Visible: Out on Television (2020) s01e01 Episode Script

1
At the height of my career, I had a dream
that I was holding a finch,
a tiny, delicate bird.
And it was my pet,
and I put it back into its cage.
I had been auditioning like crazy.
I had been pounding the pavement.
And there was a breaking point
where I was just, "I'm tired. I'm tired.
I don't know if I'm gonna do this anymore.
No one's seeing me."
"He's too this" or "He's too that"
or "He's too flamboyant" or "He's too "
I heard "flamboyant" so many times.
I wasn't sort of either thing
that society said that I should be,
and so I always felt
a little out of place.
I thought,
"There's no place for someone like me.
I'm too weird.
I'm probably too gay."
I just could not get a show made.
I couldn't get a show made.
I didn't want to write it.
I didn't think it was that fascinating.
Didn't think it was that entertaining.
I was just thinking,
"I can't How much longer can I do this
without having a breakthrough?"
Literally, the next day,
I get a telephone call.
And my agent sends me this script.
And the character breakdown
for the character of Taylor Mason
said "non-binary."
Hello. I'm Taylor. My pronouns
are "they," "theirs," and "them."
Okay.
From Modern Family
to Orange Is the New Black,
to Pose,
today's television landscape
has more diverse LGBTQ visibility
than ever before.
Something about being on television
makes people see you
as part of the country,
as part of our culture,
as part of who we are as a nation.
But this growing range of representation
was not easy to come by.
The truth is, there was no LGBT presence
on TV that I can remember.
Certainly, no characters
that I could identify with, being trans.
We sit there, we watch TV,
and we go, "Where am I?
I'm not included in here? I'm here."
The earliest representations
I saw on screen of gay people
were always people to be mocked.
My being in bed with you,
and you being a
Tinker Bell?
It was such cheap humor,
and for some reason, people just loved it.
We weren't getting anything
when people were speaking softly.
Gay people are protesting CBS's policies!
We had to force television to respond.
- You're probably not gay.
- I am.
It shouldn't make any difference,
and if it does,
and you don't love me now because of it,
then you've never loved me at all.
I remember watching the coverage
of the AIDS epidemic,
and there was anger, there was fear.
I'm repulsed by his disease,
and I'm repulsed by him!
Fight back! Fight AIDS! ACT UP!
Using TV, from ACT UP's perspective,
was the whole game.
Television helps us
to make sense of who we are,
and it humanized the entire situation.
To say, "Well, this is actually somebody
with AIDS."
I have AIDS.
I will probably not see the age of 30.
I will probably die
before I turn 30 years of age.
You tune into television
to hang out with these friends
who, in some way,
are reflecting your world back at you.
Rickie, give us the male perspective.
That's television.
That's television at its best.
I woke up and said, "I'm comin' out.
I don't belong in a cage,
no matter how beautiful it is.
I'm I'm gonna do this."
This is so hard,
but I-I think I've realized
that I am
I can't even say the word.
It's a journey that needed to be shown.
Because not everyone
is straight, gay, or lesbian.
Some of us are bisexual,
and truly, truly bisexual.
I never thought that women
who looked like me
and who shared my experiences
could be the centers
of their own universe.
We 110% had to write our own show
to get the representation
that we needed to see on TV.
I have to do this myself.
If I want to see this on television,
I'm going to now take over television.
I just wanted to tell my story accurately.
I didn't think that
there were so many of me
that needed that story to be told as well.
Ma.
I'm gay.
I didn't realize that I was the revolution
that I was waiting for.
When I was five years old,
we got our first television
on the block.
It was a little Mercury, and it was round.
Ten-inch round. And the whole neighborhood
would come and watch The Howdy Doody Show.
Boys and girls there at home. Hi, kids!
And kids in the gallery, what time is it?
Howdy Doody time!
The noise and the constant movement,
that was attractive to any child.
I remember sitting in front of it
for hours on end.
My father was on television
before we owned a television.
We bought a television
so we could watch him
on Caesar's Hour and Show of Shows.
So I'm the first generation
that grew up on television.
Everything was live.
I loved that.
Back then, it was event television.
Families watched as one.
There was no DVRs. There was no TiVo.
So if you wanted to watch it,
you had to watch it when it was on.
