Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (53 page)

One of the reasons the Louds agreed to allow the film crew into their home in the first place was because they didn’t think many people would ever see the finished product. This was a documentary, after all, and one being made for educational television at that. PBS wasn’t even broadcast in Santa Barbara in 1971 (by 1973, it was); besides, Pat didn’t watch much educational television and she didn’t think anyone else would, either. “We erroneously believed the series would be a simply interminable home movie that no one in their right mind would watch for more than five minutes,” she recalled in 2002. Lance Loud thought of the film as “a very odd, never-to-be-noticed project.”

What’s the economic acronym DINK stand for? Double Income, No Kids.

HITTING THE BIG TIME

But when
An American Family
finally hit the airwaves in January 1973, more than 10 million people tuned in, making it one of the most-watched series in PBS history. The viewers were there for episode 2, when Lance’s sexuality was revealed; they were there for episode 9, when Pat Loud asked Bill for a divorce; and they stayed glued to their sets until the series came to an end in episode 12.

Overnight, the Louds became one of the most famous families in America. They were on the cover of
Newsweek
(underneath the banner “Broken Family”), they made the national television talk shows, appearing with Dick Cavett, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas, and Phil Donahue, and their problems were discussed around the water coolers of every workplace in America. Everyone knew who they were.

ROUGH GOING

Today, more than 30 years later, the Louds may be remembered with fond nostalgia, but that wasn’t the case in 1973. Many viewers were stunned by what they saw. The Louds were an upper middle-class family, more affluent than most of the viewers who watched them. Like the fictional TV families people were used to seeing on the tube, the Louds seemed to have it all: They lived in a big, beautiful house in sunny Southern California; they had steady, high-paying jobs; they had four cars, five beautiful children, three dogs, two cats, a horse, a swimming pool—seemingly everything that anyone could possibly want. So why weren’t they happy? Why couldn’t Bill and Pat save their marriage? Why was Lance Loud gay? What on Earth was
wrong
with these people?

Many viewers—not to mention pundits and TV critics—came to see Bill and Pat Loud as unfit parents and their family as the personification of everything that was wrong with American families in the early 1970s.
Newsweek
called the Louds “affluent zombies” and described the series as “a glimpse into the pit.”
The New York Times Magazine
called Lance Loud a “flamboyant leech,” the “evil flower of the family,” and an “emotional dwarf.”

Sounds worse than it is: The medical condition
epistaxisis
…a nosebleed.

That wasn’t at all how the Louds had expected to come across. “People were shocked, and we were shocked that they were shocked,” Lance Loud remembered.

We thought people would be on our side and sympathize with a family responding to all the different moods and trends of the times. But they didn’t sympathize; they misunderstood, thinking that we were arrogant in our stupidity. They were totally wrong.

NO HOLLYWOOD ENDING

In the end, nearly everyone associated with the film ended up regretting ever getting involved. Bill and Pat accused the Raymonds of distorting their family life, zooming in on problems and controversies at the expense of everything else. “It seemed that the entire series was all about Lance being homosexual and my husband and I divorcing,” Pat Loud says. “My other four children and their friends seemed to be of no real interest to the editors.”

The Raymonds had their own regrets. Though they did make two more films about the Louds—in 1983 and 2003—they swore off making documentaries about any other family. “It was too brutal,” Susan Raymond says. “We made films on policemen, on a prison warden, on a principal of a school—people who are public officials. But we didn’t do anything on ordinary people or families. We didn’t think they could handle that kind of scrutiny.”

FINAL CHAPTER

After the show ended, Lance Loud spent several years as the lead singer of a punk rock band called the Mumps, but though his fame brought the band some notoriety, it also made it harder for them to be taken seriously. The Mumps broke up in 1980 and Lance returned to Southern California, where he worked as a freelance journalist, published in magazines like
The Advocate, Interview
, and
Vanity Fair
. He also abused intravenous drugs for nearly 20 years, which caused him to become infected with hepatitis. In 1987 he learned that he was HIV positive.

In late 2001, his health failing, Lance checked into an L.A. hospice and called the Raymonds to see if they would document his relationship with his family during this final phase of his life. They agreed. Why did Lance want to do it? Felled by years of unsafe sex and drug addiction, he’d come to see his life as a cautionary tale. But he also wanted to show viewers that for all the problems the Louds had gone through, 30 years later they still loved each other and were close. “He could have asked for a priest or a minister, but he called for his filmmakers,” Susan Raymond says.

Cold comfort: Saint Lydwina is the patron saint of ice skating.

Lance Loud died on December 22, 2001 at the age of 50—the same age his father was when
An American Family
premiered in 1973.
Lance Loud! A Death in an American Family
aired on PBS in January 2003.

After the original series ended, Pat Loud moved to New York and became a literary agent. She has since retired and now lives in Los Angeles. Bill Loud remarried in 1976; he is retired and also lives in Los Angeles. Kevin Loud lives with his family in Paradise Valley, Arizona; Grant, Delilah, and Michele Loud and their families all live in Los Angeles.

