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The Taxicab Confessional
By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 4, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 4, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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One of the great uncles of the reality TV genre, Taxicab Confessions, has its 11th season premiere tomorrow night on HBO. The NY Times had an Arts & Leisure feature about the show last weekend, noting that most New Yorkers ignore cab drivers, which could be partly due to some cabdrivers' chats on the cellphone, but, yeah, New Yorkers will conduct all sorts of strange business anywhere. Most of the other seasons of Taxicab Confessions were filmed in Las Vegas, because HBO couldn't get a permit to film here; HBO Documentaries president apparently made a new pitch to film in NYC by sending Film & TV Commissioner Katharine Oliver the Emmy that Nevins received for the first TC, but not as a threat, sort of as an enticement. The Hollywood Reporter gives a synopsis of the first episode, in a disappointed review:
The nine segments featured here include a skinny white guy and an extremely large black woman sharing the cab on their first date while he addresses his "big black woman" fetish; a guy and his blonde transsexual girlfriend boasting about their steamy sex life; a gentile guy discussing how the Jewish woman whom was once his girlfriend would take phone calls from her mother during sex; a young tattooed rock 'n' roll couple getting physical in the back seat, complete with her performing fellatio; and a couple of party girls and their male companion vividly demonstrating the "If you get naked, you get a free drink" policy of the karaoke bar they just left.
With content like that, who needs reviews?
There was an instruction on how to hail a cab by whistling, but Gothamist refuses to do the two-finger whistle when we're outside, no matter how much Purell there is. And when we think whistle, we think To Have and To Have Not, the Bogart-Bacall movie with the Hayes code line, "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow." But in terms of conversations with taxi drivers, we either get cabbies who tell us the world will end or inquire where we are from. Plus Gothamist on taxis.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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