That meant that everybody
who was watching that show
watched it at that time,
so they had the shared experience.
We got a television just in time
to see the best thing
preceding Watergate,
the Army-McCarthy hearings.
I definitely remember
the Army-McCarthy hearings
because my mother would always put them on
when she was ironing
in the late afternoon.
I remember them very well,
but you must understand,
I was a very little girl,
and I didn't know what "homosexual" meant.
There was under the investigation
some very serious allegations
with reference to homosexual behavior
on the part of a group of army officers
at a large army base in the South.
It's the first time "homosexual"
was actually said on television.
It was explosive in many ways.
Everyone's attention was on it.
And it was live.
Over the course of eight weeks,
an estimated 80 million Americans
tuned in to watch
as the Army-McCarthy hearings
were broadcast,
gavel-to-gavel, on ABC.
The televised hearings
were the culmination
of Senator Joseph McCarthy's inquisition
to purge the American government
of Communists
and people he considered
sexual subversives.
In the years leading up to the hearings,
thousands of LGBTQ Americans
were fired from the federal government.
It says a lot about where America was
and the power
that McCarthy must have known
that that allegation had.
I mean, homosexuals were despised.
Yes, they're traitors to America.
Why don't we do something about it?
Homosexuals, they're Communists!
They're Communists!
Everybody focuses
on Joseph McCarthy's hunt for reds,
the hunt for Communists.
But the "Lavender Scare," this idea
that there's this secret network
of homosexuals who are spread
throughout the government
and can't be trusted.
That doesn't get as much attention,
but it destroyed lives.
My father was this very macho FBI agent.
I remember the vast number of arguments
and debates that would happen
over the dinner table
during the McCarthy hearings.
And it was another reason
to beat back my feelings
and say,
"I can't be that person. I can't be."
My father was so homophobic,
so incredibly homophobic
He desperately tried
to get me interested in sports.
The only sport that I really took to
was swimming
because you don't sweat, and it's clean.
Here it is Barbie's Dream House.
The wonderful new house from Mattel's
When I was a kid,
I loved my sister's dollhouses.
I loved playing with them.
I loved making them.
That dollhouse stuff
drove my father to despair.
I remember vividly
I was in the basement with the dollhouse.
My father came downstairs,
saw what I was doing,
took me by the arm,
took a washcloth, wet it,
and smacked the living daylights out of me
across the face.
And I was a sobbing wreck.
As McCarthyism spread fear
about gay people,
scripted television followed suit.
The code of practices
for television broadcasters
prohibited any positive portrayal
of homosexuality.
The homicidal lesbian
became a popular villain.
And gay story lines
often ended in suicide.
Buddy was a victim
of the standards you erected for him.
- Either a man
- Or a homosexual, which he was.
Talk shows of the 1950s and 1960s
featured psychiatrists discussing
alleged causes of homosexuality.
The most common expressions of difficulty
is the aggressive, dominant,
controlling mother.
A child's maleness should be emphasized
when you suspect
there may be something wrong.
He should be taken out to baseball games
with his father and so forth.
I help teach a class
that's about gay depictions in media,
and we start with this piece
that came out in 1967 by Mike Wallace
called The Homosexuals.
We discovered that Americans
consider homosexuality
more harmful to society than adultery,
abortion or prostitution.
In it,
there's a clip of Charles Socarides,
who preached on TV this idea,
which in 1967, people just took as truth.
Homosexuality is, in fact,
a mental illness
which has reached
epidemiological proportions.
My father was a famous psychiatrist.
He was on TV all the time
because he very much wanted
to be known as the person
who discovered something.
I think he saw homosexuality as one
of the few psychiatric issues of the day
that had a lot of public interest
around it.
I was wondering if you think
that there are any "happy homosexuals,"
for whom homosexuality would be, in a way,
their best adjustment to life.
The fact that somebody's homosexual,
a true, obligatory homosexual
automatically rules out
the possibility
that he will remain happy for long.
He became known for the idea
that homosexuality
was a curable mental illness.
We lived in a townhouse in New York,
where his psychiatric practice
was downstairs.
And our home was upstairs.
As a kid, I knew I was gay,
and even though I was secret about it,
I had my formative sexual experiences
in that home,
upstairs in my room,
at the very same time
while he was downstairs
treating patients who were, you know,
being "cured" of their homosexuality.
