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"Real World"-er Talks About Real Survivor

September 23, 2000
By Mark Armstrong

Judd Winick knows a thing or two about reality television and survivors. As a former guinea pig for MTV's The Real World San Francisco, he's a voyeur-TV pioneer, and can probably dish out a few words of advice for those bug-bitten flameouts from Survivor.

But for Winick, 30, even a steady diet of barbecued rats, naked millionaires, solitary confinement or thrill-seeking space trips can't compare to the groundbreaking, 1994 season of MTV's long-running reality show. That's when he was introduced to Pedro Zamora, an HIV-positive gay man who joined Winick and a cast of strangers in a plush, Lombard Street apartment--and gave viewers a real story behind the epidemic.

Now, Winick, a full-time cartoonist for DC Comics, has created a book telling Pedro's story, and offering a reminder that reality TV can yield more than just wounded egos and Hollywood Squares contestants. Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I Learned (Henry Holt and Co., $15) is an illustrated remembrance of Zamora, a Cuban-born AIDS activist who, just hours after The Real World's final episode aired, died at the age of 22.

For Winick, the experience was life-changing. The show not only introduced him to his fiancée, then-med student Pam Ling (by the way, they're getting married next year), but it also brought him--and viewers--inside the life of Zamora, as camera crews documented everything from Pedro's commitment ceremony to his longtime partner, to his daily struggles with HIV.

And as MTV prepares to air one last marathon rerun of San Francisco's Real World this weekend (the early seasons are headed for syndication), Winick says Zamora was the only participant--himself included--who sought something from the series other than quick fame. "Pedro was the only person to do it for non-selfish reasons," he says.

It also changed Winick's path in life--after finally achieving his dream of drawing his own daily comic strip, he says he quickly became disillusioned. "It all just seemed incredibly unimportant, and it was then I thought about going back to Pedro," he says. "The book had many incarnations. All my friends had read it, but a number of people thought I should go farther. So it was very hard. It was a matter of facing all the worst of it."

From the beginning, controversy surrounded MTV's decision to put Zamora on the show. Some criticized producers and network execs for exploiting his situation, knowing there was a chance he might die. But Winick rejects those arguments, saying it was Pedro's choice, not the network's. "To say [he was exploited] kind of makes Pedro look like a victim and a puppet," he says. "He was very much in control of his life. This was his plan, it's what he wanted, and he succeeded in that."

Nowadays, one wonders whether Pedro's story would even make it onto reality television. Even the pioneering The Real World, now in its ninth season, has drifted from the stories and individual careers of seven young adults, to a more artificially structured environment, where thrill-seeking post-teens tackle group assignments like starting their own business or hosting their own TV show.

But Winick says that, for all the game-show concoctions and fishbowl voyeurism now dominating reality TV, there still are opportunities to make a statement, especially involving HIV education.

"I would love to see someone else out there doing it," Winick says. "How utterly remarkable would it be to have someone on Survivor who is HIV positive?"

Excerpts from the book, and additional information about the The Real World-ers can be found at Winick's site, www.pedroandme.com.

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