HBO’s ‘True Blood’ is a ‘Twilight’ for grown-ups

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Maybe you’ve seen the bus ads for True Blood, a faux beverage that gives vampires an artificial substitute for the red stuff they crave.

It’s a promotional stunt for ‘True Blood,’ the HBO series that launches Sept. 7 and, along with ‘Twilight,’ promises to make this fall an especially bloody season.

At the panel for the show, Alan Ball, the creative force behind the series, was asked if there would be an actual beverage bottled up to cash in on the curiosity about the advertisements.

‘Yes,’ said the creator of ‘Six Feet Under,’ ‘and it’s going to be a combination of V8, valium, vicodin and Viagra.’

The show uses vampires as a metaphor for any ‘outsider culture,’ Ball told a packed ballroom, many of them fans of the ‘True Blood’ novels of author Charlene Harris, also a panelist.

Relationships and sex are big aspects of the show, Ball said, and he said there were mortals who seek out the blood-suckers because of their prowess in the sheets.

‘They’re a pretty amazing catch,’ Ball said, pointing out that they are forever young but have hundreds of years of experience as far as satisfying their partners. ‘There’s a name for the people who try to sleep with them: fangbangers.’

On inevitable comparisons to ‘Twilight’: ‘I think there’s room for everything in the world. I don’t feel any sense of competition at all.’

-- Geoff Boucher