Through my many psychiatrist experiences,
people wanted to convert me.
So my psychological troubles
became more and more serious.
I made a very serious suicide attempt.
I was hospitalized
for two years and three months.
As a teen.
Do you remember how you felt
when you first realized
that you were a homosexual?
Frightened. Terribly frightened.
Mike Wallace said to me many years later
he had a lot of regrets
about doing that program
on a network like CBS,
which was, at that time,
the gold standard
for news and information.
He regretted that so much of the program
was devoted to the views
of people like my dad.
It just wasn't accurate.
It would be one thing if it was
a tough but accurate portrayal,
but it wasn't.
But it did give you at least a glimpse
of representation
and a glimpse of, "Wait a minute.
There are more people like me out there."
What do you think caused
your sexual orientation?
- Have you thought about it?
- I have thought about it.
But it really doesn't concern me
very much.
The first subject that they interviewed
made no excuses about his homosexuality.
He didn't find it any different
than a hair color
or an eye color, any of those traits.
It was just part of who he was.
For someone to be able to convey that
to an audience of millions back then
was bold and fascinating
and forward.
My dad knew that I was gay, I think,
from the time I was a teenager.
But we just didn't talk about it,
because if it became public
that I was gay,
and he was so public in his stance
that homosexuality was a mental illness,
it could create a lot of controversy
and a lot of problems for him, for me.
That scene that happens in When We Rise
is an accurate depiction of what happened.
This is a conversation
that we've needed to have for a while.
- I think we both should be very careful
- Dad,
you know that I'm gay.
I know that this conflicts
with everything you do.
No, no, no!
This was not a very long conversation.
And he said
This is what you're making me do, Richard.
- Do you realize that?
- We both know it's not loaded.
You'd never do it
because you think too highly of yourself.
I knew he wasn't going to kill himself.
But he certainly had a flair
for the dramatic.
It was a sunny day in Palm Springs.
We came to an intersection.
I looked across, and there was
this Rolls-Royce convertible.
And this gentleman, as he pulled up,
and they stopped, "Hi, Kirk."
And it was sort of an aura,
because he had so much jewelry on him
that the sun was bouncing off the gold.
You know, the diamonds on his face.
The reflections and auras.
And I remember just being like,
I've never seen anybody like this
in my life.
I asked my father, "Who's that?"
And he said, "That was Liberace."
My grandma loved Liberace.
"Oh, that man."
"He sure can play that piano.
I love Liberace."
And we're just sit looking like
"Okay."
I remember my parents talking about,
they were at our neighbor's house.
This neighbor,
who was super conservative
was finding out at this party
that "Liberace's gay?"
"But he's such a good piano player."
I'm like, "Do you know?
You gotta know
Liberace's the gayest gay, right?"
I certainly knew Liberace was gay.
Pardon me, sir.
Women did not have a problem with it.
They loved Liberace.
Thank you.
Gee, when I hear him sing,
it feels like he's right beside me.
My parents would talk about Liberace.
He was the only person
they thought might be a homosexual.
Now, my mother thought that
homosexuality was basically a disease
that men got from the hair spray
in the beauty salon.
Hey!
As flamboyantly gay and campy as he was,
people always wondered, well,
I mean, how did this not become an issue?
Ultimately,
as tabloid journalism came into our lives,
later in his career, it did.
But I always thought
he was having so much fun with it.
I told those newspaper people
there were men in my audiences too.
And it was so contagious,
and he loved what he was doing,
that people went right past it.
We weren't one of those houses
where the TV was always on.
But then Nick at Nite happened.
I was being essentially raised on the same
television that had raised my parents.
That was really my introduction
to television as a medium.
The first time I ever saw Sheila Kuehl,
she was on the Dobie Gillis show.
That was one of the shows I used to watch.
She played Zelda Gilroy.
We will be married,
live in a split-level house
with a lawn and rhododendron bushes,
and we'll have three children.
She had personality, energy,
and she had a specific perspective.
And I loved seeing a character who
wasn't just somebody's cute girlfriend.
Zelda was not the typical beauty
you would have.
She was more of a tomboy,
more of one of the guys.
And it made her extremely endearing,
and you wanted her to be your pal.
Well, team, it was a tough struggle,
but I got our engine in 14 feet of water.
