Alan Ball

He grew up in Mari­et­ta, Geor­gia and stud­ied play­writ­ing at Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty. His play “Five Women Wear­ing the Same Dress” led to a job offer to write sit­coms for tele­vi­sion. Dur­ing that time, he also wrote the screen­play of Amer­i­can Beau­ty, direct­ed by Sam Mendes, for which he won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play in 2000. He went on to cre­ate the HBO series Six Feet Under and True Blood. He made his fea­ture film direc­to­r­i­al debut in 2007 with Tow­el­head. Uncle Frank is his sec­ond film.