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Towelhead: Alan Ball's Controversial New Film
Writer-director doesn't shy away from controversy, as he's proving once again with Towelhead
Peter Macdissi and Summer Bishil star in Towelhead.
In 1999 a plastic bag floated in the wind—the most beautiful thing ever seen by the strange boy next door—and with that, Alan Ball won an Academy Award for his very first screenplay, American Beauty. Two years later Ball began testing his skills behind the camera, directing several episodes of “Six Feet Under,” the rich and deservedly praised HBO drama he created. All of this prepared the moviemaker for Towelhead, his feature directorial debut.
Premiering at Toronto in 2007 then rematerializing at Sundance, Towelhead is an unflinching and darkly comical drama based on Alicia Erian’s controversial novel of the same name. Set during the Gulf War, a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl named Jasira (Summer Bishil) is sent to live with her psychologically abusive father (Peter Macdissi) in the suburbs of Houston. It’s here that her sexuality begins blossoming dangerously close to her predatory, racist, Army reservist neighbor, Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart). MM spoke with Ball about Towelhead, our society’s sexual double standards and how the film almost ended up with a tamer title.
Aaron Hillis (MM): Erian’s novel addresses a wide array of themes like cultural prejudice, pubescent sexuality and familial scapegoating. How difficult was it to determine what wouldn’t make it into your adaptation?
Alan Ball (AB): Well, it was hard. The novel has so many great moments, but unfortunately you can’t put everything into the movie, and there are moments in the book which are a little repetitive. I sat down and tried to distill it: What were the most salient, most important points to tell this story and still remain completely true to the spirit of the book and the author’s intent? My first draft was 180 pages, so there was a second pass of cuts and a third, and there were several passes during the editing. Ultimately, you get it down to what you feel makes the movie work best. I took a 10-minute trim between Toronto and Sundance, and while what the movie lost was really great—morally ambiguous moments with some interesting dynamics—the flip side was that it made the payoff at the end much more powerful.
MM: Were there any moments you were disappointed you had to cut?
AB: One of them was [Jasira’s mother] Gail’s return in the end. She returns in the book and gives her daughter a razor, and it’s a great moment. I cut this out in the script because once Jasira reveals what happened with Mr. Vuoso, then you’re done. You want to see the fact that she’s not destroyed by this experience. In fact, this experience gave her the strength to remove herself from an abusive situation with her father.
One of the things I really responded to in the book was that it didn’t tell the story of a young girl who has something sexually inappropriate between her and an older man that basically says, “Well, she’s destroyed. The worst thing that can possibly happen to her has happened. She’ll always be marked.” There’s a certain fetishization of victimhood when that story is told. Since it’s such an incredibly common experience, I found it refreshing in the book that not only did she survive it, but that she was stronger because of it. I definitely wanted to keep that, but I didn’t need to wrap up every little moment with every character at the end.
MM: The medium of film has to convey the racing, confused thoughts of this coming-of-age teen, and yet you seem to have made things harder for yourself by eschewing voiceover narration.
AB: Yeah, absolutely. Since the book is basically narrated by Jasira, that was difficult. But I knew right off the bat that I didn’t want to resort to narration. Not because I believe narration is bad—I don’t really buy those screenwriting seminars that give you a bunch of rules set in stone—but it didn’t feel appropriate for this particular movie, and that was a real instinctive thing for me. I knew I was trying to convey what was going on for her through her situation, the performance, the way we shot her, really seeing the innocence and wanting to feel some sort of power in her life. Casting was crucial. Thank god we found Summer, that’s all I can say. There’s not exactly a huge pool of extremely talented young actresses who can carry a movie, who look like they have Middle Eastern heritage and who are actually 18 but could pass for 13. There are four or five names you can go to, so we hired casting directors all over the world, in Australia, London, New York and Detroit, and Summer just walked in. She lives in Arcadia, California.
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by Sim only contracts on 11/17/08 at 2:54 pm
great converstion between MM and AB..
i really like this post..
thank you very much..
Sim only contracts- Comment by Mobile Phone blog on 11/18/08 at 5:32 am
after reading this article i have decided to watch this movie
Great presentation by the author
Thanks
mobile phone blog- Comment by igor on 11/22/08 at 11:35 am
- Comment by free g1 on 12/17/08 at 11:40 am
sounds like a good movie!
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This story was published in the Summer 2008 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Hard Ball
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