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The roots of reality TV go back further than we might think. Televised competition series started almost as early as the format itself, becoming a staple of the form in the 1940s. By 1973, PBS was broadcasting An American Family, a TV documentary series that captured the daily lives of the Loud family in Santa Barbara, California. This family docu-series was a pre-cursor to later family reality shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians. From the 1980s onward, audience obsession with televised versions of reality only increased, and TV producers have been working overtime to meet demand.

The American Society of Cinematographers is training its career-honor lens on Andrzej Bartkowiak, who will receive the group’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. The longtime Sidney Lumet collaborator will be feted February 23 during 39th annual ASC Awards at the Beverly Hilton.

ASC also said today that Michael Goi, Joan Churchill, John Simmons and Pete Romano are set for other career honors.

Known for his evocative visual style, Bartkowiak’s taut camera work drove Jan de Bont’s smash 1994 actioner Speed starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. His breakthrough film was the gritty 1981 thriller Prince of the City, which marked his first teaming with Lumet. Bartkowiak shot 11 of Lumet’s films over the next dozen years, including Deathtrap, The Verdict, Daniel, Family Business and A Stranger Among Us.

His lensing credits also include Best Picture Oscar nominees Terms of Endearment and Prizzi’s Honor, along with The Mirror Has Two Faces, Dante’s Peak,...

If you are like me, in order to view reality TV, it has to be something very interesting, music-related, or overly dramatic. Reality TV has dramatically changed since its inception, and many people would just rather do without. But if you are a real reality TV junkie, we have a great list of shows that you will really enjoy and where you can stream them in this handy list.

The Real World

The Real World is MTV's longest-running series and was a pioneer in the world of reality TV. Based on the 1973 TBS documentary An American Family, The Real World: New York premiered in 1992 and featured "the true story of seven strangers, picked to live in a loft and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” And it was precisely that. The debut season of the series, and possibly the only season,...

Reality TV started with hidden camera shows in the 1940s. It evolved into a pursuit of the American family in the 60s. The reality TV genre is constantly evolving. Streaming services are entering the game, giving more creative control to producers. Pioneering reality TV shows like Candid Camera and An American Family laid the groundwork for popular modern shows like Survivor and The Bachelor.

Reality television exploded in the early 2000s with franchises like The Bachelor, Big Brother, and Survivor, and it wasn't long before fame and fortune took on a greater focus with The Real Housewives series and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. But, before all that, hit reality TV shows had quite a fascinating history in the twentieth century with the first reality TV shows. The genre began far earlier than people might realize, and it started with the hidden camera style, then moved into the pursuit of the real American family.

Albert Brooks Screenshot: Paramount Following last year’s reality TV home deconstruction project, The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder returns to screens this week with The Curse. True to form, the series sees Fielder, who also directs and co-writes, and Emma Stone starring as aspiring HGTV gentrifiers Asher and Whitney Siegel. Co-written by Benny Safdie,...

Albert BrooksScreenshot: Paramount

Following last year’s reality TV home deconstruction project, The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder returns to screens this week with The Curse. True to form, the series sees Fielder, who also directs and co-writes, and Emma Stone starring as aspiring HGTV gentrifiers Asher and Whitney Siegel. Co-written by Benny Safdie,...

The documentary is one of the most celebrated genres of film, as well as being one of the most derided. The mockumentary has seemingly become one of the dominant strands of comedy, ranging from The Office to a litter of Christopher Guest classics. The reason documentaries are so easy to make fun of is very simple, they are often made by self-serious, indulgent filmmakers who are more concerned with "purity" and "reality" than they are with making a film that actually says anything interesting. The cinéma vérité era of documentary filmmaking is a classic example of this. The idea of being an impartial, "fly on the wall" to what is really going on sounds great, until you realize it just cannot happen. The idea of acting for the camera has just become so ingrained that you will never capture it, and by some miracle you do, the result may be sad,...

Documentary films and docu-series have gained mainstream popularity in recent decades, inspiring feature films and TV shows to adapt their narratives. HBO has spearheaded the trend of adapting documentaries, producing TV movies and series that draw from true stories captured in non-fiction films. Adaptations such as The Walk and Lords of Dogtown have replicated the style and themes of their documentary predecessors while adding their own cinematic flair.

