A Talk with Lance
REMEMBER THE LOUDS? WE watched the family self-destruct in prime
time in 1'973. Their broadcast breakup heralded an epidemic of divorce in
the United States that only now shows signs of having run its
course.
Well, says oldest son Lance--a sometime journalist, former Warhol
camper, and ex-male stripper--it only looked like they came apart. Sure,
parents Pat and Bill got a divorce, but the family is still together,
just in an unconventional way. After assorted rovings, Pat lives with
Lance in L.A., while Bill lives with second son Kevin, a prosperous
businessman, in Houston. And they're all very close.
What really came between them was the TV camera, Lance told
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY in an extensive reflection on the series, which was
originally broadcast on PBS in 1973 and rebroadcast just last year. The
camera moved in and subtly led everyone to dramatic poses. "From May
until just after Thanksgiving in 1971, a crew stayed with us and set up a
permanent television camera in the living room. It became just like
another piece of furniture. We felt very comfortable with the three crew
members.
"Filming a family like ours could never happen again because
everyone is too media savvy now. We were the last gasp of media
innocence." Their lack of self-awareness obscured the impact their
behavior would have on the public, and the public reaction in turn
hardened them in stances they might never have assumed on their own.
Moreover, their lack of self-consciousness also blinded them to their own
internal needs.
Lance says he "never talked about homosexuality on the show,
although I was admittedly very flamboyant. At the time they shot it, when
I was 20, I really didn't think I was gay, and I certainly didn't come
out on television. I just thought I was a terribly unique person. I
didn't wear blue lipstick to be like a woman--I wanted to shock people.
But the publicity department started telling writers 'You really should
do an article on this show. The son Lance comes out on televison.' And
that became one of the hooks. What I was trying to do was just make
people edgy. I was disappointed that it was just palmed off on
homosexuality.
"Only at one point did anyone warn us not to say certain things,"
Lance recalls. "That was totally taboo. One day, toward the end of
filming, when I was really at my wildest, I was visiting my dad at his
office. I was wearing tons of makeup, bracelets, necklaces, and perfume.
I was a total terror. After they filmed a particularly uncomfortable
encounter between my father and me, [one of the producers] Alan Raymond
took me aside and said, 'Lance, have you ever thought about how people
are going to think about you when this comes out?' I didn't think there
was any need to. But two years later, when [the show was broadcast and]
The New York Times Magazine singled me out as the 'evil flower' of the
family, I was horrified.
"Until then, the production company and producer Craig Gilbert
tried to keep us from thinking about how we would be perceived. In fact,
it's been a very long debate within our family as to how much influence
Craig Gilbert had, especially over my mother's decision to ask for a
divorce. He really commiserated with my mom. He never encouraged her to
do anything, but his intense sympathy for her dilemma accentuated, I
think, her desire to break things off with Dad.
"It was a subtle form of encouraging her to take a bolder step than
perhaps she would have otherwise. I think that's one of the reasons my
mother hates the series."
His dad, says Lance, was "the big, brassy Frank Sinatraish swinging
salesman. But he was living an image and couldn't admit, when it was
prudent, that it was a mistake." Bill remarried in the late '70s and then
divorced again in 1987. "She was very sweet but extremely conservative,''
Lance says. "His Big Bill Loud Spending Spree had given her the idea that
he was very wealthy.
"I think he got out of step with who he really is. When he was a
young man, he had always wanted to be an artist. Then his dad died and
left the family in the lurch, so he had to take over the
business."
"My family has changed since the show. And if we were a portrait of
an American family then, we are still a portrait of one 20 years later.
In the late '60s and '70s, a lot of families went through an explosive
period when nobody knew whether they'd ever see each other again. Kids
especially were thinking, 'I'm going to be as different from my parents
as possible, and I don't care if I ever come back.' Then they found out,
as we did, that part of the solution to surviving is to come back and be
connected with your family. That's a pretty momentous thing.
"I think that we bode very well for America, that we are a
compliment to America because we didn't burn out. We didn't become tiny,
small, defensive human beings. We didn't cut ourselves off from each
other or from living. We didn't fall prey to a lot of the alienation that
we were advertised as representing. The last two decades have shown me
that our family's love was very strong.
"I feel very proud that our family didn't die; we were just reborn
as a question on Jeopardy; one, by the way, that everyone on that show
seems to get wrong." Maybe that's the trouble with television. The medium
always misinterprets the message.
PHOTO (COLOR): FAMILY FEUDS: The Louds went prime time in
1973.
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