Taxicab Confessions

This inaugural episode of the Taxicab Confessions series, premiered on HBO in January 1995, and went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Special. Far ahead of its time, this show allowed viewers to watch as unsuspecting cab riders in New York City revealed their most vulnerable sides. Memorable rides include an off-duty trauma cop who recounts scenes of death he has witnessed, a homeless man who explains his decline, and a young woman who talks about the joys of body piercing.

More personal lifestyles and secrets are revealed in this episode, including a pair of young women flirting with their bisexuality and each other, an outgoing African American body-builder who seems surprised that the cabbie even picked him up, and an AIDS victim coping with his impending death.

The people who appear in this episode, which premiered in August 1996, are as unpredictable, and often as outrageous, as the city where they live - New York. There's a foul-mouthed young woman who admits to having shot her boyfriend in a fit of rage; a cocaine addict struggling with his yearning for drugs, and a prostitute who claims she narrowly missed becoming the latest victim of a cab-driving serial killer.