I remember our first transgender ride on Taxicab Confessions.  The woman got into the cab one evening in 1993, as we were making the pilot episode.  We picked her up in the meatpacking district of Manhattan, near 14^th street on the West side, where during the day all the meat wholesalers had their businesses.  Today that area is the trendiest part of the West Village.  But in 1993, at night, with all the empty truck loading docks, that neighborhood felt somewhat deserted.  It wasn't completely deserted, though.  Hidden in certain corners and basements of the meatpacking district were interesting bars and clubs that pushed the boundaries.  Our garage was right there, on Gansevoort Street, so we were in that part of town several times a night.

The way Taxicab Confessions worked was that either my brother or myself was in a follow vehicle, following the cab all night.  We could see all the six cameras in the cab through a microwave feed, and hear the five microphones.  We talked to the cab driver through a wireless earpiece, and directed the conversation from the follow vehicle.

It was about one in the morning and we had just changed batteries at our garage, when a cute, brown haired woman flagged down our cab.   Our cab driver that night was an older Jewish guy named Jerry who had been driving a cab in New York City for thirty years.   Jerry asked the woman what she did for a living, and she told him that she impersonated Maria Carey at clubs around town.  Jerry smiled and asked her, "sing a little".  The woman laughed and said, "no, I don't sing like Maria Carey, I look like Maria Carey!"  And with her long brown hair lit by the New York city streetlights, sitting in the back seat of our cab, she did look something like Maria Carey. 

The woman told Jerry that she had been born male, and that she was Transgender.  You could see from Jerry's expression that he was a bit confused by that.  But in 1993 many people who would watch Taxicab Confessions would find this subject a bit difficult to wrap their minds around.  Speaking through Jerry, I asked the woman if she was in a relationship.  She said that she had a boyfriend who really loved her, but--and she searched for the right way to put this--"her boyfriend was not into dick."  By her expression she seemed to apologize for even using that word.  Then the woman continued with a smile, "but he's not going to let that little detail come between us."  

The woman was so friendly and relaxed and energetic that she quickly won Jerry over.  I remember that at one point she went on to tell Jerry that if he ever needed advice on a relationship, a transgender person is the best person to give it.  "We used to be boys so we know what boys want.  And now we are women so we know what women want.  So we can explain things from all sides!"

Taxicab Confessions was one of the first series on television to show gay, lesbian or transgender people in a non-judgmental light.  And that's just how we approached all of our rides.  Later in the ride this woman began to talk about her family.  She had been extremely close to her family growing up, and their complete rejection of her once she'd made the decision to live her life as a woman had been very difficult for her to deal with.

As I listened from the follow vehicle, it was so sad to hear how her father and mother and grandmother had all let her gender identity issues break off their family's love for each other.  Our Maria Carey look alike vividly described the tragedy of parents who refuse to accept their child for the choices they've made.  In this case, she'd been cut off from her family for choosing to live her life as a woman.  But other kids have faced similar situations, being cut off from their families because they married outside their race or their religion, or simply for acknowledging that they are gay or lesbian.

This woman's ride resonated with a lot of viewers.  Her story, and the emotion that she showed as she told it, had an impact that was very moving.  And that's the thing about Taxicab Confessions, looking into someone else's life gives insight into your own life.  When this woman described her situation so honestly and so openly, her story touched and informed people who never thought they world learn from a person whose lifestyle was so different than their own. 

This woman's message of accepting others, especially those closest to you, was a powerful reminder of how many people get hung up on appearance when there are so many more important matters to focus on, in life and in families.

Right before getting out of the cab, Miss Maria Carey look alike leaned forward and told Jerry, our driver, "if you're not happy with the way you are, you have the right, you have every right, to be who you want to be."  Those words and the way she said them, with the conviction of a person who had risked so much to live her life, have stuck in my mind ever since.

Over the years we've had many amazing transgender rides on Taxicab Confessions.  The way we always work is, we just stay non-judgmental and we tell our subject's story from their perspective.  Our latest show, Gender Blender, focuses on the lives and the relationships of Transgender beauty queen contestants. 

