sookie Stackhouse is the literal center of the action.

During the first season, she is pursued by a killer and courted by both a 173-year-old vampire named Bill and her tender boss, Sam (not a werewolf but a shape-shifter), all while having to deal with dead bodies piling up around her, the vile thoughts of her vampire-hating human clientele and a brother addicted to sex and vampire blood, a potent hallucinogen.

“It’s powerful and moving and scary and completely crazy,” says Anna Paquin, who says she stalked Ball for the part of Sookie. “Our show is definitely not for everyone, but all of us who work on it are obsessed.”

The mix is an acquired taste, to be sure, but ratings indicate a growing group of thrill seekers. According to HBO, the “True Blood” audience started small but grew throughout the season.

Chasing after the role has paid off for Paquin. She won a Golden Globe for lead actress in January, and, unlike other Hollywood actors who feign indifference about award season, she doesn’t quickly dismiss it.

“Obviously, I’m really grateful for (award season) as a concept. If I hadn’t won an Oscar when I was, like, 11, I’m guessing I wouldn’t have a career right now,” the actress says.

In 1993, she became the second-youngest performer to win an Oscar for her portrayal of a child translating for her mute mother in Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

It probably will be more of an uphill battle for “True Blood” when it comes to Emmy voters, a group long spooked by genre shows, snubbing critical favorites like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” season after season.

But timing could be on its side. Season 2 premieres June 14, less than two weeks before nomination ballots are due, and the intensity hasn’t let up. Sookie and her vampire suitor are now the adoptive “parents” to Jessica, the teen Bill was forced to turn into a vampire as punishment for killing another vampire.

“Trouble, as usual,” Paquin says. “But if you already watch the show, you know that’s going to be the least of it.”

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Camille Langfield

Camille Langfield has been cast for the role of “female human blood hooker” in episode 2.06 Friend Is A Four Letter Word. She is allowing a clearly disinterested Eric to drink from her, a clip of that can be seen in The Buzz video.

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Article on Courier-Journal.com by Tamara Ikenberg

If and when I meet Stephen Moyer, the gorgeous British actor who plays lead vampire Bill Compton on HBO’s “True Blood,” I shall be wearing a pink “Sired by Bill” T-shirt and will offer him a teddy bear clad in a tiny “Glamoured by Bill” T-shirt.

I predict his fangs will retract, and he’ll run away screaming.

The super-sweet and cheesy “True Blood” merch available at Billsbabe’s Shoppe on cafepress.com celebrates the show’s sexy leading men, and sharply contrasts with the show’s trademark gore and guts. But buying the crazy stuff helps a good artistic cause, the Brentwood Theatre in Essex, United Kingdom.

Visit the shoppe at www.cafepress.com/billsbabe.

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The Vault created the Stephen Moyer Appreciation Page on Facebook only days ago, but already over 460 enthusiastic Stephen Moyer have joined and are participating in the fun.

The goal of this page is to share information and show our appreciation for the talented Stephen Moyer.

We will publish news, photos and videos on the Facebook page that are NOT available on The Vault.

The Vault: Stephen Moyer’s Facebook Page

click to join us

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Stephen Moyer revealed in a very recent, and yet to be published, interview with Daemon’s TV that True Blood will be back at Comic Con this year.

Comic Con will be held from July 23 – 26 at the San Diego Convention Center. It is unknown at this moment on which day the True Blood cast will make their appearance or who will participate. The event, however, is already completely sold out.

More info at the Comic Con website.

If you are attending this event and you would like to share your story and photos, please contact The Vault at thevault@trueblood-online.com

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Article on AdvertisingAge by Brian Steinberg

With its tales of vampires who walk among us, HBO’s “True Blood” series certainly blurs the lines of what is real and what is fantastic. Now the Time Warner cable network’s ad campaign for the series is trying to do the same.

