I was born in 1978. I never heard about this project until I read about Cinema Verite in a magazine. I'm really glad I watched it and learned more about this fascinating family!
Taking back IMDB message boards....one ignored Troll at a time.
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>>I was born in 1978.
you just answered your own question.
I was born in 1957 and I just barely heard of this. I think I heard about it in the last 10 years.
The original poster's point is well taken. It is amazing that they basically did a reality show back in 73 and it is not more well known considering how popular reality shows are now.
guess it depends how often PBS was on in your house growing up. it pretty much was nightly in mine.
shareI was also born in the 70s and just recently heard of this. Like so many of our generation, I always thought of the first "Real World" on MTV as being the first true reality show. Glad I found out I was wrong--the Louds seem like a very interesting family indeed, and I really want to catch the docu in its entirety someday.
"It's alligator, darlin'...al-li-gator"
I remember it when it was appearing in 1971 on tv. It was like looking at a slow motion car wreck with real people. Years later there was a followup one hour documentary but the children had all gone their own ways as adults and the parents divorced. They were much more guarded and laid down grown rules. In the original Lance was living at the Chelsea Hotel in NYC with punk rockers etc and it was obvious his parents in Santa Barbara didn't have a clue what kind of place it was until his mother arrived for a visit.
In the followup they interviewed them and showed footage of their current lives. Lance Loud was a punk rocker in New York and his kid sister had come to New York and was sharing an apartment with him. Lance also became writing good reviews on music etc. In contrast another son in formal dress sang songs and played music from the 1940's to elderly well to do couples dining and dancing at a Santa Barbara hotel. Worlds apart.
In the original one shocker was Bill Loud coming home from a business trip. His teenage son picks him at the airport and was supposed to tell him his wife wanted a divorce. A cameraman had jumped into the car and the son became tongue tied. Bill gets home sits down in a recliner only to have his wife hand him her lawyer's business card and ask him to leave. His answer: "at least I don't have to pack." That was a real ambush moment by the film crew.
@chicago85
Are you sure a camerman was in the car with the son and Bill Loud? I remember in the PBS series Pat telling Bill to move out that night and was really shocked at how relatively well it went down--I mean no shouting or crying, etc.
I'd never heard of it until Cinema Verite came along either, and I was born in 1947. But then, I'm Australian.
Now I can blame PBS for the plethora of reality show garbage which seems to dominate our TV these days :)
There wasn't very much TV in 1973, so I'm surprised anyone missed this show as it was really unusual & ground breaking. In those days PBS was different than the reputation it has now. The first fully nude person I saw was on PBS. When the Real Life started, I thought, this is not the first reality show; doesn't anyone remember The Loud family on PBS?
The person who wrote the review is absolutely out of their minds. They said "how boring that time frame was." The early 70s were hardly boring; probably one of the most interesting & exciting times - Vietnam, Watergate, counter culture, women's issues, Roe v Wade.
HBO is free this weekend so I am really enjoying Cinema Verite and wish I could see the orig show.
I remember my parents watching the mini-series at the time, and not being allowed to watch with them. From what I understand, there had been advance publicity on this show, and being eleven at the time, my folks weren't going to let me be exposed to such a thing. Although tame by today's standards, it was not tame by 1973 standards; especially where TV is concerned.
I remember there being a lot of talk about it at the time, and whispers about the "queer" son, which was the word people were using at the time, and a word that I did not know the meaning of at the time.
But, I DVR'd the entire 12 episodes when this was replayed a few months ago. Now I have finally seen the series! Yippie! I always wanted to see this.....I had seen the HBO follow up in the early 80's, which had peaked my interest again, but never saw the whole thing till recently. I sure would love to see the "Fairwell to Lance" documentary from about 10 years back. Maybe one of these days they will show that again, as well?
This was on PUBLIC television? Strange indeed that public TV would push upon the world one of its horrors. Reality TV. Sure. That's right.
Unfortunately, reality TV is all that people live in nowadays. The real world is gone.
I never heard of these people. Guess I was too busy watching Clint Eastwood's work.
Better choice.
Oh yeah, why in HELL is that guy from NEW JOISEY in this flick? I thought they got rid of him years ago.
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This was basically a long form documentary. It really was an interesting idea to treat an American family like an anthropological study. Instead of filming a tribe in Borneo or Aboriginals in the Outback, they filmed people who were supposed to be a typical American family. If the producer actually overstepped and introduced drama into the show that's when it moved from documentary to "reality" tv. (Such a stupid name since its exactly the opposite.)
shareFor real. Watching PBS as a kid during the 70's was a real eye opener besides being educational in the best sense of the word.
shareI was born about then in the U.S., and in the real world of the Midwest, and I never heard of them either, I guess I was just too busy in the 70s living my own life and didn't care much for the "California scene", now I know why.
shareYes, I'm younger than you but I lived in Santa Barbara. Never heard of this people. Fascinating? No.
shareOther than the oldest son, Lance, the rest of the family did not court attention or controversy in the wake of all this. Several of them were embarrassed by the whole debacle.
"He'd kill us if he got the chance."
--The Conversation
I had heard of this show but not seen it. It's referenced in some sociology textbooks, commenting on family dynamics. So I think I read about the show in high school.
Lance Loud also crops up briefly in the biography Edie, which is a compilation of long interviews with people who knew druggie 60's model/actress Edie Sedgwick (Kyra Sedgwick's cousin.) So I had also registered the name from that.
I met Lance Loud around 1998 (?) and his name kind of rang a bell. And I said, "Lance Loud...Lance LOUD...have we met before? Are you from New York? Your name is kind of familiar..." And the friend he was with said "His family was in a TV show from the 70's on PBS," and then it clicked, and I said, "Oh yes, yes...that's a very FAMOUS show..."
So, to sum up, I knew it was a famous landmark show that was referenced more in academic stuff than pop culture...but I'd never seen it. In fact, I still haven't seen it : (
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I was born in 1960--I never saw 'American Family' when it debuted in '73, but the scenario was brought up years later in a high school sociology class and college media studies class. One teacher summed up the series by saying, "once the cameras started to roll, the marriage started to disintegrate." Prior to this series, the only "reality TV" was the nightly news or the gags on Candid Camera.
I don't know. Perhaps it is your age. The family was everywhere when I was 13/14.
share