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Transgender transformation process is seeing how each person's lifestyle effects their closest relationships.  Gender Blender is a simple, very human story.  And now that we have started CrushedPlanet we finally have a distribution vehicle for innovative, authentic and provocative content like Gender Blender. We have been wanting to make a series like Gender Blender for years, and we would love to get your feedback on how it turned out.  Please contact us at CrushedPlanet.com, and I hope you enjoy it.

Taxicab Confessions Website

The part about changing the world is an overstatement.  We want to change the world.  We think that there are things that need changing, that we could influence.  But so far we haven't made much progress in changing shit.   We've just spent money we didn't have in pursuit of some Don Quixote type dream.  

But the other part is true, we are regular guys.  Although we've been making documentary films for twenty years, we get no ownership of the productions we work on for the networks, so we've got very little money to invest in something huge like this.

The thing is, there's a gold rush mentality to stake a claim on the Internet and every media company, as well as other delusional schmoes like myself, are rushing in to grab a spot and throw up a site.  And we're all being followed in by the people that want to sell the gold rush types their supplies-- design and programming and viral marketing and SEO and advice-- at hugely inflated prices.   

Many of the gold rush folks rushing into the Internet, like the media conglomerates and VC financed companies, can afford a fancy site designed by the companies waiting on the sidelines to charge an arm and a leg.  Those other guys getting their pockets picked, unlike ourselves, arrived with bulging pockets.  When you arrive in this Internet world you are surrounded by people that KNOW THE INTERNET.  We're all told that we need Internet guides, because only the guides know this strange uncharted landscape out there on the Internet and without them we'll all be KILLED, financially speaking.   Those bulging pockets folks can't afford to be killed.  So they sign up the best and brightest, and often the most expensive of the guides.

We at CrushedPlanet were, and are, stupid enough to think that we can go out there with only our small rag-tag band of dreamers.  Everyday someone, even well meaning and knowledgeable folks who have our best interests at heart, tells us to spend more money and make our site better before going out into the big, scary Internet world.  But it cost ten grand to sneeze in the Internet world, and twenty grand to pick your nose, and I no longer trust the guys offering Kleenex. 

Strangely, having spent a lot of money-- at least a lot of money to us-- and barely gotten up and running, we still think that we can change the world.  And the way we plan to do that is by creating a new language of what streaming media is all about.   I can't exactly tell you the alphabet of this new language, because it's so new.  And I can't even speak the language yet myself, I'm sorry to say.  But I know when people are speaking it, and I can understand it when I hear it.  And I get sort of sick to my stomach when I don't hear it for a while.

Our feeling here at CrushedPlanet is this--the world of streaming media is made up of three endless streams.  There is TV (or TV style programming which is now just migrating over to the Internet), there is user-generated media, and there is Porn.  

TV is, with notable exceptions, banal.  It is a medium invented by corporate advertisers to sell you stuff.  And that's what it remains, for the most part, an advertisement delivery device.  Studies have shown that watching television induces low alpha waves in the human brain.  Alpha waves are brainwaves between 8 to 12 HZ. and are commonly associated with relaxed meditative states as well as brain states associated with suggestibility.  Television style programming provides a great way to zone out in a stressful world.  But television style programming is familiar rather than challenging, predictable rather than surprising, and so that leaves a lot of potential to expand on. 

And then there are user-generated sites.  There's some interesting stuff on those sites, but it takes a ton of time to look through the enormity of stuff to find a gem.  Those user-generated sites are like driving a car on the freeway of life.  You look out the window and see an accident, or some scenery, or a girl in the next car with a nose ring.  And each visual you come upon can hold your attention for a moment, and there's enough stuff to stare at for a lifetime, and for the most part there's no point of view, other than your head which swivels on your neck.