Drawing inspiration from the documentary on the American Samoan football team’s redemptive journey, Taika Waititi’s upcoming sports drama Next Goal Wins joins the list of movies that are adapted from documentaries. Since the past few decades, documentary films and docu-series are garnering more mainstream popularity with some audiences being in sheer awe of the cinematic potential their non-fiction narratives capture. From Man on Wire walking between adrenaline-fueled archival footage and thrilling re-enactments to The Staircase drawing up the blueprint for...

An American Family was a groundbreaking reality TV show that shocked viewers with its cultural awakenings and intimate portrayal of the dysfunctional Loud family. Lance Loud, a breakout star from the show, became an LGBTQ+ icon but tragically passed away from liver failure and HIV after battling addiction to crystal meth. The show's legacy is seen in its influence on American television, inspiring other series and even being cited as the inspiration behind MTV's The Real World and the film Little Miss Sunshine.

An American Family season 1 ended 50 years ago, and a lot has happened to the Loud family since then. An American Family is hailed as America's first reality TV show. Produced by Craig Gilbert, filmed in 1971, and released in 1973 by PBS, An American Family followed the lives of an upper-class Santa Barbara family, the Louds, over seven months. The series received widespread viewership and acclaim for its...

On June 5, 1998, Peter Weir's The Truman Show posed the question "What if you were watched every moment of your life?" Truman Burbank, played by notable actor Jim Carrey, lives a seemingly normal life, working as an insurance salesman and married to a woman a little too keen on product placement. Little does Truman know that his hometown of Seahaven Island is actually an elaborate studio set, with the town's denizens all being actors. All over the world, viewers tune in to watch Truman, enamored by the simple concept of a man just living his life.

That concept of a man just living his life -- all while being secretly filmed at every turn -- created a thought-provoking film that commented on society's desire to take a peek behind the curtains into someone's private life, whether a celebrity or a neighbor next door. And while The Truman Show's portrayal...

The argument is now unironically known as “Pizzagate”: Luis Ruelas, the socially challenged husband of Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice, claims that he lost $250,000 investing in a doomed pizza oven business with his wife’s brother, Joe Gorga. The Bravo fandom (also unironically) ate Pizzagate up and attempted to decipher whether this business ever existed. Is it even possible to lose that much money on a non-existent pizza oven? No one knows.

Giudice has starred on Rhonj since its inception in 2009. It’s a show where...

MTV’s groundbreaking reality series The Real World first premiered in 1992, and although the network had already begun airing non-musical programming, The Real World was something different entirely. Inspired by the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family, The Real World gathered a diverse group of strangers to live together in one house for several months, with each season set in a different city. The premise is outlined the best by the show's famous opening voiceover: "This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite ... and start getting real." It's a format that has inspired countless reality shows in the years since, including two spinoffs on MTV, Road Rules and The Challenge.

As the old saying goes, "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." NBC's "Saturday Night Live," a highly successful show that's been around so long it can accurately be labeled an institution, is no exception to that axiom. While it feels a little absurd to attribute the success of SNL to any single person given how many comedians and celebrities have greatly contributed to its longevity, it's generally presumed that creator Lorne Michaels is the show's guru.

However, Michaels did not come up with the concept for SNL out of whole cloth, at least not according to actor/writer/director Albert Brooks. Brooks was a frequent contributor to SNL (or "NBC's Saturday Night" as it was called during the first and second season), providing the show with a series of short films.

Yet, allegedly, Brooks was highly instrumental in the development of what the show became, thanks...

When "Little Miss Sunshine" arrived on the scene in 2006, nabbing both Academy Awards and the hearts of American audiences, it captured an era of mid-aughts indie filmmaking that was defined by quirky comedic dysfunction. From "Garden State" and "Napoleon Dynamite" before it, to "Juno" and "500 Days of Summer" after, the road trip movie seems like the center point of a very specific movie trend.

Surprisingly, though, "Little Miss Sunshine" didn't mean to follow in the footsteps of the offbeat 2000s dramedy, but wanted to captured the essence of a different type of film that came decades earlier. In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel around the time of the movie's release, co-director Jonathan Dayton says he and his wife Valerie Faris took inspiration from "An American Family," a 1973 PBS docuseries directed by Craig Gilbert that's widely credited with ushering in the advent of reality television. It's an odd comparison,...

