PEDRO

The film is a meaningful tribute to a life cut short.

As someone who never actually watched The Real World, it took me a minute to figure out what Pedro was going to amount to as a movie.  Once I worked out that it was about a cast member from the show, I assumed we’d be catching up with Pedro Zamora himself, hearing how life went after the show, etc.  You can imagine my embarrassment and horror upon realizing that Zamora actually passed away from AIDS-related causes in 1994, shortly after leaving the show, at the impossibly young age of twenty-two.

I mention my own mental process not to highlight my cluelessness, but because the movie was my first exposure to a young man whose only wish was to stand up and be counted.  Indeed, he proudly stepped forth to represent, and was commended by President Clinton for humanizing the AIDS crisis.  He was Cuban-American, openly gay, and HIV-positive (from the age of 17), but most of all, he was Pedro.  He seized the opportunity to show that there was a real person under the labels, and he used his own battle with HIV as a springboard for educating others. 

Pedro takes Zamora’s story beyond the confines of the The Real World, and contextualizes the slice of his life that aired on television.  The final product serves as a respectful homage for fans, or a moving introduction for those of us who never knew him at all.  Either way, the film is a meaningful tribute to a life cut short.   

DVD NOTES

Bonus features include an intro by President Clinton, audio commentary, three original episodes of The Real World with Pedro Zamora, Pedro’s audition for the show, the theatrical trailer, and deleted scenes from the biopic.