And then there is porn.  Porn is also quite banal, even if it does serve a vital function-- giving men a short-term alternative to looking for real partners who might be hurt when they can't fulfill the expectations of true intimacy.  But porn, like TV, is made to put you in a half conscious state where you will spend your money, among other vital fluids. 

We at CrushedPlanet are working to create an alternative to the endless stream of mindless crap.  We are looking for, and we are finding, work that is powerful, innovative, authentic, provocative, and surprising.  We are not finding it easily, it is not falling into our lap, but we're discovering artists and producers that are laboring on the fringes of our product-pumping media world to make strong-point-of-view, personal films that pulse with fresh energy and unique perspectives.  So even though we're struggling, and we're frustrated, we are continuing on.  We are tilting at windmills, we are limping a bit from the journey, we are an unlikely band of dreamers and whores, but we are on a mission here and we must continue.

The first project my brother and I worked on together was an unusual little documentary called "Couples Arguing".  This was 1985, and back then it cost $75,000 to buy a professional camera, and it cost $65,000 to buy an editing system.  We didn't have much money to work with, so we said fuck it and we bought a good consumer camera for $3,000.  We never had taken a film class and I had never shot anything on a video camera at that point.  But for lack of other options, I decided to shoot one camera and my brother Harry, who had never done anything like sound before, became the sound mixer.

We advertised around the bay area for couples that argued a lot, and we asked them to beep us whenever they found themselves in an argument.  The whole crew could be sound asleep, we'd get beeped and jump out of bed, throw on our clothes and rush over to film an argument in progress.  (We asked the couples to go into separate rooms once they beeped us so the argument wouldn't continue until we got there).   It was simple, just five couples flat out arguing and talking about their relationship.  Then once we finished shooting the film, we moved on to thinking about how to sell it.  Not the usual order of doing things, but the best way to not get bogged down in the idea that your project might not be possible to accomplish.

In 1985, there were only three networks plus PBS, and none of them were interested in something so raw and real.  For several months there, as we sent our ten-minute trailer, it felt like we were screwed.  But then, on a whim, we decided to take the trailer to England and see if anyone was interested in our little film over there.

We somehow wound up at Channel 4 in England, and my brother and I were floored when they said they'd love to help us produce our documentary.  So we rushed home and edited it, and it showed in England.  It even made a big splash there, with complimentary reviews in several newspapers.  One had a big picture of Harry dashing out of the van with all this equipment in his arms, and the caption said that he was running to film an argument.

So with that under our belts we decided to take Couples Arguing to a big television market in Cannes, France, called Mip Con.  When we showed up at Mip Con, we didn't know how one of these markets worked, but we quickly found out that it cost $100 a day for one person to even go in.  That represented a huge part of our budget.  So we paid for one of us to go in, and then took the badge they gave us to the copy center nearby and made a color copy for the other brother.  Each day the market would change the color of their badges, so we would just make a new trip to the copy center and change the color on our badges to match, and we'd go back in.

Once we were inside the convention there were tons of booths.  We had cassettes of our film, but we didn't have anywhere to show our film, if we were convincing enough to get a buyer interested.  Then, while walking around trying to figure out what to do next, we saw the one person who had seen "Couples Arguing" in the U.S., who had actually liked our film.  His name is Phil Kent and he is now the head of CNN.  At the time he was distributing the show "Divorce Court".   He's an extremely nice guy, and when we explained our predicament, he offered to let us show people our film in his private viewing booth on the expo floor.  Because of that lucky break we were able to bring people by all week, from countries all over the world, and ended up selling "Couples Arguing" to France, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Israel.  It was crazy, and we were ecstatic.  (Props to Phil Kent for letting two broke interlopers use his private viewing room to show a little film about couples shouting at each other.)

The point is, that back then most people didn't think that they could make a film if they couldn't come up with the huge money it took to buy professional equipment.  And if you were daring enough, or stupid enough, to shoot a film with your own money, there were very few options of ways to get that film seen.  Now one can buy everything you need to make a professional looking film for $3,000 to $4,000, and there are many more options for getting a film out there.