Documentarian Senain Kheshgi takes us through a few of her favorite documentaries.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

American Movie (1999)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) – Katt Shea’s trailer commentary

The French Connection (1971) – Dennis Lehane’s trailer commentary, Mark Pellington’s trailer commentary

Grey Gardens (1975)

Salesman (1969)

Real Life (1979)

Hoop Dreams (1994)

Seven Up! (1964)

Don’t Look Back (1967)

Primary (1960)

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Reds (1981)

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) – Dennis Cozzalio’s 2020 best-of list

High School (1968)

Hospital (1970)

Titicut Follies (1967)

Harlan County, USA (1976)

Salaam Bombay! (1988)

Mississippi Masala (1991)

India Cabaret (1985)

The 400 Blows (1959) – Robert Weide’s trailer commentary

Bicycle Thieves (1949) – Dennis Cozzalio’s Muriel Awards column

Shoeshine (1946)

Citizen Kane (1941) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Day For Night (1973) – Neil Labute’s trailer commentary

Sherman’s March (1986)

Capturing The Friedmans (2003)

I Think We’re Alone Now (2008)

The Mole Agent (2020)

The Act of Killing (2012)

Other Notable Items

Walter Hill

Walton Goggins

The Majority

Mark Borchardt

Mike Schank

The...

What does it take to succeed in a man’s world? A Los Angeles Film Festival panel of women cinematographers ivealed what it took to make it to the top of a competitive industry.

1. A shot of LSD. Cinema verite shooter Joan Churchill (“Last Days in Vietnam”) started out by recovering from an eight-hour acid trip, she admitted, to shoot some of the most iconic images from the Rolling Stones Altamont doc, “Gimme Shelter.” That led to the assignment of shooting the Louds in PBS’s “An American Family.” A documentary cameraperson, often working with a hand-held camera and natural light, has to have “people skills,” she said. “You have to be interested in your subjects.” When she moved to London, she couldn’t get work until she joined the Asc—and became its first woman member. Her membership card read: “Lady Cameraman.”

2. Read and reread the script. French-born Maryse Alberti...

Last week we reminisced about Vito Russo with two related docs: the essential The Celluloid Closet and the 2011 HBO doc Vito. This week we turn from a pivotal figure in silver screen Lgbt history to a pivotal one for the small screen. I’m talking, of course, of Lance Loud, who famously came out in An American Family in 1973 when the Loud family became the subject of a PBS docuseries, what many deem to be one of the first reality shows in American TV. Directed by Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, Cinema Verite (watch on HBOGo) follows the behind-the-scenes drama behind that infamous and breakthrough program.

For Americans, as we saw last week, many of the images they saw of homosexuals on movie screens were outright stereotypes. But they really paled in comparison to the images they were getting from the media. In 1967, CBS aired The Homosexuals an episode of CBS Reports.

Jeff Probst is trolling us again. For "Survivor"'s 29th season, CBS and Probst--who's the show's executive producer, showrunner, and host--have cast John Rocker. Yes, that's the former baseball player who said all those awful things in Sports Illustrated back in the 1990s, and who has continued to say awful things, from using anti-gay slurs in a restaurant in the early 2000s to arguing last year that the Holocaust would never have occurred if Jewish people had and used guns. Probst defended Rocker's casting by calling him "a perfect fit for this show because of all the baggage he brings in" and arguing that because Rocker "made some very controversial, polarizing comments about how he views the world. That is in its core, when you take away all the strategy and all the challenges — that is what Survivor is about." I hate to take the bait here and react to such obvious trifle,...

Reality television is one of today’s most consumed forms of entertainment. One of the first forays into this genre was by PBS in 1973 with a show called An American Family. A small camera crew followed and documented the Loud family, a suburban middle-class family which seemed like the perfect average American family. PBS was hopeful audiences would tune in to see this revolutionary show and the rest is history. HBO Films released a TV movie called Cinema Verite, shedding light on the inner workings of the reality show’s production as well as its impact on pop culture.

Craig Gilbert (James Gandolfini) is a TV producer who selects the Loud family as the first American family to be filmed and documented for mass audiences to see. The family consists of the patriarch Bill (Tim Robbins), matriarch Pat (Diane Lane) and five children. The film shows the progression of the...

