Not Dead Yet

"Francisco Franco is still dead."

-Saturday Night Live

One of the morbid aspects of our society is that when we don't see or hear from people in a while, we assume they are dead.

Saturday Night Live had, as part of their "News Update," had would occasionally use the line "Francisco Franco is still dead," a reference to the number of mistaken reports of his death in the media before he was actually dead.

With celebrities, there is always that game of "Alive or Dead."

One of the funniest moments in the documentary of comedian Don Rickles, called Mr. Warmth, is when Rickles is talking about the people in the pictures on his wall. Rickles was about 80 at the time of the shooting, so it makes sense that many of his contemporaries were now dead.

As Rickles looked at the photos, he would identify them as follows: "Dead. Dead. Almost Dead. Dead...."

Don Rickles is thankfully still with us, and so am I.

For the first time in a very long time, there has been a month gap in my posts. While I try to deliver at least one post a week, I never wanted to let the quality suffer by just churning them out.

In the past month or so, I have directed a one-act play (which is now being discussed as being shot as a short film), prepared a large number of budgets for people (and I still am), did a rewrite on a script, and found time to take an intensive meditation retreat at the Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Templar, New York. The latter was a necessity as part of my Zen practice, which is about all that keeps me sane in this very insane business.

Oh, and I prepped a short film which got postponed a week before shooting (actor problem). (See reference to why I needed retreat above)

Through all of this, almost every day, I was determined to write the next part of the blog series on the film Floating with Norman Reedus and Chad Lowe. Every day, something came up. As I write this, I realize I need to get ready to go out and see a show with a talented young actress I know who happens to be the daughter of the my favorite casting director  (and one of the truly good people in this business, Judy Keller).

At 55, you may be able to include me in that game of "Alive or Dead" at some point in the future - but not yet. Still here, and busier than ever. I came home to two more people looking for budgets, an offer to First AD a very long short, and an offer to maybe go on a shoot in Alaska in the Fall.

Oh, and there is still that short that got postponed which we will be shooting - well, sometime.

Fear not - determined to get the next post out in a few days.

While you wait, enjoy below:

1994:The Wonder Year - Taxicab Confessions - Part 2 - Backseat Undercover

We learned about love in the backseat of a Dodge,

The lesson hadn't gone too far

"Taxi"
-Harry Chapin*

Context is everything, and when looking at the first season of "Taxicab Confessions," the only season I can speak of from first-hand experience, it is important to remember that it originated on HBO as part of their "America Undercover" documentary series.

"America Undercover" was the series that early on brought us documentaries like "Death on the Job, " "Asylum" "Skinheads: USA Soldiers of the Race Wars,"  and "Multiple Personality Disorder: The Search for Deadly Memories." These were meant to be gritty looks at the unpleasant side of life most of us were never meant to confront.

Somewhere along the line, they began to lean to the more salacious, with shows like "Mob Stories,"  "Atlantic City Hookers: It Ain't E-Z Being a Ho" and "Hookers and Johns: Trick or Treat".

Not surprisingly, audiences showed more interest in the latter. Pornography and horror are two genres that clearly show that we enjoy watching the the seedy, dangerous and unpleasant side of life if we also get a little titillation to sweeten the mix.

It was in this atmosphere that the powers at HBO and "America Undercover" embraced "Taxicab Confessions." If one were to describe reality shows as revealing people in the midst of bad behavior, then "Taxicab Confessions," is a reality show. However, I know that Joe and Harry Gantz, the creators, looked at it from more of an anthropological angle, or an answer to that definition of character that is what we do when we think no one is looking.

As smart producers, they also had an aim to please, and I think the first episode was a balancing act. Subsequent episodes seemed to give in much more to the prurient, culminating with people finally having sex in the cab some years down the road.

There was talk about that happening during the first season, and it is here I will begin to address questions I have received over the years when I reveal I worked on the show, which certainly showed me the power of television. I have worked on dozens of feature films, but if you were to ask my extended family what I have done with my life, it starts and ends with "Taxicab Confessions."

So, here they are, all those questions you wanted to ask, or that many people have asked me over the years. All of these answers apply to the first year; I simply cannot speak to the rest.

Did people know they were being taped?

