This special 5 disc set contains all 12 episodes of the original
series, IN EXCELLENT QUALITY, PLUS BOTH SPECIALS.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY was television's first reality
show, shot documentary style in 1971 and first aired
in the United States on PBS in 1973. The show was
twelve episodes long, edited down from about 300
hours of footage, and chronicled the experience of a
nuclear family, the Loud family of Santa Barbara,
California,during a period of time when parents Bill and
Pat Loud separated (in a infamous and powerful on
camera sequence) and Pat filed for divorce.

The parents had five children. One of them, Lance
Loud, was a gay 20-year-old man who occasionally wore
lipstick and women's clothes and took his mother to a
drag show in the second episode of the series. He lived
in the Chelsea Hotel during its Warholesque heydey and
this is captured in the second episode (Holly Woodlawn
was his neighbor and appears in several scenes, along with
Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and other famous drag
queens of the time).

On airing, the show drew over 10 million viewers...
phenomenal viewership for PBS in 1973 (or even presently)
and drew considerable controversy. The series was widely
discussed in the media in 1973, and the Loud family
appeared on the cover of the March 12, 1973 issue of
Newsweek magazine.

In 1983, PBS broadcast AMERICAN FAMILY REVISITED,
and in 2003 PBS broadcast A DEATH IN AN AMERICAN
FAMILY, shot in 2001, visiting Lance and his family again at
Lance's request. Lance was 50 years old, had gone through
20 years of addiction to crystal meth, and was HIV positive
and dying of hepatitis C. In the winter of 2001, a few months
after 9/11, Lance Loud passed away.

This special 5 disc set contains all 12 episodes of the original
series, IN EXCELLENT QUALITY, PLUS BOTH SPECIALS.


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