Chicago – HBO’s under-appreciated original movie recalls the moment when entertainment-seeking Americans averted their eyes from actors to their neighbors over the fence. Voyeurism had a new name, “cinema verite,” and one-time producer Craig Gilbert was determined to take it from art houses to small screens in homes across the country.

His target was the Loud family—a large and popular clan headed by the philandering Phil and the strong-willed Pat. Their son Lance was openly gay and his flamboyant exuberance was celebrated within the walls of his home but proved to alarm conservative viewers once it was broadcast on TV. The show resulted in the dissolution of Pat and Bill’s marriage, which was already ailing but wasn’t at all aided by Gilbert’s manipulative strategies to intensify their domestic conflict.

Blu-ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

The enormous timeliness of the subject matter makes “Cinema Verite” a fitting entry in HBO’s ever-impressive filmography.

On April 7, Mike Wallace, the lion of the TV news magazine died. Wallace was more than a news man. He was a former actor and game show host who found a way to seamlessly blend news and entertainment into a combination that was far more than a sum of its parts. Wallace -- first on Night Beat, then on 60 Minutes -- didn't just investigate or report. He turned interviewing into a blood sport -- becoming both one of the most liked and feared men on television as a result. He brought the same intensity and enthusiasm to every interview -- be it entertainers, world leaders or criminals -- even once calling Ayatollah Khomeini a lunatic, to his face.

This got him into trouble at times -- settling a lawsuit with General Westmoreland; losing a battle with CBS over a tobacco industry whistleblower -- but it also made him something rare...

On April 7, Mike Wallace, the lion of the TV news magazine died. Wallace was more than a news man. He was a former actor and game show host who found a way to seamlessly blend news and entertainment into a combination that was far more than a sum of its parts. Wallace -- first on Night Beat, then on 60 Minutes -- didn't just investigate or report. He turned interviewing into a blood sport -- becoming both one of the most liked and feared men on television as a result. He brought the same intensity and enthusiasm to every interview -- be it entertainers, world leaders or criminals -- even once calling Ayatollah Khomeini a lunatic, to his face.

This got him into trouble at times -- settling a lawsuit with General Westmoreland; losing a battle with CBS over a tobacco industry whistleblower -- but it also made him something rare...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 24, 2012

Price: DVD $19.97, Blu-ray $24.99

Studio: HBO/Warner Home Video

Tim Robbins and Diane Lane live their lives on camera in Cinema Verite.

Starring Tim Robbins (Green Lantern), James Gandolfini (Welcome to the Rileys) and Diane Lane (Secretariat), the 2011 HBO Original Film Cinema Verite is a fictionalized account of the production of the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family.

A revolutionary piece of television programming for it’s time, An American Family catapulted a seemingly ordinary family to notoriety and captivated audiences with their first taste of reality TV.

Believing that the lives of an everyday family would be relatable to Americans in a way that existing TV shows were not, a filmmaker (played by Gandolfini in the movie) sets out to chronicle the life of the Louds, a seemingly “perfect family” in Santa Barbara, Calif. Once filming begins though, the strain in Pat and Bill Loud’s (Lane and Robbins) marriage,...

Every Friday night, my kids, my wife and I boot up the TV and watch a week's worth of our favorite shows. We don't all like everything the same. Personally, I feel like Glee has jumped the shark, and it took a while for my kids to warm to the pitch black humor of Louie. Still, we watch it all, together (usually over Thai food). It's an important time for our family in which issues arise that normally would not. Sometimes my wife and I must answer questions we'd rather not, and sometimes my kids get questions they'd rather avoid. But after a long, rushed, hectic week apart, this "TV Time" brings us closer. Unfortunately, in this digital age, this is a rarer occurrence than you might think.

Once upon a time, in "the days before the 'Net," families all over America gathered together, in front of an electronic hearth,...

Tonight, PBS will air a two-hour version of An American Family. The "Anniversary Edition" has been condensed from its 12-hour version by its original filmmakers, Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond, and debuts at 8 p.m. Et. If you haven't yet seen the series that gave birth to reality television, which earlier this year was rebroadcast in its entirety on some stations, this is your best bet, as it's not on DVD or available elsewhere. Check...