Simple answer: no. Over all the rides we did, not once did we ever tell people we were taping them before the end of the ride - not once. We didn't put words in anyone's mouth, or encourage them what to say.

During the ride, Joe and Harry followed in a van, listening to the ride. The taxicab drivers, who were real drivers who had to have hack licenses, were not professional actors, though they turned out to be damned good, Joe and Harry would prompt them to either pursue a line of questions or to drop it if they felt it wasn't interesting. The drivers did a lot of a improvising, and much of that was for the best.

This is one of the many things that separates "TC" from reality shows - these people did not know they were being taped, and so had no incentive to improve their image or establish a "character."

C'mon, really? They didn't notice at all?

In order to get a quality image, extra lighting had to be put into the cab. The bullet-proof divider was also removed, This gave the drivers the perfect explanation for the extra lights - that the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) was trying out better lighting to see if it helped with safety. This was the first show of it's type, so, unlike rides on "Cash Cab" now, where people get in and guess, "Oh, my God, is this that Cash Cab," people had no reason to believe they were being taped.

So much for a more innocent time.

Did you pay people?

We never offered money to encourage people to sign, and we certainly didn't pay them to embellish their stories. There was one ride where the customer was paid $100 by the producers, but it was not to get her signature, It was one of those many rides that I wish had made it into the cut; it did not.

The woman was a hooker who revealed that she had a young daughter and she had AIDS. In 1994, that was still a death sentence.

When the driver asked if she felt guilty turning tricks and possibly spreading the disease, she said she knew she was going to die, and needed to put as much aside for her daughter as she could before that happened. She was neither proud nor repentant, just realistic. Now, that's reality.

I remember watching the ride, and I still get chills as I write this. It was as sad as it was brutally honest. In today's reality television, "brutal honesty" can be something as simple as confronting someone for not doing the dishes. This was the real deal.

As with other rides that were not used, I have no idea why it wasn't chosen. Maybe the HBO legal department was concerned - we had a lot of back-and-forth with them.

The producers gave her money out of their pocket simply out of concern for her. Everyone was moved.

Were there any rides that you wanted to use but the people would not sign?

I do not think so, An irony that arose is that the few people who were difficult about being taped were boring rides that we would not use anyway. This included one obnoxious female lawyer who threatened to high heavens about her privacy being invaded, even when we assured her that without her signature, we would not and could not use her ride. I really wanted to say to her that as boring as she was, it was unlikely we would consider it anyway.

Is the story from the paramedic about the subway car true?

If people remember any ride from that season, it was this one. It was so powerful that Homicide: Life on the Streets did an episode around it with Vincent D'Onofrio, simply called "The Subway", for which he was nominated for an Emmy.



For those who don't remember it: when asked what was the worst things he had seen, he tells of a person caught between the subway and the platform, the bottom half of them twisted. They are still alive, in fact, not in pain, but the truth is, once the train is moved, their body will untwist, the organs permantly damaged, and they are going to die. They are asked if they want to contact loved ones. (LINK Below - it won't embed)

http://youtu.be/KnED-lQedjo

That guy told a number of stories, and all the same way. He had no reason to make it up. I've had people tell me that it was more urban legend, but the specificity with which he recounts it, and his point about people of 'all ages, even young people' makes me believe it.

I never doubted he would make the episode. None of us did. I still think that story may have been what got the show the notoriety it later achieved.


How come there were so many hookers, transvestites, etc?

We weren't interested in "Gee, I had a long day at the office," - and viewers would not have been, either.  The rides were all at night, and many of the best ones were as the clubs and bars were closing, The cabs spent a lot of time down by the Meatpacking District, where you were going to find more colorful characters.

Did you go on the rides?

I did very few entire rides; more parts of rides. Years of being in production makes you a bit jaded, so that the "action" of being on set is not as important. I needed to be at the office most of the day, and you can't be up day and night.

It was interesting to go on the rides, but, much like filming a narrative, there is a lot of 'hurry up and wait.' For every ride that was interesting, there were a ton of yawners, just like people coming to watch the "excitement" on a film set get quickly bored watching two characters walk down three stairs and saying the same line twelve times,  It's not as exciting without the editing.

What part did you play?