That's our engine?
The Zelda character was so popular,
they wanted to do a pilot
for a series of my own.
And so it was a wonderful time for me,
very heady,
because I helped with the casting,
I was called in
on all the writing meetings.
I was treated like a grown-up,
which I just barely was.
I think maybe I was 20.
We made the pilot, and we heard everyone
was very high on the pilot,
including CBS.
And then, suddenly,
it just sank like a stone,
and I didn't hear anything.
The director, Rod Amateau,
asked me if we could have a talk.
And he told me that Jim Aubrey,
who was the president of CBS at the time,
had seen the pilot and had said,
"That pilot's going nowhere
because she's just too butch."
And, of course,
what I thought is that everybody knew.
The fair Zelda and Dobie-do.
I was in a relationship
when I was doing Dobie.
My very first lesbian relationship,
very, very closeted.
Such a chill that went through me,
'cause it was clear to me
my career would be over if people knew.
I had only been an actor.
It was the only thing
I'd ever wanted to do
and the only thing
I ever thought I was going to do.
I took a long drive
up Pacific Coast Highway,
which is what I always did
when I felt like
I needed to think about something.
And decided that acting
was not the best plan for me.
That would have been
a fantastic career advance for her.
But to have it stopped because
she was perceived to be too butch
also sent a special message to me
that I've got to watch my behavior
if I'm going to build a career
as an actor.
I have enough barriers to fight
as an Asian-American with this face.
Then after they talked to us both,
I drove her home.
It was a great shock to her, Mr. Mason.
I was on a Perry Mason.
And, at that time,
I did not know that Raymond Burr was gay.
Raymond Burr was gay?
My mother loved Perry Mason.
Raymond played a defense attorney,
and always in the last few minutes
of the show,
he would get a confession
or solve the case.
My mom played Della Street,
his personal secretary.
Raymond was this bigger-than-life figure,
and he was always spoken about
with such reverence by my mother.
So, when I first met him,
it was like meeting God.
I love Raymond Burr. I'm always
talking about Raymond Burr's suits.
When people say, "I couldn't possibly
look good in a suit. I'm too big."
Raymond Burr was not a diminutive man.
And he looked fantastic
because his suits fit him.
Well, what do you have to say to that?
Raymond Burr was gay? That is fantastic.
Oh, I feel even prouder.
I love that man.
I like the way
he flirted with his secretary.
Straight home.
- Who's going to do your dishes?
- You will.
Tomorrow. Good night.
Good night.
I don't care that people say
he did it in order
not to be a homosexual character.
I don't care. He flirted beautifully.
What was the deal
with you and Barbara there?
Was there a you know,
any out-of-court settlements?
It was the Hollywood publicity machine
that left it open.
It was kind of a "maybe it is,
maybe it's not." We don't know.
I did a Perry Mason in 1961.
One of the qualities
that really drew me to him was
everybody believed
that he was so big and strong.
But he was just an excited kid
underneath all of that.
The persona that he was projecting
was totally different
from what he gave to me.
Particularly when we moved in together
and got to really know each other well.
Everywhere he went, I went.
He always introduced me as an assistant
or associate or producer or whatever.
He never said, "This is my partner."
And years later, I've talked to people
who were at places with Raymond.
And they never remember me,
and that's fine.
That's the way it was.
Raymond Burr
was a really good friend of mine.
I had dinner with Robert and Raymond
in restaurants
that I would never have gone to.
They would have been much too expensive.
I did not talk about my sex life,
and I didn't ask them
about their sex lives.
I have the utmost respect for people
who had to live a double life
and couldn't be just who they were.
They had to create, you know,
other personas, I guess.
I think the crew knew, the producers knew,
everybody knew,
but it was just never talked about.
He was protected by the studio,
because he was their star.
Look, in those years,
Raymond Burr and many other people
would not have had a career
if they would have said that they are gay.
In the 1960s, homosexuality was
considered a crime in 49 out of 50 states.
Police regularly raided LGBTQ
establishments and arrested patrons.
But beginning in the early morning
of June 28, 1969,
at a bar in New York's Greenwich Village
called the Stonewall Inn,
the LGBTQ community fought back
for six nights.
Television did not cover
the Stonewall uprisings at all.
And I think this is one of
the great failures of American television,
that they were missing in action.