A colorful 70's time capsule and an immersion into the beginnings of reality television, the groundbreaking doc An American Family still grabs our attention today. But let's face it, the 12-hour version is a lot of Louds, even though suburban couple Bill and Pat Loud dealing with their five children and breaking up their marriage on camera quickly draws you in and keeps you around for more. The 2-hour version being shown on PBS tonight (and channel 13 in New York tomorrow) is just as gripping an alternative. This version is edited by Alan and Susan Raymond, who photographed the…...

An American Family has been turned into a fictional film for HBO and has been rebroadcast on a few PBS stations, but now viewers nationwide will be able to watch the 12-hour series compressed into a two-hour version called An American Famiy: Anniversary Edition that was edited by Alan and Susan Raymond, the people who filmed the series in 1971. PBS announced that the Raymonds have "adapted the 12-hour series into a new two-hour feature-length...

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Contact me here. (And be sure and include your city and state and/or country!)

Q: So Lance Loud was the first openly gay person on reality television, on An American Family in 1973. I assume The Real World’s Pedro Zamora was the second. So who was the third? – Martin, Philadelphia, Pa

A: Norman Korpi (who is gay, but was portrayed as bisexual on the show), appeared on the first season of The Real World in 1992 and actually preceded Zamora, who didn’t appear until the third season, in 1994.

In the U.S., the first non-Real World reality show participant was Survivor’s Richard Hatch in 2000.

Since then, there have literally been hundreds. It’s surprising how far we’ve come so quickly, isn’t it?

Q: With the royal wedding fever gripping England two weeks ago, a question struck me, in terms of gay rights.

Whenever I Ta for the History of American Television course, we always screen episodes of producer Craig Gilbert's pathfinding series "An American Family" (1973). "An American Family" is notable for a barrage of reasons. First, it essentially gave birth to reality television programming. Gilbert's program focuses on the upper-middle class, Santa Barbara based Loud family and took a rumored 300 hours of footage that was cut down to 13 hours. The camera and sound technicians, Alan and Susan Raymond, lived with the family for months. Yet, "An American Family" is more than a beginning exercise in documentary meets reality television. The show focused on what was supposed to be a typical family and through Gilbert's editorial hand, slowly deconstructed the myth of the nuclear family. Through the show's 13 hours, we are witnesses to the slow and painful separation of the Loud parental unit, embodied by adulterous business man Bill and his repressed housewife Pat.

 This evening at 92Y Tribeca, J Hoberman will be introducing a screening of Anthony Mann's Reign of Terror (1949, also known as The Black Book) and signing copies of his new book, An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War. For Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Leo Goldsmith writes that "Hoberman's particular interest here is the cinema that captured and often prodded the pathologies of the day: reactionary exposés of the lurking Red Menace, crypto-socialist satires and sympathetic docudramas, and those scads of B-grade Cold War allegories presented in the genre guise of science fiction, the biblical epic, the western. With a cast of characters including G-men, fact-finders, space invaders, coonskin kids, Christian soldiers, and 'white negroes,' and with cameos from the likes of Ronald Reagan, Nick Ray, Orson Welles, and Joe McCarthy, it's a densely detailed, near-hallucinatory history, irradiated with Hoberman's inimitable,...

Cinema Verite is the true story of the Loud family, America’s first reality TV family. In the 70s, documentary filmmaker Craig Gilbert (James Gandolfini) and PBS embarked on the groundbreaking task of creating An American Family, a series that helped change the way Americans looked at themselves and their ideals. Pat Loud (Diane Lane) and Bill Loud (Tim Robbins) agreed to let Gilbert’s camera crew shoot their family and see hopefully show the world how a true family unit lives. Sadly, the “experiment” backfired on the Louds, showing off only the negative aspects of their relationships. The series was tragic in its innovation, drawing 10 million viewers to watch the series on PBS. Yet, it served as the basis for warped reality TV shows today like Jersey Shore and The Real World.

Cinema Verite brings to life what happened behind the camera. Off camera moments are mixed in with...

Husband and Wife Directing Duo Also Give Details On Upcoming 'Imogene' Comedy With Kristen Wiig In 1971, PBS and documentarian Craig Gilbert inadvertently birthed reality television thirty years before the culture was ready for it with the 12-episode-long documentary series, "An American Family." Culled down from 300 hours of footage, "An American Family" chronicled the experiences of the Louds, a relatively normal, nuclear family in Santa Barbara, California. Making TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time list in 2002, the show was groundbreaking for peeling back the layers of privacy in a way now prevalent and accepted on…...