I had no creative input or contribution, per se. I logged tapes, made sure the folks had supplies for the rides, followed up on paperwork and was a liaison with HBO, including any legal questions we had for them. The biggest impact I had, if any, was using my budgeting background to make the case that we could do the extra days Joe and Harry wanted for a minimal amount of money, a case I made to Sheila Nevins. I always found that laying things out on paper made it easier for people to say, "yes."  Did they wind up using rides from those extra days? I don't remember.

Any rides you wish they had used?

The mean side of me makes we wish that they had used the ride of the guy I referenced in Part 1, the one who was cheating on his wife and said he would "be able to talk his way out of it," by the time the show aired. I would have liked to have seen that.

There was a violin player who closes the show - most of his ride is used with credits over. His was an extremely long ride, and one of my favorites, and I know the creators and the rest of us loved watching it. I wish more of it had been used, though I understand why it wasn't.


Felicia went on to do what I did for a few years; not surprised, she was very bright. I met one of the production coordinators from a few seasons later, who had his own stories, but I won't share those, as I can't verify them.

I know when the show began to lean more heavily on sex and alternate life styles, I became less interested, which is probably why I am the perfect person not to be in focus group for a reality show. I'm not the least bit prudish, but I find the fantasy of sex more exciting than the raw truth to watch, which most of us can attest seems nothing like it does in the movies, either porn or romantic, being less athletic than the former, and less soft-focus than the latter. I've always appreciated the sexual tension of movies like the original The Postman Always Rings Twice, where there was very little doubt what was going on, and you didn't have to be a genius to imagine what happened next.

Call it documentary or call it reality TV, I'm proud to have worked on "Taxicab Confessions," and think the world of the talent of Harry and Joe Gantz. I'm glad they had a very good narrative television show in "The Defenders," and look forward to the work they will continue to put out there. I thank them for giving me a peek into a world I was not familiar with, and for proving to the non-artistic side of my family - which is pretty much all of it when it comes to blood relatives - that I did have, yes, a real job.



NB: I noticed that Joe and Harry have a Kickstarter for a documentary entitled "American Winter" about the working poor. I never push people to support Kickstarter projects, but do pass along those that I find of interest - what you do is up to you. Link is below:

http://americanwinterthefilm.blogspot.com/


*C'mon, you really thought I was going to get through this series on "Taxicab Confessions" and not work this in?

1994: The Wonder Year - Taxicab Confessions - Part 1 - The New Reality

"Oh, can you see the real me,  can ya?

Can ya?

Can you see the real me, can ya?

-The Who

On the HBO show Cinema Verite, the 1973 PBS show featuring the Loud family, titled An American Family, is credited as the first reality show. While communications professors might agree, there was not a rash of similar shows to follow in the Seventies. The show is credited with inspiring MTV's The Real World 19 years later, which might be the better template for the mindless reality shows that now fill our airwaves.

I certainly wasn't thinking of the Louds, or even MTV, when I got a phone call from two brothers from San Francisco in the Spring of 1994. They were going to be doing a show for HBO, and they were looking for a production coordinator.


The pair were Joe and Harry Gantz, and at first meeting, you would hardly think them brothers. Joe was a photographer whose work had received some acclaim, serious to a fault. Harry, to me, was an aging hippie, not a pejorative in my book. I had always gotten along with people who fell into that category, from the talented director of "Hair" and other plays, Tom O'Horgan, to the puppet-theater creators I had worked with in Allentown, PA.

It would take me the run of the show to realize how well they worked in unison, how where one ended, the other began. Truth be told, I never got that close to Joe, a really talented guy with laser-like focus that I found to not always be approachable. I was much closer in personality to Harry, and since he handled a lot of the logistics, I spent most of my time working directly with him.

Joe Gantz, Harry Gantz

We met at a little Italian espresso place on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village, at a time when before Starbucks became the interview halls for those sans office.

I sat as they explained the concept to me. They would put five wireless microphones and a few (I forget the number) lipstick cams in a taxi. They would pick people up, and tape the ride, then pick the best ones for air.

Nice idea, I thought, but, frankly, I didn't see how it was going to work. First, what interesting ever happens in the back of a taxicab, unless the guy in the front seat has a Mohawk haircut and talks to himself in mirrors. I kept that reservation to myself, something I learned from recent experience.

