Many of us associate the dawn of reality television at MTV’s The Real World, which debuted in 1992, but the true pioneer of candid reality programming came two decades before. This Saturday (April 23, 2011) HBO will air Cinema Verite, a fictional account of the very first reality show.
An American Family was a 12-hour PBS documentary that followed the affluent Loud family from Santa Barbara in 1971. The footage aired in 1973 and featured an openly gay older son, Lance Loud, who was considered to be the first openly gay “character” on television. An American Family was a game changer to American television. Audiences were used to family sicoms like The Brady Bunch, which fatured caramelly smoothed-over plotlines and silly family problems that were in essence superficial and were resolved by the end of the episode. An American Family featured a marriage dissolving before the public’s eyes. One of the most fabled lines in television is when mother Pat Loud told father Bill that she wanted a divorce.
Many people credit Lance Loud (the oldest of the Louds’ five children, including Kevin, Grant, Delilah, and Michele,) with coming out on the show, but that wasn’t exactly the case. He was already out and proud. The flamboyant young man was living an artsy life at the Warhol contemporary Chelsea hotel in NYC, and in the second episode he dressed in drag and took mom Pat to a drag show. There was no syrupy “I’m coming out” episode where everyone acted sensitive and strange and pamphlets were handed out. Lance was just simply Lance. He once explained how the producers approached the family “They basically said, ‘How would you like to star in the greatest home movie ever made?’ We didn’t have to do anything, just be out little Southern California hick selves.”
The Louds made quite a pop culture splash. They garnered a viewership of 10 million, to PBS, in 1973! I’m sure PBS would kill for those numbers now. Everyone was fascinated. Of course, many were offended, by the gay son, and/or the divorce. America’s love affair with reality television was not a slow build, it was love/hate at first sight. The Louds were so popular they graced the March 12, 1973 cover of Newsweek. They went on the talk show circuit, and their personal problems were the topic of endless water cooler and dinner table discussions. Humans love a good story, if the story’s real, then all the better.
Ten years later, in 1983, HBO aired an updated special on The Louds. Lance had become the lead singer of a punk rock band called Mumps, which achieved some buzz because of Lance’s fame, but they broke up in 1980, and Lance became a freelance journalist and came back to Southern California.
Lance had a near 20-year drug habit, and became infected with Hepatitis C and HIV from his intravenous drug use. In 2001, when it was obvious that his health was failing, he checked into hospice care, and called his documentary-makers, Alan and Susan Raymond, to come film his last months on earth. 50-yea-old Lance died at the end of 2001, and his special Lance Loud! A Death in an American Family aired on PBS January 2003.
Although Bill had remarried (the divorce had come about because he was cheating on Pat,) and Pat had spend some time in New York as a literary agent, Bill and Pat got back together soon after Lance died.(It was one of his wishes that his parents got back together.)
Pat, now 84, and Bill, 90, live together in Southern California again, and the story has come around full circle. Bill even attended the premier of HBO’s Cinema Verite.
Although we’re about to experience a fictional retelling of the very first reality show (starring James Gandolfini as producer Craig Gilbert, Tim Robbins as Bill Loud, and Diane Lane as Pat Loud ) it is impossible to watch the original series, or any of the follow-ups. What a strange predicament this is! The first reality show is being recreated with fiction and the stories are retold as folklore. Hopefully this renewed interest in the series will inspire whoever owns the copyright to release the original series.
The character Gandolfini plays, Craig Gilbert, never worked again after An American Family, and had to defend himself all his life against accusations that he manipulated the portrayal of The Louds. Rumors have also circulated that Gilbert had an affair with Pat Loud while filming the documentary, which the 84-year-old told The New Yorker that he denied to a curious Gandolfini “twenty ways.”
Gilbert is tired of talking about An American Family, especially the HBO movie Cinema Verite, which he describes as “essentially fallacious.”
“ ‘An American Family’ changed the lives of the Louds, and it changed my life,” he said. “It was pretty damn tumultuous, and I don’t want to go over it anymore.