“True Blood” promos have received lots of attention over the last week, thanks in part to a bit of online brouhaha over the seeming addition of Bloodcopy, an adverblog HBO created last year to promote the show, to Gawker Media, the operator of such blogs as Gawker and Jezebel. What’s more, the cable outlet has unveiled print ads that seem to promote real products and services from Geico, Gillette, BMW’s Mini Cooper, Harley-Davidson, Ecko and Monster — but act as if the audiences for these popular goods are vampires.

Next up, an advertorial in Conde Nast Publications’ Vanity Fair that features famous people hobnobbing with vampires at buzzy events, and an eight-page take-off of AM New York, the free metro daily, that will be distributed to commuters.

HBO’s idea is to play along “that fine line of fully disrupting someone’s experience and at the same time immersing them in your experience,” said Zach Enterlin, VP-advertising and promotions for HBO.

This marks HBO’s second effort to generate attention for “True Blood,” which portrays a world in which the development of a synthetic blood product in Japan has allowed vampires to “come out” of their coffins, as it were, with all kinds of cultural ramifications. Starting last May, HBO began sending mailers to vampire hobbyists and bloggers; set up the website BloodCopy.com, which featured discussions and a blog (and has now returned); distributed viral videos; and, most memorable of all, perhaps, delivered samples of a red beverage known as “Tru Blood,” while distributing ads for the drink online and in alternative weeklies.

The ads may have helped create a community of fans for the program. While the first episode of “True Blood” snared about 1.44 million viewers in its first telecast, the audience built steadily during the show’s first season, according to Nielsen. By the first run of the season finale, the audience had increased to more than 2.44 million. On average, the first season of “True Blood” attracted about 2.02 million live and same-day viewers for first-run episodes, according to Nielsen.

Does HBO worry about consumers actually believing some of these promotions? Already, the Gawker-BloodCopy.com alliance has generated some controversy online. “The goal isn’t to really mislead at all,” Mr. Enterlin said. “It’s just igniting curiosity. I think the way the ads are done, there’s a certain amount of known quantity with a wink. It inspires a double take. We’re trying to make them as authentic as possible, but it’s an absolute necessity that they have that element of ‘wink.’”

The campaign contains many other elements, including evening weather reports on radio for vampires who might just be starting their day; a faux ad for movie theaters made to look like the ads for local businesses that normally appear before the show starts; and a faux weekly newsmagazine set to appear on HBO on Demand and HBO internet platforms that includes a segment called “The Vampire Report.” That segment will cover “notable events that have occurred over the past week as vampires continue their integration into human society,” according to HBO.

In a sign of the complexity these ideas require, HBO is working with six different creative and media-buying agencies. New York-based Campfire is the creative force behind the Bloodcopy.com blog, as well as some viral videos that will be issued as part of the campaign. Another agency, Digital Kitchen, crafted the “vampire product” ad, while Ignition has been working on ads that drive viewers to tune in to the program. Another agency, Red Creative, worked on online ads to entice viewers to tune in. Omnicom Group’s PHD placed the more traditional advertising, while Deep Focus did online media buying for certain parts of the campaign.

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Alexander Skarsgård steals the show in Lady GaGa’s lastest video “Paparazzi”.

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Article on 2theadvocate.com by John Wirt

Let’s say you are music supervisor for an HBO series about redneck vampires in backwoods Louisiana. What’s the best place to find music for the show? The musically rich state of Louisiana, naturally.

During the first season of True Blood, the music of Baton Rouge swamp blues man Slim Harpo, New Orleans’ Dr. John, Lee Dorsey and Allen Toussaint and Lafayette’s C.C. Adcock accompanied the exploits of mind-reading waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and her 173-year-old soul mate, vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer).

All of the above recording artists appear on the recently released True Blood soundtrack CD as well as non-Louisianians Ryan Adams, the Watson Twins, Little Big Town, John Doe and Jace Everett.

Adcock and his band, the Lafayette Marquis, wrote and recorded their CD selection, “Bleed 2 Feed,” specifically for the show.

“To be on the same record with Lee Dorsey, Allen Toussaint and Slim Harpo,” Adcock said, “not to mention Dr. John and Lucinda Williams, is very cool company indeed.”