Stonewall wasn't covered on television
because LGBT people
were cast as the dregs of society.
And so the people who were in charge
of what was seen on television
or what was written about
they didn't care.
So, in the '60s, everything blew up.
There was the Vietnam War,
which divided the country.
You had Lyndon Johnson,
who chooses to not run.
Bobby Kennedy who looks like
is going to take on the anti-war mantle.
He gets assassinated.
And then Richard Nixon emerges.
He runs as the law-and-order president
and inherits this country that is
culturally, politically, sexually
and every other way divided.
RICHARD NIXON: I was trying to tune
into the damn baseball game,
and then the game went off,
and CBS came on with a movie.
They had two magnificent, handsome guys
and this stupid old fellow in it.
They were glorifying homosexuality!
JOHN EHRLICHMAN:
What's it called? I've never
Archie is the guy's name.
What is all this anyway?
What do you got here?
What is that, whipped cream there?
- It's clam dip.
- Clam dip?
Who are you having here,
the Duke of Windsor?
Roger.
Roger, the fairy?
All right.
All in the Family debuted
in January of 1971.
It was beyond cutting edge.
We dealt with race relations,
the Vietnam War, sexuality, homosexuality.
- How was the trip?
- Fabulous.
Mike, it was the most super trip.
In fact, it was an absolutely stunning,
exhausting, incredible experience.
When is he gonna land?
I had a friend, Roger,
and he dressed very foppishly.
He was not gay.
But Archie was convinced he was gay.
I was Meathead. I played his son-in-law.
We used to fight about everything.
Just because a guy is sensitive and
he's an intellectual and he wears glasses,
you make him out a queer.
I never said a guy who wears glasses
is a queer.
A guy who wears glasses is a four-eyes.
A guy who is a fag is a queer.
When the show went on the air,
the network objected to this and that
and I said, "What we're doing
is nothing that you wouldn't hear
in a playground of a school anywhere."
This is America.
This was after seeing shows
like Father Knows Best,
Leave It to Beaver,
Ozzie and Harriet,
where everything was kind of whitewashed
and suburban picket fence.
The main thing that Norman was after
was reality and truth.
To basically show people
as they really are.
His approach was first make it real
so that people can identify
with the situation,
then make it funny.
The protagonist was an antagonist.
Someone you shouldn't identify with if
you cared about anything about humanity.
Archie Bunker, taking a blue-collar,
prejudiced, know-it-all, bigoted man
and making him the object
of both identification,
but also amusement.
Growing up in the Mormon Church in Texas,
we certainly weren't allowed
to watch All in the Family,
'cause that was a bit too progressive.
And probably right there,
I missed one of the first depictions
of a gay person on television.
You bachelors, you got 'em coming
and going like running water, huh?
Whatever you say, Arch.
In the episode,
it turns out that Archie's friend,
who is an ex-football player, is gay.
How long you known me? Ten, 12 years?
Yeah.
In all that time,
did I ever mention a woman?
Oh, come on, Steve.
It's the first time ever
on an American sitcom
that a character came out
and said he was gay.
I'll see you later, pal.
I remember watching that episode
with my grandmother.
Queerness was not really talked about
at my house.
And so that was the first time
I started to understand
what being queer or different meant.
CBS was nervous about airing it.
And they had a huge disclaimer.
The censors were figuring out
what can you say, what can't you say?
This was something that was issued
by the standards and practices.
It says,
"We ask that homosexual terminology
be kept to an absolute minimum.
And in particular the word 'fag'
should not be used at all.
'Queer' should be used sparingly,
and less offensive terms
like 'pansy, ' 'sissy, '
or even 'fairy' should be used instead."
So, that's what you had and that's
And Norman said, "Forget that."
I was just using the language of the day.
I wasn't providing the language.
What could prove it better
than to have the president
of the United States engage
just as any ordinary guy might be engaged
in a conversation, from his point of view,
about that show?
RICHARD NIXON:
The last six Roman emperors were fags.
You see,
homosexuality, immorality in general,
these are the enemies of strong societies.
That's why the Communists
and the left-wingers are pushing it.
They're trying to destroy us.
The point that I make is that,
God damn it, I do not think
that you glorify, on public television,
homosexuality.
