Programs/Content

One last visit with Lance Loud

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Twenty-nine years after their pioneering observational doc series entranced PBS viewers, the filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond are bringing back the Loud family one last time. They are talking with WETA about offering the new hour-long episode to PBS, according to Mr. Raymond and Jim Corbley, v.p. of production management at the Washington station. If a deal is struck, the film could be ready this fall, Raymond said. The occasion was the death Dec. 21 [2001] of Lance Loud, eldest son in the Santa Barbara family, who stunned his family and became a symbol of gay liberation in 1973 by coming out on national television.

An American Family

The return of the Louds: WNET to air 1973 film

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After 17 years in blissful obscurity, the Loud family is about to be put back into the public television fish bowl. WNET-TV in New York will rebroadcast on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day An American Family, the 1973 cinema verite production that followed the lives of Bill and Pat Loud of Santa Barbara, Calif., and their five children: Michele, Delilah, Grant, Kevin and Lance. “I’m amused,” said Lance Loud, who now lives in Los Angeles. “It’s no big deal. We have nothing to sell or promote because of it,” he said, adding that he has not seen the 12-hour documentary since its original broadcast on public television.