What future Academy Award winners Alan and Susan Raymond captured was a microcosm of the country in transition. Before the seven-month shoot was over, Bill and Pat Loud had filed for divorce and their 19-year-old son Lance had come out of the closet -- the first openly gay man to star on TV.
"For years, people thought we caused the divorce just by being there with the camera," Alan Raymond says in a phone interview. "That haunted us for years."
Now the Raymonds also get credit for creating a genre that's taking over prime time. Eight new "reality" shows are premiering this week alone. But don't expect the Raymonds to humbly play along.
"This predated all of these shows by so many years that in some ways it's almost like an academic thing to say it was the first reality TV show," Alan Raymond argues. "I hate to say I'm the serious guy and everyone else is superficial, but it's sort of true."
Alan and his wife are back in the news because Lance Loud asked them to film his last days. At 50, he had regrets about all the drugs he took and about the perception of his family as dysfunctional. But he also wanted another 15 minutes. So if "Lance Loud! A Death in 'An American Family,' " premiering tonight on PBS, is a cautionary tale about hard living, another of its themes is that fleeting fame can be as dangerous as it is ego-fulfilling.
"For him being frozen at 19 was a burden that was very difficult to carry throughout his life and proved to be at the very least a mixed blessing," Alan Raymond says. "He could never really follow it."
"He called us," Susan Raymond adds, "because he wanted to do it one more time before he died" in late 2001 of AIDS complications.
Lance acknowledges in the hour-long film that he feels most at home "in the vernacular of real time," by which he means reality television time, or on camera. "I want a happily ever after," he says. But he also remembers being boxed in by the image created by "An American Family," which he contributed to. "People expected me to be a certain way."
Lance's tale and that of his family is made even eerier by the fact that he had a childhood friendship with Andy Warhol, who coined the "15 minutes of fame" idea. Lance started writing incessantly to the artist when he was 13.
The Raymonds -- even as they distance themselves from "The Real World" and all the other reality muck they inadvertently helped unleash -- believe Lance understood, at least intuitively, its potential. But they also point out the differences between their work and what passes for "real" now.
"A lot of these people are preyed upon by the filmmakers and it makes it more of a voyeuristic experience," Alan Raymond says. "The truth of the matter is that reality TV is a superficial version of documentary filmmaking to begin with. It's not a genre we aspire to or have a high regard for. It's interesting. I'm not knocking success, but I don't think they're necessarily advancing the idea of what documentaries are supposed to do, which is hold up a mirror to society or to your own life. There doesn't seem to be any real substance to it."
"Lance Loud!: A Death in an American Family" aired early in 2003 along with the second episode of the original series, which had never been released on home video or DVD. The episode follows Pat Loud's visit to her son in New York, where he takes her to a drag show and tells her, quite subtly by today's standards, that he found his upbringing stifling.
The Raymonds also made the documentaries DOING TIME: LIFE INSIDE THE BIG HOUSE (1991), I AM A PROMISE: THE CHILDREN OF STANTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (1993), "Children in War" (2000, TV), and "The Congretation" (2004, TV).
Nominated for Achievement in Documentary Features 1991: DOING TIME: LIFE INSIDE THE BIG HOUSE - Producer (w. Susan Raymond)
Best Achievement in Documentary Features 1993: I AM A PROMISE: THE CHILDREN OF STANTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL - Producer (w. Susan Raymond)
2 nominations, 1 Award