Nixon was someone
of a different generation,
who wasn't happy with the change
that's taken place in the country.
And I think that is something
that will always exist.
Old generations die hard.
And they make room for new leadership.
And, unfortunately, but that is how
I think a lot of change comes about.
All in the Family
became a major hit for CBS,
anchoring the network's
Saturday night lineup.
Executive producer Norman Lear
continued to bring LGBTQ characters
into the lives of the Bunker family.
Later in the series,
a lesbian character was introduced
at the funeral of Edith's cousin, Liz.
Your cousin Liz and I were
very fond of each other.
Extremely fond of each other.
Oh, I know.
We was too.
No.
This was
more like a marriage.
A marriage? Oh, but it couldn't be.
I mean, you and cousin Liz was both
Edith, of course,
who was patterned after
We always asked ourselves,
what would Jesus do?
How would Jesus react?
Edith's character was like
the moral compass of the show.
It must have been terrible
loving somebody
and not being able to talk about it.
My grandmother never cursed
those queer characters,
and that had a real impact on me.
She just sort of appreciated the episode,
like she did everything else.
I think it shows that we need more
creatives like Norman Lear, even now,
that are willing to break the mold,
are willing to do the thing
that nobody else wants to do.
I think it made a huge amount
of difference to the community
to begin to see any change in the way
LGBT characters were portrayed.
I think television profoundly affects
the way people feel about themselves.
If I see someone like me on television,
it's a major validation.
In 1994, Sheila Kuehl became the
first out state legislator in California.
When I ran for office, we did a poll,
and even the people
that didn't like gay people said,
"But, you know, I loved Zelda,
so I have to rethink this."
And that is an important aspect of
what television does in the whole culture.
I think it's being very important
to the transgender community now.
I grew up through the '50s and '60s.
There was only three networks:
ABC, NBC, and CBS.
And I don't remember
any television show characters
that I could identify with entirely.
Certainly, no characters being trans.
Those types of characters
were not even around.
There's definitely nothing on TV.
There's nothing that I'm gonna find
in the movies to relate to.
And so, you get this attitude,
like, you know, you're alone.
And it's you against
the rest of the world.
Come along, Mildred, dear.
I remember Milton Berle doing drag.
It was really kind of ridiculous.
At the beginning,
when it was straight guys doing it,
it was burlesque.
They were making fun of women.
George! George!
Well! So this is what George does
behind my back!
- Look, look, Gracie
- You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
You You barefoot hussy, you!
For a lot of that stuff,
the humor of it
eluded me completely.
What is your definition of love?
Love
Love is a feeling you feel
when you're about to feel a feeling
you never felt before.
They used this portrayal of us
in a humorous way for them,
but not humorous to me.
So, it was a hurtful thing.
In the early '60s,
there wasn't a trans community,
per se, at that time.
Any of us, primarily,
were considered drag queens.
And everybody liked drag queens
'cause they performed in shows.
And it was, "Yay for you. Go good, honey."
Long as you go backstage
and take that shit off.
Well, my community, we're not gonna
go in the back and change
into some male attire.
We don't have any male attire.
I'm not a drag queen. I don't want
to do this shit on weekends at a bar.
I live in this role, you know what I mean?
In the 1950s, there was a singular moment
of trans representation
when Christine Jorgensen spoke
to reporters about her transition.
Christine Jorgensen,
who used to answer to George,
creates quite a stir as she returns home
to New York from Copenhagen.
Christine hit the headlines following
the series of operations in Denmark
that transformed her
from a boy into a girl.
I don't have any plans at the moment.
And I thank you all for coming.
But I think it's too much.
Fine. Thank you very much.
That was such a wonderful thing
to see on TV.
It was kind of like,
"I'm gonna grow up to be
the first black Christine Jorgensen."
That shit never happened.
But besides Christine Jorgensen,
trans representation on television
was almost nonexistent
in the '50s and '60s.
When scripted television
included characters
who were transgender
or gender nonconforming,
they were almost always villains.
Stella, you're such a pretty nurse.
But in 1975,
the procedural drama Medical Center
featured a transgender character
undergoing her transition
in a two-part special episode.
Actor Robert Reed, best known as Mr. Brady
in The Brady Bunch,
played Dr. Pat Caddison
in an Emmy-nominated performance.
