10 TV Shows That Were Saved By One Genius Tweak
5. HBO Telling Alan Ball To "Make It More F**ked Up" - Six Feet Under
TV networks are notoriously risk-averse where challenging content is concerned, and even a company as seemingly permissive as HBO has its limits.
Yet when Alan Ball, fresh off an Oscar win for writing American Beauty, submitted the script for Six Feet Under's pilot episode to the network, he got a surprising response. In Ball's own words, from a 2005 interview with Movieweb:
"Certainly one of the most memorable moments was when I went to HBO and they had read my first draft and Carolyn Strauss said, 'You know, this is really, really good. I love these characters, I love these situations, but it feels a little safe. Could you just make it just a little more f**ked up?,' which is not a note that you get in Hollywood very often. And I though, 'Wow!' And that gave me free range to go a little deeper, go a little darker, go a little more complicated, and that was certainly one of the most memorable moments."
Needless to say, from its very first episode few would ever dare call Six Feet Under "safe" - its thoughtful confrontation of mortality, spiced with lashings of surrealism and black comedy, ensured it frequently lurched into "f**ked up" territory, and was all the better for it.