"An American Family" is a 1973 documentary filmed for PBS that followed the Loud family for seven months of their lives, showcasing a real American family living in Southern California, instead of the idealized "Brady Bunch" and "Patridge Family" units seen on TV at the time. It was named one of TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time in 2002.

"Cinema Verite" is a new movie from HBO that chronicles the making of "An American Family." Diane Lane and Tim Robbins star as the Loud family parents and James Gandolfini is Craig Gilbert, the documentary filmmaker who was often at odds with his crew over what was appropriate to shoot.

The title of the HBO movie literally means "truthful cinema" and is a style of documentary filmmaking that is known for taking a provocative stance toward its subjects. It combines naturalistic techniques with editing and camerawork, staged set-ups and using the camera to provoke the subjects.

"Cinema Verite" premieres Saturday night (April 23) on HBO. It chronicles the seven-month process back in 1973 when documentary filmmaker Craig Gilbert (James Gandolfini) filmed the Loud family for the PBS documentary "An American Family."

Diane Lane stars as Pat Loud, the family matriarch who agreed to let her family be filmed despite the fact that her marriage was not rock solid. It was what the filmmakers wanted - to show a real family and not the "Brady Bunch"/"Partridge Family" ideals that were the popular TV families of the day. But the American TV audience was not prepared for such a hard look at real life.

"No one was prepared for the backlash that resulted. The family was, in essence, stoned in the town square, burned in effigy," says Lane. "They were a tool in a machine that didn't know what to do with them, and the public and press were...

Summary:  The true story of America's first reality TV family should have been a documentary, despite the level of talent involved.

In 1973, a documentary filmmaker named Craig Gilbert convinced the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California to participate in a little project for PBS. A film crew would move in with them for several months, recording their every moment, and the footage would be edited into a twelve-part series entitled An American Family. By participating, the Louds would become what we later deemed America's first reality TV family. Cinema Verite, which premieres on HBO tomorrow night, is a dramatic behind-the-scenes recreation of this process, which utilizes occasional actual footage from the program along with reimagined scenes featuring actors playing the Louds. What I can't figure out is why.

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Chicago – How did we get here? How did the reality TV craze start? Some would have you believe that it is a modern trend and its popularity in the ’00s and ’10s has certainly been striking, but it’s much older than that. In 1973, when a film crew showed up at the Loud family household to shoot the 12-part series “An American Family,” which has been credited as being the start of the trend, do you think they envisioned a future that contained “Real Housewives of Orange County”?

TV Rating: 3.5/5.0

HBO’s “Cinema Verite” chronicles the making of the PBS documentary series and the impact it had on the Loud family. It’s led by Pat (Diane Lane) and Bill Loud (Tim Robbins), who struggled with marital issues including the specter of a looming divorce while the cameras rolled. Bill obnoxiously acted up in front of the camera and baited...

Filed under: Reality-Free, Features, Celebrity Interviews

Even though she plays one of the first big reality stars in her new HBO movie, 'Cinema Verite.' Diane Lane is not a big fan of reality TV.

"I've seen probably one episode of maybe five different shows, and that's about it," she told me last week. "I don't even watch 'American Idol' or 'Dancing With the Stars.' I just... I'm not American... I don't know what my problem is."

In 'Verite,' Lane plays Pat Loud, whose family was depicted in the landmark 1973 PBS documentary 'An American Family' The movie is told from Pat's perspective, how she deals with her philandering husband Bill (Tim Robbins) while not-so-subtly being influenced by the miniseries' producer Craig Gilbert (James Gandolfini). Meanwhile, the seemingly All-American family from Santa Barbara has to deal with their son Lance (Thomas Dekker) coming out of the closet...

Diane Lane was eight when An American Family first aired on PBS in 1973. She remembers people talking about the twelve-part reality show, the first ever. Ten million people watched it. The Loud family would never be the same. Nor would American television. But the show did more than break the rules. Back then Svengali producer Craig Gilbert could lure an attractive Santa Barbara family like the Louds into putting themselves in front of the cameras--wielded by the husband and wife team of Alan and Susan Raymond, who became Oscar-winning documentarians--for seven months without guile. They had no idea how their messy lives would be edited and manipulated into a juicy narrative, one that was eventually dissected and roundly criticized by the American public. "They ...