And then, in 1977, television audiences
were forced to reconcile stereotypes
with a real person.
I remember all the coverage
of Renee Richards in the '70s.
Now that's when I was a lot more
aware of myself and who I was.
And I was captivated by that.
Richards, who had a sex change operation
two years ago,
wore gold earrings and lace panties
for a first-round match
against Virginia Wade.
Initially banned from playing
women's tennis because she was trans,
Renee Richards sued
the US Tennis Association and won,
becoming the first trans athlete
to play in the US Open.
It was hard to see
what they put her through,
but it was amazing
to see her stick with it.
And I felt that it gave the community
a sense of pride in what she was doing
that we could take her strength from that.
The same year that Renee Richards
became a household name,
transgender characters emerged
on prime time on two shows,
both developed by Norman Lear.
My grandmother used to have
The Jeffersons on all the time.
She wanted to educate her kids as well
as the ones that were behind her kids,
her grandchildren to, you know,
know that we can strive.
On October 1st, 1977, The Jeffersons
introduced a transgender guest character
named Edie Stokes.
George's buddy in the navy, Eddie
Eddie comes back and Eddie is now Edie.
And they would play jokes on each other.
So, George thinks it's a big joke.
Things were a little off, and you're like,
"What does this mean?"
Like, they cast a cis woman to play trans.
And they didn't have the proper wording.
Are you one of those guys
that likes to dress up in women's clothes?
- Transvestites?
- Yeah, one of them.
- No.
- Good.
But I still think it was a step forward
to people seeing us as the people we are.
It's hard for people
to accept what I've done.
I have a job I enjoy, a place of my own.
I feel good about myself.
George, for the first time in my life,
I'm really happy.
This was someone George knew
and someone he loved.
But George had that reaction of, you know,
actually hurting his friend
by running out on her.
Hold the elevator!
Yeah, George, you take care of yourself.
Through Edie, the audience saw
how transgender people were being treated.
But then at the end, George comes around.
Look, Eddie,
I just wanted to apologize for the way
I acted back at the hotel tonight.
George, as a friend,
I wish you'd call me Edie.
Okay, sure Edie.
It gave that character
the dignity of saying, "This is me."
And asking, you know, George Jefferson
to play the fool
instead of the trans woman
to play the fool.
George! There's a big rat in the bathroom!
A rat! Here? What's a rat doing
Gotcha!
Norman Lear also introduced
a gender nonconforming character
on All in the Family named Beverly LaSalle
who appeared in multiple episodes
over the course of two years.
Norman wanted that character
to be authentic.
So he hired Lori Shannon
from San Francisco to play the part.
Wow!
Do you think it's too busy?
And Edith, of course,
loved Beverly LaSalle.
It didn't matter
what his/her history had been.
But it winds up that Beverly's killed.
And it's a hate crime.
It's like the worst possible thing
you think could ever happen.
I'm sorry, he just died.
And we decided
that Edith would lose her faith in God
to see Beverly killed.
Beverly was killed because of what he was.
And we're all supposed to be
God's children.
It don't make sense.
I don't understand nothing no more.
Once we had the audience,
and we had the acceptance of allowing us
to go into these areas,
then you could turn the flame up
on the honesty of it
and the truth of it
and make it more dramatic.
Ma, if there is a God,
you're one of the most
understanding people he ever made.
We need you.
As audiences were adjusting
to the new array of characters
on scripted television,
a new format with all real people
debuted on PBS.
- Hi, baby.
- I have a present for you.
- For me?
- Uh-huh.
Oh, how nice. Who from?
Your ex-husband.
Uh-oh. It says "After 20 happy years."
We had no connection with show business.
Had no idea how it worked and didn't
realize what we were getting into.
An American Family was a 12-episode series
that followed the day-to-day lives
of the Loud family.
I was totally aware that this was
a very, very special project.
I mean, nothing like this
had ever been done.
An American Family
was the first reality show.
And it was on PBS, ironically enough.
It came out of documentary filmmakers
who would follow people around
and record their activities.
Morning.
Hello.
People say it's the first reality show,
and I guess it is in a certain way,
but the reality shows of today,
I don't think it's
They're not reality shows.
I mean, they're totally staged.
I always think of it more akin
to like Grey Gardens
or, you know, cinema verité.
That's feta cheese.
