Lance Out Loud

Born in 1951 Alanson Russell 'Lance' Loud was an American magazine columnist and new wave rock-n-roll performer. Loud is best known for his 1973 appearance in 'An American Family', a pioneer reality television series that featured his coming out, leading to his status as an icon in the gay community. However, Lance Loud was so much more than a gay icon, as witnessed here. Enlisting moving essays by each of his family members, along with Lance's friends and colleagues - such as Bobby Mayhem, David Keeps, Rufus Wainwright, and Cherry Vanilla, among others - Pat Loud has constructed, through a partnership with visual artist Makos, a moving portrait of a joyous and beloved individual. Lance Loud came to represent the gay community, and in addition, embodied the creative spirit and genius of outsider status that became the 1980s and fuelled so much of what has evolved today in our culture in terms of art, music and literature. In 2003, PBS broadcast the program, 'Lance Loud: A Death in an American Family', which was filmed in 2001 while visiting the family again, at the invitation of Lance before his death at age 50. As seen here, short as Lance's life was, it was a monumental one that continues to resonate to the present day.