Adcock and the Lafayette Marquis appear in episode 10 of the first season, I Don’t Wanna Know. Playing themselves, they perform five songs at Arlene and Rene’s engagement party at Merlottes, Sookie’s place of employment.

“Playing a redneck vampire isn’t a stretch for me,” Adcock said.

Alan Ball, True Blood creator and executive producer, discovered Adcock through iTunes. The intro scene for the series’ first episode, in fact, features Adcock’s song, “Y’all’d Think She’d Be Good 2 Me.”

“After we sought clearance for his song,” music supervisor Gary Calamar said from Los Angeles, “C.C. learned about the show and got excited about it. He also wanted to show Louisiana in the great light in which it should be seen.”

Early in True Blood’s existence, Adcock told Calamar that he hoped the series could be authentic to its Louisiana locale.

“C.C. brought that up several times,” Calamar said. “Not that he had much control over it, but he was hoping that it wouldn’t be like The Big Easy, which he and a lot of people thought was inauthentic. He’s happy that True Blood turned out better.”

“I talked to Gary about Slim Harpo and swamp pop,” Adcock recalled, “and songs that would be on a jukebox in a place like Mulate’s. I hope the show opens up a pipeline for lots of local artists, because, when you hang out in a bar or travel in Louisiana, you hear local music.”

Calamar also gives credit to Alan Ball, with whom he worked on HBO’s Six Feet Under. “Alan is very active with the music,” he said. “He’s a big music fan and he has great musical taste.”
Native New Yorker Calamar’s path to music supervision includes management of Rhino Records’ retail music store and his eclectic public radio show, The Open Road (Sunday nights on KCRW-FM). His soundtrack work began with the 1999 film, Varsity Blues. Calamar later received Grammy nominations for the two Six Feet Under soundtrack CDs he co-supervised.

As much as life-long music lover Calamar knew about music beforehand, supervising True Blood broadened his expertise.
“Louisiana music has a swampy, bluesy, earthy, funky quality to it that is very distinct,” he said. “It is amazing that all this great music comes out of that state.”

Calamar found such colorful, indigenous voices as Slim Harpo, Lee Dorsey and Dr. John especially striking.

“All those guys, you hear this spooky quality in their vocals,” he said. “And with the great instrumentation and production around them, it’s a beautiful mix.”

Calamar promises more evocative music during True Blood’s new season, which begins June 14.

“The show was wild in the first season, but it gets even wilder,” he said. “We’ve got some great music in there to help illustrate that.”

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Michael Ausiello of EW.com twittered the other day that he has received the screeners of the first 4 episodes to True Blood’s Season 2.

Our own Sanna ask Ausiello this question: Since you’ve seen the first four True Blood episodes of season 2, is there anything you can share? –Sanna

Ausiello: They’re bloody fangtastic! (Never. Gets. Old.) Seriously, season 2 — premiering June 14 — gets off to a thrilling, gory, scary, sexy, disgusting, funny, suspenseful start. Alan Ball would drive a wooden stake through my heart if I spoiled any of the big twists (i.e. my lips are sealed about the fate of a certain flamboyant vampire blood dealer), but here are a few juicy morsels to whet your appetite:

•    There are three orgies, all of them powered by Maryann’s (Michelle Forbes) aphrodisiac fairy dust.
•    Alexander Skarsgard’s Nordic vamp has an extremely homoerotic encounter with a character who shall remain nameless. In related news, there are about two dozen gratuitous shirtless shots in the first four episodes, all of them belonging to either Mehcad Brooks (Tara’s new BF, Eggs) or Ryan Kwanten (Jason).
•    Sookie has a very revealing conversation with a new character in episode 4.
•    If you’re wondering what secret Merlotte’s newest waitress (played by Ashley Jones) is harboring, a clue can be found on her skin.

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Ryan Kwanten attended the TV5Monde USA and The Tennis Channel’s 2009 French Open celebration party held at Beso on May 26, 2009 in Hollywood, California.

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Ryan Kwanten

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

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