As a practical matter, I was curious how they would get releases from people. This was before the spate of shows that made people celebrities for acting stupid on television, before everyone was aching to prove Mark Twain correct, that it was better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Sure, it was the height of the newly-minted "trash TV" shows, such as Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, and the late Morton Downey Jr., who I always found the most fascinating of the bunch if only because he was such a character himself that I always expected as much weirdness from him as from his guests. I always assumed it took forever for those shows to cast and find those people, and that once they did, they probably paid them decently to look like fools.

We would not be casting people, and we would not be paying them, the brothers informed me. They had first tried this sort of thing out with a short they had done in San Francisco, where they would set a camera on a street corner, pick people at random, and ask them about their lives. The concept was more fleshed-out than that, but they had tested it, and it worked. Furthermore, they had done a pilot on a shoestring for HBO the year before, and it had worked out well.

They already had a contact with a taxicab company in Queens. One cab would be outfitted by Mitch, the technical director who had done the pilot the year before. The two would follow the cab in a van, where they could listen to the ride, as well as communicate with the driver, a real taxi driver, via earpiece. At the end of the ride, a woman riding with them would get out of the van. The driver would have explained the basics at the end of the ride, the woman would seal the deal and get a release, which we would also tape for verification.

Having a young woman was crucial, they had learned, since both men and women signed more readily when a young woman approached them than a man. There would also be a PA to help.

I was to help find the PA and the girl getting the releases, as well as find them inexpensive office space. They would ride for 30 nights straight - sunset to sunrise. If mama always said that nothing good happened after midnight, our reality was that nothing interesting happened before sunset.

The young lady we found, Felicia, went on to production coordinate for the show in subsequent years.

I worked mostly during the day, reviewing tapes, looking over their notes, helping prepare them for the next night, filing, and being the go-between with HBO. I went on parts of some rides in the beginning, and on one or two full evenings later on to get a feel for what was happening.

The executive producer for HBO was Sheila Nevins, and one of the uncredited handlers on the project was Susan Benaroya. While I always consider specific budgets to be propitiatory, I can say that whatever you think the budget was, it was significantly less, certainly less than almost any of the low-budget features I had worked on. Both Nevins and Benaroya had backgrounds at PBS, and as such, understood how to manage the relatively-new documentary division of HBO on a small budget.

The original office space I found was tiny for what we were paying, and I felt cutting into money that could be used elsewhere. I lobbied for an office at HBO, and eventually, an available space opened. The new space was hardly bigger, but the proximity to people at HBO and the fact that we weren't paying for it freed money elsewhere.

I also helped negotiate the rate, and everything else, with Mitch. It seemed like during the filming of the pilot, some tension had arisen between Mitch and the brothers, the origin of which I was never able to objectively track down.  All three were consummate professionals, but over long hours, these sorts of things pop up from time to time. The three have subsequently worked incredibly successfully over the years, so I assume those tensions were worked out after the first year. That year, I acted as a bit of an intermediary, something I had done many times in my experience as line producer and assistant director.

Once we started, I found everything Joe and Harry had said to be true. I was amazed at the number of people who signed releases, even after revealing embarrassing sides that most of us would prefer to keep to ourselves.

Time and time again, I would watch a ride in the morning and think to myself, "He is never going to sign," only to find the person in question cheerfully signing away their image.

One of my favorite examples was a well-dressed man who got into the cab with a younger woman who was clearly not his wife. She seemed to know he was married, as they actually joked about being out on the town, and how the wife would never know.

Sure enough, when they got to the end of the ride, there is Felicia with her clipboard. He asks when it will air, and Felicia gave him the closest to what we knew, which was about six months later on HBO. "Ah, six months, I'll be able to talk my way out of it by then," he said.

For legal purposes, there was some concern that he may have been drunk - he certainly had been drinking - and I was asked to follow-up with him the next day. I caught up with him at his workplace on the phone. "Oh, you're the television folks from last night. That was cool." He assured me again that there was no problem with his release, but he did ask if he could contact "that cute girl with the clipboard."

In  Part 2, I will answer some of the more common questions people have asked me about Taxicab Confessions, as well as talk about some rides that did not make it on the show, including one that was truly heart-breaking.