By Iain Blair

Was chatting with Alan Ball, the Academy Award and Emmy Award winning writer and director, about his great new film Towelhead, which is certain to generate controversy. It’s his feature film directorial debut, based on his screenplay adaptation of the novel “Towelhead” by Alicia Erian.  The film stars Aaron Eckhart, Toni Collette, Maria Bello, Peter Macdissi and newcomer Summer Bishil who plays Jasira, a 13-year-old Arab-American girl, as she navigates the confusing and frightening path of adolescence and her own sexual awakening.

The performances are amazing – and Ball had an award-winning behind-the-scenes team that includes Director of Photography Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects, Three Kings, X2, Superman Returns), production designer James Chinlund (The Fountain, 25th Hour, Requiem for a Dream), editor Andy Keir (Beloved, The Night Listener, Neil Young: Heart of Gold), costume designer Danny Glicker (We are Marshall, Transamerica), Music Supervisor Randall Poster and 8-time Oscar®-nominated composer Thomas Newman.

 “It was tough getting this made, as we only had a budget of $8 million,” Ball told me. “And the state of indie films now is so difficult. I just feel like the films that really need to to get made are the hardest to get made, and it’s easy to be discouraged, but I think there’ll always be people willing to fight.” I also asked him where he keeps the Oscar he won for American Beauty. “In my office – and for a while I had it dressed up in Barbie clothes on it, as a way of making it seem less pretentious. But then I realized that was just as pretentious, so now it’s now just standing on a shelf.”

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