Boston Herald:
Cartoonist draws on `Real World' tragedy for new novel

September 5, 2000
By Mark A. Perigard

Pedro Zamora put a face on AIDS for the MTV generation.

His valiant, fatal battle with AIDS captured the hearts of millions of viewers during the 1994 season of the long-running reality soap The Real World.

Now Zamora's former castmate Judd Winick has written and drawn Pedro And Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned ($15, Henry Holt and Co.), a graphic novel that draws on the AIDS activist's spirit and the friendship they shared.

"It took me an awful long time to get to the proper place where I felt comfortable enough to write it," Winick said. "I needed enough perspective and security to look back at it honestly."

Those familiar with the San Francisco season of The Real World arguably the most powerful in the series' history, may be surprised to learn of Winick's initial anxiety about living with Zamora.

"I carried the banner of being this understanding liberal guy, but not as much as I made out to be," said the 30-year-old Long Island native. "I was brutally uncomfortable - at first. I'm living with someone who has AIDS and I have no idea what that was like. At this point, it was 1994, and when you had AIDS, you just died, that was it."

With humor and insight, Pedro And Me follows Zamora's early years in Cuba; how this headstrong gay man became friends with a heterosexual Jewish cartoonist; Winick's romance with fellow roommate Pam Ling; and Winick's evolution from anxious friend to AIDS educator.

Winick hopes the book will continue, in a small way, Zamora's commitment to educating young people about HIV. "Of all these reality shows before and since, Pedro was the only one who did it for altruistic reasons," he said.

Bike courier and evicted roommate David "Puck" Rainey barely makes a cameo in the book. "Puck isn't part of the story. We lived with him for all of seven weeks, which is just not that long a time. The other reason why he's not in the book is that it's all been dealt with on television. People have seen that story already, and I'm not here to regurgitate it."

Winick today keeps himself busy producing The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius a comic about an obnoxious kid with a 350 IQ, for Oni Press. He just started writing DC's "Green Lantern" comic and starts working in November on an animated film for Thrave, an Internet company. He and fiancee Ling, now an AIDS researcher, plan on getting married next September.

On The Real World Winick came off as the guy who just couldn't get a date, so how could MTV miss a romance budding beneath its cameras? "Oh, they didn't," Winick replied quickly. "We just didn't give them the end of the story. They talked about it endlessly after we finally got together. (A producer) said, `Your relationship was a 747 on the runway, gassed up and ready to go. We had the show all laid out, the clips, the interviews, but you guys never did it.' "

With The Real World going into syndication next month, many viewers will be meeting Zamora for the first time. Winick is bracing himself for another outpouring of grief.

"That's the downside. The upside is that Pedro gets to share his story with more people.

"I'm quoting myself from the book, but when you lose someone, you feel the whole world should mourn. In our case, it was absolutely amazing. Everyone should have this bizarre grief process that we did. Strangers in the street coming up to you in tears and wanting to console you. It can be inappropriate, but for the most part, it was not. It was oddly comforting."

Winick hosted the recent The Real World casting special and likes the New Orleans cast. "They're decent people," he said. "I don't know if it's a good idea to have them making their own television show. It's a little bit too ironic and weird."

Readers curious about Pedro And Me can sample excerpts as well as unpublished material on Winick's Web site, www.pedroandme.com.

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