Pedro Zamora's Life Remembered

We’re not purposely trying to be depressing here, what with our coverage of Selena (R.I.P.), Seven Pounds, and now the Pedro movie, which airs tonight on MTV and MTV Tres at 8 p.m. EST. But some things you just can’t avoid talking about. On that note, I’ll go on. Some of you may be old enough to recall Pedro Zamora from the Real World San Francisco, the openly gay, HIV-positive Cubano who struggled with the illness on the show and later passed away on Nov. 11, 1994, the day after the final episode of the season aired. The youngest child in a close-knit Cuban family, Zamora discovered that he was HIV-positive after donating blood to the Red Cross. His story, however tragic, inspired change and forever altered the face of reality TV. Even then president Bill Clinton called Pedro one morning to thank him for his contributions as an AIDS activist and educator (in fact the movie opens with Clinton’s call).

Recently, the biopic’s director Nick Oceano described the movie, which stars Alex Loynaz (Greek) and Justina Machado, as “basically recounting his experience with being on the show and also going a bit further back into his childhood when he grew up in Cuba, when his family moved to Florida, and his teenage years to the point that he got a diagnosis of HIV.” It also doesn't hurt that Dustin Lance Black (who just won an Oscar for penning Milk) wrote the screenplay.