Pedro Zamora: from 'Real World' to real legend

Pedro Zamora: from 'Real World' to real legend
By Choire Sicha
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 1, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-tc-tvcolumn-pedro-0331-0401apr01,0,5806328.story


When "The Real World" premiered in 1992 on MTV, it created a standard in reality television: It cooped up Mormons and gay people and crude bike messengers and splayed their tiny culture wars on TV.

From the beginning, "Real World" participants sought to give voice to their political and personal agendas. In Season 1, African-American cast member Kevin Powell tried to use the show as a platform to discuss race, for instance.

Across 21 seasons, Pedro Zamora—of "The Real World: San Francisco" in 1994, during its third season—has been by far the most successful user of the show.

He hasn't had that much competition in recent years, to be fair: As the show aged, producers were more likely to emphasize drunken swimming pool hookups than socially mindful agendas.

Zamora, an HIV-positive, Cuban-American gay man who was 22 when he died, was always on message. He brought a scrapbook of his work as an educator to show his cast mates, immediately lectured them on HIV transmission and took them along on his speaking gigs. He and his boyfriend, Sean Sasser, also had a tear-jerking commitment ceremony before the cameras.

That those who saw the season's "Real World" could not get Zamora's story out of their minds has led us to "Pedro" (7 p.m. Wednesday, MTV) a biopic by the network and "Real World" creators Bunim-Murray, directed by Nick Oceano and written by Dustin Lance Black of Oscar-winning "Milk" fame.

Some members of Congress will get a sneak-peek screening earlier in the day. That is how big Zamora was. The film also includes a re-enactment of then-President Clinton's phone call of appreciation to Zamora and his family. (On MTV, Clinton will introduce the film.)

"Real World" producers own the story rights to cast members' lives during the period of filming. But Bunim-Murray bought Zamora's life rights as well, and so the film spans events from Zamora's family's departure from Cuba to his unexpected decline and death.

Most memorably—and jarringly for "Real World" viewers and postmodern culture enthusiasts—the film re-enacts actual sequences from the show. Actors play the reality stars in that season's infamous standoff between Zamora (Alex Loynaz) and rude bike-messenger housemate David "Puck" Rainey (Matt Barr).

During a fictional casting of Zamora, actors play MTV's producers as well. Meanwhile, some of Zamora's actual former housemates—"San Francisco" co-stars Judd Winick and Pam Ling, who became his close friends during the taping and later married each other—appear in cameos. As does "Real World" co-creator Jonathan Murray.

The movie, therefore, reflects the maturation of reality television as a genre; its stories are now informing scripted projects.

But it is also overtly a time capsule of MTV's past, before "The Osbournes" and the like. Back then, MTV often produced something called "scripted" or "fact-based" programming, including 2001's "Anatomy of a Hate Crime," a take on Matthew Shepard's murder.

"Pedro" closes a trend circle of the last 15 years. In a short conversation, Brian Graden, president of entertainment for MTV Networks Music Channels and president of Logo, used the word "earnest" no fewer than three times.

"This season, it's so earnest," Graden said of the "Real World: Brooklyn" cast, which does somewhat resemble the year of Zamora. "The kids are so real."