i like it loud

just watched the cinema verite episode on hbo about the loud family. the louds are the first reality tv stars when a 10-part documentary on the day-to-day doings of the family originally aired on pbs in 1972. i don't remember the series as i was just about 5 years old when it was first broadcast. what i did get from watching this film was a frisson of nostalgia for that most garish of eras, the 1970s. the filmmakers got the look and feel down to a t. from the fat, chunky, green ashtrays to the long hair and mutton chops.

tim robbins and diane lane portray the elder louds, pat and bill, and they looked pretty close to the real pat and bill. the filmmakers cannily edited footage of the original series with scenes of the movie. by the time we get to the end, and the expected hub bub of outrage from the public about the personal lives of a family put onscreen, we see the scenes of the real louds do their own media tours of the talk shows of the time, like the dick cavett show and the mike douglas show, to explain their sides of the documentary.

what amazed me, not knowing the history of the louds, is how well they turned out. they also were a deeply loving, committed family members. and frankly, by today's standards, their lives might be considered fairly standard and boring. at least that is how it seemed to me as i watched this movie version of their lives. the most dramatic part of the series was when pat loud declared her intent to divorce bill while the cameras rolled. a divorce is shattering to a family but it is not necessarily high drama for television.

i thought how would real life be filmed. large parts i think would bore the shit out of viewers. think of the cameras rolling while i sat and tapped away on this keyboard for hours on end. think of the cameras rolling as i read book after book with nary a muscle moved except to shift in my chair and use my index finger to turn the pages. or my walks to and from work, and work itself, and the ta dum of raising a 6 year old. do you think viewers could ratchet up any enthusiasm for that? i can't. hence today we get reality stars that are no where near living ordinary lives and reality shows as scripted as a sitcom.

even watching this film about the louds i saw how much of cinema verite is still made up, constructed and edited. but perhaps that is true to life too. as we move thru our days and nights we make it up as we go along, but we write our own private scripts, even if those scripts aren't shared with others but ourselves. we construct ourselves, and we are blindly guessing, at the same time. it's lovely to see diane lane as pat loud dressed in period clothes and smoking cigarettes, because people, a lot of people, did smoke in the '70s. it was also lovely to see her as a real, flesh and blood person. she is aging well, and so is tim robbins. greying hair and slight wrinkles. then again i have a vested interested in aging and aging well. but then i look around and say, we all do. we all are getting older and older still. the '70s was my childhood and i remember it well. it might seem like history as ancient as the chronicles detailing the exploits of king henry v, but it happens, and will happen shortly to everyone, that what was once young and fresh turns and grows old faster than you could think possible. a popular expression in the '70s was, 'hold on, baby'. indeed, hold on.