Typical biopics, even good ones, end by flashing images of the real people who have been turned into fiction on screen; Cinema Verite dares to reverse that ploy. From the start and scattered throughout we glimpse Bill and Pat Loud and their five children as they appeared on An American Family, the jaw-dropping documentary that created reality TV. In HBO’s colorful film about the making of the series, Diane Lane is Pat, Tim Robbins is Bill and James Gandolfini is producer and instigator Craig Gilbert, a man who has no idea what long-term mischief he is about to set in…...

Patrick Warburton has joined Ted, the Seth MacFarlane comedy about a man whose Teddy Bear comes to life, but grows up to be an obnoxious slacker. Warburton is going to play Guy, “the sexually confused co-worker of John (Mark Wahlberg) at the Enterprise Rent-a-Car front office.” This probably isn’t going to end well for us.

Facebook has apologized for censoring the photograph of the gay kiss, and says it never should have happened.

Most of the cast of Happy Days is suing CBS for not paying them for use of their likenesses on merchandise. CBS admits that “funds are owed.” Amusingly, the most successful stars from the show like Henry Winkler and Ron Howard have been paid on time. As for Scott Baio, they don’t use his likeness for anything, so they’re good there.

You already read our review of Cinema Verite, but the New Yorker talks to 85-year-old Craig Gilbert,...

James Gandolfini, Diane Lane, and Tim Robbins

Psychologists have long known that the mere act of observing someone changes that person's behavior. They call it the Hawthorne Effect.

In 1971, a visionary documentarian named Craig Gilbert had the crazy idea to film an actual family in their home over many days and turn the resulting "story" into a TV series, An American Family, that aired in twelve parts on PBS in 1973.

It was the invention of "reality" television, and it was a sensation at the time, and a huge controversy, in part because the family's oldest son Lance was gay (but also because the marriage between Pat and Bill Loud slowly, but dramatically unraveled on screen).

The documentary about this one particular family turned out to be a nexus of a number of important social forces all simmering just under the surface of the time: the rise of feminism and gay liberation,...

[1] These days, reality television may be considered by some to be a blight on our cultural landscape, but there was a time when it offered a more honest counterpoint to the idealized families being portrayed on American sitcoms. Back in the early '70s, filmmaker Craig Gilbert conceived of a documentary series about a California household as a response to shows like The Brady Bunch. The show, "An American Family," was considered groundbreaking at the time, and is now thought of as one of the earliest examples of reality television. HBO Films' Cinema Verite, directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor), tells the story of the making of "An American Family." James Gandolfini stars as Gilbert, while Diane Lane and Tim Robbins play the parents of the Loud family. We've featured spots for the movie here [2] before [3], and a new trailer has just been released. Check it out after the jump.

Long before The Real World, Survivor or Jersey Shore, producer Craig Gilbert created An American Family. The PBS documentary special that aired in 1973 was unlike anything ever put on television. It chronicled the real life, daily struggles of the Louds, a seemingly perfect California family who were not only catapulted to fame by the film, but helped usher in a whole new genre: reality television. Cinema Verite is an HBO Original Film that tells the behind the scenes story of this groundbreaking piece of popular culture, starring James Gandolfini [1] as producer Craig Gilbert along with Diane Lane and Tim Robbins and Mrs. and Mrs. Loud, the main subjects of the film. Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor), Cinema Verite premieres on HBO April 23. We recently highlighted [2] a first glimpse at the film but you can check out the full trailer after the jump. Here's a brief...

Way before Kim Kardashian and her family make the definition of reality TV blurry, America has tried out the approach on an ordinary family in early 1970s. HBO drops the first trailer to "Cinema Verite", a TV movie which tells the behind-the-scenes story of the groundbreaking documentary "An American Family".

It chronicles the lives of the Louds and catapulted the Santa Barbara family to notoriety while creating a new television genre: the reality TV series. It put the Louds in the spotlight as the parents (Diane Lane, Tim Robbins) struggled with their marriage while raising their children. In particular, Pat was criticized for her support of her openly gay son Lance (Thomas Dekker) at a time when homosexuality was rarely represented on television.

