Over the years, HBO has earned a reputation as the television destination for Hollywood's biggest names and brightest talents. The latest star to accept an invitation form the network? Diane Lane.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Lane has agreed to star in the upcoming original film 'Cinema Verite.' The role marks Lane's first television work in eight years and her first appearance on HBO since 'Descending Angel' two decades ago. She previously earned an Emmy nomination for the miniseries 'Lonesome Dove.'

Diane Lane has been cast as the lead role in HBO's new film 'Cinema Verite.' She'll be playing Pat Loud, the mother and main character of the ground-breaking 1973 PBS documentary 'An American Family.' When the documentary was first released, it stunned viewers with its frank discussion on issues such as divorce and sexual identity. Pat even historically asked her husband for a divorce on camera.

In short, this is to be a scripted movie about a documentary behind the filming of a documentary. With such convolution, it's sure to cause some sort of rupture in the space-time continuum. Doc Brown is probably having a conniption as this is being written.

It does sounds like a pretty good movie, though. In 30 years or so, we'll be seeing television movies about the backstage antics in shows like 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' or 'The Simple Life.' It's likely that whomever they cast as Paris Hilton will be more convincing in the role than Paris Hilton.

Family and the workplace -- two constants in everyday American society. They are the places where we spend most of our lives. Sometimes we spend more time at one over complaints of the other. Other times, we barely want to spend time at either location.

Because these are so important to many people across this country, it made sense that television would delve into both of these environments during the Reality Revolution. However, since a 60-minute show about a senior technical analyst sitting in his four square-foot cube was not likely to draw in the audience, the reality shows that were created focused on those families and workplaces that were a tad more unique. Thusly, shows were created around well-to-do families, celebrity families, or families with multiple children, while workplace shows dealt in tattoos, motorcycles, hair styling, and house-flipping.

Coming in later than the game operas and relationship shows, these family and workplace programs ushered in a new phase of the Reality Revolution and set the stage for the future of reality programming.

Love it, hate it, or feel indifferent about it, reality television is a staple of American television. It has been since The Real World and Road Rules premiered on MTV back in the 1990s, which started a chain reaction in the broadcast world. Eventually, the network and cable landscapes would be full of shows like Survivor, American Idol, Trading Spaces, and Big Brother. Since then, a season hasn't gone by without a show that emulated those shows, or any of the hundreds of other reality shows that were spurred by these originators.

So, what happened? How could we television viewers have lived with scripted fare for decades without a whiff of "reality" except for what was shown on the network news each night? Well, technically we didn't. Reality programming was there, except it wasn't called "reality programming" at the time. In addition, it was placed amidst a slew of scripted programming so it was considered a rarity. Nevertheless, these show were there and they were the impetus for some of the reality shows that we see today.

So where did reality programming begin? Actually, it didn't begin on television at all, but on the radio.

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