Well, don't put it in there.
- Where do you put it?
- Huh?
Where would you put the cheese?
If it's a cheese, it goes
in the cheese container, doesn't it?
I remember everything
about watching American Family
because I was mesmerized
by this idea of taking real life
and turning it into a TV series.
Before Pedro Zamora on The Real World,
we had Lance Loud on American Family.
And that was the first time you really saw
a real gay person on your TV
and saw what their lives were like.
One of the things
that will make me happiest
is if someday, I'll
If I became independent,
because I like to be alone much better
than I like living with people.
Except Kristian and I
get along pretty well.
We were outcasts in high school.
Nobody in art class liked us.
The people in sports hated us.
We thought,
"We're not gonna settle for this shit.
We're gonna make our own world."
We thought having cameras follow us,
we thought,
"They should follow us around.
We're fabulous."
Lance would often say to me, you know,
"Rufus, the worst thing
that anybody can do,
worse than murder, worse than robbery,
worse than anything,
is to be boring."
When he was putting that green lipstick on
with Delilah in front of the camera,
he knew that he was making
a revolutionary statement.
He was a real dandy.
And a kind of, you know, very fey,
very flowery and lugubrious, you know
He had a very romantic spirit.
He was the first openly gay man
on television.
But it wasn't like
he came out on television.
He just was who he was.
Viva la fiesta, baby.
What have you been up to?
He was shocked when people said
that he came out on television.
Lance was always out.
He was proudly gay,
and his mother knew he was gay,
his family knew.
That wasn't happening
anywhere that I knew of.
And so, it was really groundbreaking,
that show.
Really, really groundbreaking.
I really am very proud of the way
you're taking care of yourself.
- You really are a man.
- Uh-huh.
And if you need any help
or you want to come back,
you're sure welcome to come back.
Okay.
Well, that's very reassuring to know.
And I'll
They were very hip parents.
Great examples for parents
who were not so hip,
as to how you deal with a situation
with which you never thought
you'd have to deal.
An American Family premiered on PBS
in January 1973.
And the press immediately seized
on the Loud family.
Critics zeroed in on Lance
and his sexuality.
Anne Roiphe of The New York Times Magazine
described the "flamboyant, leechlike
homosexuality of their oldest son Lance,"
and described him as an evil flower.
What they did was review the family.
They didn't review the documentary.
A lot of people wrote about the show.
Many of them were highly critical
of the family.
I probably deserved it, but Lance didn't.
And I felt terrible
that I had gotten them into this thing.
So, we fought back.
We went on a lot of shows.
We did The Dick Cavett Show.
Let me ask you this bluntly, now.
If you had it to do over again,
a quick yes or no, would you do it again?
I say no, Bill says yes.
The reason we did it was,
we are very proud of the family,
proud of what we'd done for 20 years.
We've lost dignity,
and we've been humiliated
as a result of it.
Our honor is at question.
But it turned out that
most of the people who saw the show
understood what kind of a family we were.
Very normal family.
And they felt
that they could relate to us.
We started getting
all these letters from people.
We got thousands of letters.
And a lot of gay kids
from all over the country wrote in,
and they said how inspired they were
to live their own lives
and be who they are
and be proud of themselves.
And Lance inspired them.
It really said to us that,
"You're not alone."
That someone else is having this
experience, and that was all we needed.
You're glad you did it and you
Sure, I'm glad I did it.
How about the things
that have been written about you now?
Do you feel that you've been
badly treated by the press?
I took two aspirin, it was gone.
One could also tell
that he harbored a wounded soul
from that experience, you know?
He was definitely battling demons
throughout his life.
In the fall of '87,
I came back to California
to take care of him.
And he was he really got sick.
He was really, really sick.
In 1987, Lance was diagnosed with HIV.
The weird thing about Lance
is he did out himself
as someone who had been
diagnosed with AIDS.
But it took him ten years
to show any symptoms.
Lots of people we knew
just died right off the bat.
And he was just asymptomatic
for years and years.
He would go to parties
and he would go like,
"Why them and not me?"
In 2001, he passed away at the age of 50.
He wanted to be this flare
that just was bright
and then disappeared.
He loved riding his bicycle,
singing at the top of his lungs.
And I always think about him like that.
I don't know about his legacy.
I know what he means to me.