"Cinema Verite" gives a behind-the-scenes look at how the original PBS series was created by filmmaker Craig Gilbert (James Gandolfini). While he aimed to have an impact on culture,...

These are big, big Glee spoilers. Most of it you knew, even if you didn’t “know.” It has to be this way to move the plot forward. Still, majorly spoilery. But also, the Kurt/Blaine stuff makes me very happy.

WWE is going to partner with GLAAD to embed anti-bullying messaging into their shows, which are marketed as PG entertainment. While the dialog between WWE and GLAAD began after homophobic remarks (scripted, mind you) by John Cena, I’m happy they’re trying this. I just wish I knew how you made professional wrestling “anti-bully.”

Quentin Tarantino is suing his neighbor over his “intolerably loud macaws.” This is not, despite all appearances, viral marketing for the release of Rio.

Nick Youngquest has teamed up with Nous Model Management to “Defend Equality.” While I’m happy about that, and how consistent Nick is in his advocacy, I suppose what you...

HBO has released the first trailer for its upcoming original movie Cinema Verite, and to describe it requires some thorny meta untangling: It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the groundbreaking 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family, which chronicled the painful dissolution of a family in Santa Barbara, California. The series by Oscar-winning doc filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond centered on couple Pat Loud (Diane Lane) and Bill Loud (Tim Robbins), who split up during the filming, and their children, the eldest of whom, son Lance, became TV’s first openly gay character.

Cinema Verite stars Diane Lane and Tim Robbins as Pat and Bill, Thomas Dekker as son Lance, and James Gandolfini as producer Craig Gilbert. It was directed by husband and wife team Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor, Wanderlust), and written by David Seltzer (1976′s The Omen).

Official synopsis:

An American Family was...

[1] Reality stars are a dime a dozen these days, but HBO Films' Cinema Verite takes us back to a time when that wasn't the case. The film dramatizes the behind-the-scenes action surrounding PBS' 1973 documentary series An American Family, which HBO's marketing team is referring to the first reality show. The series followed a Santa Barbara family called the Louds as parents Pat and Bill filed for divorce. Cinema Verite stars Diane Lane and Tim Robbins as Pat and Bill, Thomas Dekker (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) as son Lance, and James Gandolfini as producer Craig Gilbert. It was directed by husband and wife team Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor, Wanderlust), and written by David Seltzer (1976's The Omen). Pretty good pedigree, right? Watch the trailer and read the official synopsis after the jump. I've been curious about this project since the cast was first announced [2], and...

In a few months, HBO will once again fictionalize the creation of a famous work of nonfiction, although this time it's the reality series that started it all: An American Family. The Sopranos' James Gandolfini stars as Craig Gilbert, the producer who followed the Loud family for the 1973 PBS series, while Pat and Bill Loud are played by Diane Lane and Tim Robbins, while Thomas Dekker plays their gay son Lance Loud. Robbins and...

At the Television Critics press tour in Pasadena, HBO screened footage from Cinema Verite, a new look at reality TV pioneers the Loud family, reports Amy Dawes: First-look footage from HBO’s Cinema Verite unveiled Friday in L.A. at the television press tour played as a punchy, potent and emotionally explosive look at what went on behind the scenes during the creation of a landmark television experience. Based on the PBS documentary An American Family, which aired in 1973, this feature film version stars Diane Lane and Tim Robbins as Pat and Bill Loud, the Santa Barbara couple who allowed filmmakers to spend seven months recording them and their five children in what HBO is positioning as a precursor of today’s reality television phenomenon. In the ...

Bravo's Boy Meets Boy was ahead of its time. The 2003 dating reality show, which had confirmed bachelor James Getzlaff choose between a bevy of available men (some of whom were secretly straight), was one of the first shows specifically geared towards the personal and romantic lives of gay men.

The cast of Boy Meets Boy

Alas, Bmb didn’t exactly burn up the airwaves and its first season was its one and only. Nor did it set off a stampede of similarly themed programming.

Nonetheless, reality TV has always had at least a hint of gay. Even the first reality show, An American Family, also gave us Lance Loud, the first openly gay person on television, . And Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the flagship that led Bravo into a new age of gayness and popularity, not only helped make gay judges and “experts” a staple of competitive reality TV,...