Documentary on PBS revisits Lance Loud in his ‘twilight’

Lance Loud was deteriorating in a Southern California hospice when he glanced at a photo of himself from “An American Family,” the landmark 1973 documentary miniseries.

“That’s me in the morning,” he said. “This is me in the twilight.”

In December 2001, Loud left the world in the same way he burst onto the world’s stage: with the TV cameras rolling. But he was not the same guy.

He invited the filmmakers behind the shocking, original PBS show to record his last days as complications from hepatitis C and HIV were taking his life at age 50. The result, “Lance Loud! A Death in an American Family” (9 tonight, KCET), reveals a surprisingly introspective, witty and courageous man coming to terms with a life full of regret.

As baby boomers will remember, Loud created a media stir just by being his outrageous self, as Alan and Susan Raymond spent seven months in 1971 recording his dysfunctional family for a 12-hour documentary series called “An American Family.”

Loud became America’s first gay icon on TV and arguably its first “reality” star, drawing the wrath of critics (one called him an “evil flower,” another derided the series as “a glimpse into the pit”).

An episode of the original show, in which Lance’s mother visits him in lower Manhattan for a tense tour of how the other half lives, follows at 10 p.m., offering a reminder of how refreshing “An American Family” was, even if it paved the way for today’s unscripted nonsense.

In the new documentary, Loud laments the breakup of his semi-successful punk band, the Mumps, and his parents’ split, which he blames in part on the media spotlight.

Mostly, Loud regrets living in pursuit of an “indescribable feeling of fun that I never really found.” His mom agrees, saying she hopes the story will convey the dangers of drugs and unsafe sex.

But Loud was not a waste. He was talented as a singer and hyperkinetic frontman, colleagues recall, and later as a writer for various entertainment magazines.

He was also a sweet soul with an unstoppable sense of humor.

“Every day I wake up excited like it’s my birthday, like it’s something really neat,” he said at the hospice. “Of course, by the end of the day, get back to me.”