An American Family
Craig Gilbert's 12 week PBS documentary about the Loud family
(yes, "Loud" was their surname) of Santa Barbara,
California, anticipated MTV's Real World (and an onslaught
of 'reality TV') by a good twenty years.
Edited down from three hundred hours of footage, this
controversial program is best remembered for the episode in which
teenage son Lance comes out.
A British version called The Family appeared the
following year, and US producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard
Goldberg were inspired to make their long-running drama series Family
(Starring Meredith Baxter-Birney and Kristy McNichol) as a
reaction to the documentary.
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