The New Yorker delved into producer Cragi Gilbert’s regrets after creating the seminal “An American Family” series. Verite film making presents many difficult situations – ones typically skirted in today’s semi-scripted “reality” programs by the cast members’ knowledge of or indifference to the creator’s willingness to distort the story. In 1973, the filmmaker and his subjects didn’t have a set of common assumptions about what documentary television might look like or how it would be perceived by critics and the American public. It is terrifically sad to think that a talent as significant as Gilbert could be effectively silenced for 40 years because he was so far ahead of his time.
Craig Gilbert, the creator of “An American Family,” the PBS series that documented the Loud family of Santa Barbara for seven months in 1971 and was a premonition of reality TV, has lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Jane Street for twenty-one years. He has the same patrician hair and beard that he had when he appeared on “The Dick Cavett Show,” thirty-eight years ago, sitting uncomfortably alongside Pat and Bill Loud. On the show, he defended himself against charges that he had exploited the family and betrayed their trust. One recent morning, Gilbert, who is eighty-five, sat at his dining table peering at eight bottles of pills. A home-care nurse hovered nearby with a clipboard. He had just been released from the hospital after accidentally overdosing on Mucinex. Framed on a wall in the living room was an old cartoon from this magazine showing two couples at a dinner table. One woman smiles as she says, “I’m probably old-fashioned, but I felt much more at home with the Forsytes than I do with the Louds.”
Gilbert talked about a dinner he’d recently had with James Gandolfini, who was doing research for his role as Craig Gilbert in “Cinema Verite,” HBO’s new docudrama about the making of “An American Family.” Gandolfini had asked about an old rumor that Gilbert and Pat Loud had had an affair during the filming.
“I told him no in twenty ways,” Gilbert said.
In 1973, American viewers were consumed with the five Loud children and their parents, who handled their travails with a composure that, depending on your point of view, was either admirable or chilling. Gilbert never worked again after “An American Family” aired, and he has spent the years since then trying to avoid the notoriety that came with his creation.
“ ‘An American Family’ changed the lives of the Louds, and it changed my life,” he said. “It was pretty damn tumultuous, and I don’t want to go over it anymore.” He went on, “The Mucinex episode was the climax of a six-month nightmare.” Last year, one of the Loud children sent him a copy of HBO’s script. “The story line was essentially fallacious,” Gilbert said. He hired a lawyer to represent both his and the Loud family’s interests, but although he voiced his displeasure, he did not sue. (The Louds, who also were reportedly unhappy with the script, ended up accepting a financial settlement from HBO for agreeing not to discuss it publicly.) “Cinema Verite” depicts Gilbert showing Pat Loud (played by Diane Lane) evidence of her husband’s infidelity (Bill Loud is played by Tim Robbins), and then taking her up to his hotel room—all, the movie suggests, in the service of capturing their divorce on camera. Like Gilbert, Pat Loud has always maintained that the two did not have an affair. “If you are given the assignment to write a two-hour film that exposes the making of ‘An American Family,’ the only avenue to take is that the producer is corrupt,” Gilbert said.
“Cinema Verite” depicts another behind-the-scenes drama, between Gilbert and a married couple who worked on the series with him, Alan and Susan Raymond. Gilbert hired them to film and record sound for “An American Family.” But the Raymonds balked at capturing several of the series’ rawest moments. In the HBO version, Gilbert and Alan Raymond have a fistfight over whether to film what became a famous and painful scene between Bill and Pat at a restaurant, in which Pat finally loses her cool and calls her husband “a goddamned asshole.”
Both men insist that they didn’t come to blows. When asked to comment on this scene, Alan Raymond said, “I did push him. I should have punched him.” Susan Raymond claims that Gilbert had a “Svengali hold” on Pat Loud, and said, “Craig destroyed that family.”
Looking back, Gilbert blames the Raymonds for not being willing to observe the first rule of the form: never stop filming. “What did they think cinéma vérité is?” Gilbert said. “You shoot only certain things?” He also fought with the couple about their credit on the series. The Raymonds are still bitter that they weren’t given proper credit for effectively creating reality TV, and Gilbert seems crushed by the knowledge that he did.
When “An American Family” began its broadcast, in January, 1973, the Loud family was devastated by the public’s response. One critic called the family “affluent zombies,” and the Times described Lance Loud, the gay son, as “camping and queening about like a pathetic court jester, a Goya-esque emotional dwarf.” Gilbert remembers getting a late-night phone call from Pat after she had read the first of many scathing articles that would be written about her family.
“Pat was screaming,” Gilbert said. “She’d taken a below-the-belt hit, and it hurt. That, right there, was the beginning of my own confusion. What have I done? What do I do?” He paused. “I’ve never resolved it. I didn’t know what I had wrought. I still don’t.” ♦