DUBIOUS ACHIEVERS

Alan and Susan Raymond, credited with filming the first-ever reality TV show, are still making documentaries…but they refuse to watch any of the shows their work has inspired. Anthropologist Margaret Mead predicted that
An American Family
would come to be seen “as important a moment in the history of human thought as the invention of the novel,” but judging from the shows that have followed it—
The Real World, Big Brother
, and
The Osbournes
among them—it’s a safe bet she was wrong.

“Like Frankenstein’s monster, it’s a mixed blessing to be considered someone who spawned this reality TV genre,” Alan Raymond says. “I think it’s a largely superficial, stupid genre of television programming that I don’t think as a documentary filmmaker I take much pride in.”

*        *        *

A Final Note
. For all it cost them personally, how much money were the Louds paid for letting a crew film them for seven months? Not much. “The family received no compensation for their participation in the film,” Pat Loud says. “The only money we got was a check for $400 to repair the kitchen where the gaffer’s tape had pulled the paint off the walls.”

Scientists say: An adult must taste a disliked food 10 times before learning to like it.

MEAD’S CREED

When Margaret Mead died in 1978, she was the most famous anthropologist in the world. Her 44 books and more than 1,000 articles helped shape our understanding of human behavior
.

“We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.”

“No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.”

“I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.”

“Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.”

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”

“The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.”

“What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.”

“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.”

“Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.”

“One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.”

“Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put ourselves in an impossible situation.”

“Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.”

“Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.”

“We need to devise a system within which peace will be more rewarding than war.”

Eighty percent of migraine sufferers are women.

FAMILIAR PHRASES

Here are more origins of common phrases
.

T
O BREAK THE ICE

Meaning:
To start a conversation

Origin:
“Severe winter weather is a major nuisance to operators of boats. Until the development of power equipment, it was frequently necessary to chop ice at the river’s edge with hand tools in order to make channels for plying about the river. The boatman had
to break the ice
before he could actually get down to business.” (From
Cassell Everyday Phrases
, by Neil Ewart)

TO PULL ONE’S OWN WEIGHT

Meaning:
To do one’s share or to take responsibility for oneself

Origin:
“The term comes from rowing, where a crew member must pull on an oar hard enough to propel his or her own weight. In use literally since the mid-19th century, it began to be used figuratively in the 1890s.” (From
Southpaws & Sunday Punches
, by Christine Ammer)

TO KICK THE BUCKET

Meaning:
To die

Origin:
“There are a number of explanations for the origin of this expression, but the most plausible one has to do with the way some people committed suicide in the past. It was once fairly common for a man bent on killing himself to do so by standing on an upturned bucket, putting a noose around his neck, and then ‘kicking the bucket.’” (From
Ever Wonder Why?
, by Douglas B. Smith)

A SHOT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

Meaning:
An act of great importance, which has far-reaching consequences

Origin:
“The shot from which this phrase derives wasn’t literally heard around the globe, but its repercussions were certainly felt far from Concord, Massachusetts, where it was fired on April 19, 1775. On that day, British troops marched to Concord to seize a cache of weapons they believed were being hidden there by American patriots. A confrontation between Colonial militiamen and the Redcoats took place at Concord Bridge of which the essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard ’round the world.’ The American Revolution had begun. Not only did that first shot have great significance for the Americans and the British, but it had a tremendous impact on the rest of the world as well.” (From
Inventing English
, by Dale Corey)

Something else to look forward to: The ability to taste sweets decreases with age.

THREE SHEETS TO THE WIND

Meaning:
Very drunk

Origin:
“The phrase comes from the world of seafaring and the sheets referred to are ropes. The first thing one learns about ropes once aboard ship is that they are never called ropes. They are named according to their particular function:
halyards
(which move or hold things vertically, usually sails),
sheets
(which move or hold things horizontally), and
lines
(which hold things in a static position). The sheets in this case are those ropes that hold the sails in place. If one sheet is loose, the sail will flap in the wind, and the ship’s progress will be unsteady. Two sheets loose (‘to the wind’), and you have a major problem, and with three sheets to the wind, the ship reels…like a drunken sailor. (
Four sheets to the wind
, by the way, meant ‘completely unconscious.’)” (From
The Word Detective
, by Evan Morris)

GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE

Meaning:
Stop being arrogant

Origin:
“The 14th-century English religious reformer John Wycliffe once described a royal pageant in which high-ranking personages were mounted on
high horses
, or chargers, and these mounts became symbols of their superiority and arrogance. Mounted knights were certainly superior to foot soldiers, and even in 19th-century armies the cavalry regarded itself superior to the infantry. Ever since, telling someone to
get off their high horse
has meant to stop behaving arrogantly, with or without justification.” (From
It’s Raining Cats and Dogs
, by Christine Ammer)

Q: What’s the official name of India? A: Bharat.

ANTE UP!

Bet you didn’t know that poker is a relatively new invention. Think we’re bluffing? Read on. (By the way, can you guess Uncle John’s favorite poker hand? That’s right—the royal flush.
)