Way back when, in 1985, my brother and I made a film that was simple, innovative and meaningful to us, and we were passionate about finding an audience for it.  We made our money back and got our film seen all over the world, but most importantly, we got the impression that we could make a film about any crazy idea and then somehow find a way to get it seen.  That didn't prove to be true in the long run, but it did give us momentum for years to come in our quest to make our own brand of unusual films.

And, we learned a little something that may have contributed to our creating CrushedPlanet... that there is a big world out there.  By going to England, we discovered that our film was not dead in the water anymore.  Instead of having to give up after our disastrous attempt to sell our film in the U.S., we were rescued by Channel 4 and we charged onward into the abyss.  Now we are charging onward into the world of the Internet.

CrushedPlanet is about presenting powerful, innovative films.  A filmmaker, or just a person with a camera and an idea, can make something special and personal and out-of-the-box, AND find an audience.  With CrushedPlanet, we're just trying to make this process a little less excruciating and more accessible to all of the talented artists and free-thinking filmmakers out there who deserve to get their work seen.  CrushedPlanet is about breaking free from the limitations of the traditional outlets of film and television, and creating an unrestricted venue for unrestricted voices.  So send us your films.  Let's get this party started.

BLOG #1

I've never done a blog.  I'm a blog virgin.  That being said, the idea that I can share my thoughts without censorship or getting some kind of stamp of approval from the Corporations of Public Broadcasting, well, that's right in line with CrushedPlanet's vision.  It's in the moment, personal, emotional --it's kind of exhilarating actually.  I think I will give this a try, so here goes...

We are launching CrushedPlanet today, after ten months of faux launches and promised launches--each of which ended up being a heartbreaking crash and burn.  It's been frustrating getting to this point.  But here we are at the finish line of our design and programming phase, which is really just the starting line for getting CrushedPlanet out there.  

We started this dream of creating an Internet network almost ten years ago when we launched CrushedPlanet the first time in 1999.  That was when people could only stream itty-bitty postage stamp sized media.  On this go around CrushedPlanet rivals the image quality of any TV.  But we're not obsessed with the tech stuff.  We're all about content. 

CrushedPlanet will show the most innovative, provocative and intimate programming on the Internet.  TV was started by Corporations to sell advertising, and they don't want anything too edgy or mentally taxing.  The Corporations would put you to sleep for the programming and then wake you up for the advertising if they could.  And sometimes I think they try to do that.

I honestly think that the spectrum of entertainment possibilities offered right now is a sliver of what it can and will be.  We haven't exploited a tenth of what can be done when it comes to content.  CrushedPlanet is going to be about Powerful, Innovative content and --as The Unrestricted Voice-- we are going to help reinvent programming possibilities in this country and hopefully around the world.  (Sorry about using so many capital letters but I feel passionate about this.)

The second concept behind CrushedPlanet is to treat producers and artists and filmmakers the way we wish we had had been treated when we were coming up in this business.  Over the last fifteen years artists and producers in Hollywood, in the vast majority of cases, did not get ownership of their ideas.  Instead we had to sign over the ownership of our ideas, and we were offered this mythical back end, always calculated using net receipts rather than gross receipts.

At CrushedPlanet, everyone who allows us to distribute their work keeps all the rights to their content and we give them 51% of gross, if their work is exclusive to CrushedPlanet, and 33% of gross if it is given to us on a non-exclusive basis. 

And these two concepts --innovative and provocative content, and retaining ownership of all one's rights and getting a very fair percentage of gross receipts-- have already allowed us to sign up some of the most amazing artists from around the world who do absolutely phenomenal work.  I am in awe of the artists that we have signed up for CrushedPlanet, and we are only getting started finding these amazingly creative folks.

CrushedPlanet has short and long form films and videos that are honest and intimate, that are surprising and powerful, we have films that break the mold and come at filmmaking from a completely different direction, and we have films and videos and blogs that are such a simple, strong statement that they can astonish you and blow you away.   (Sorry about the run on sentence, I'm getting myself excited here.)

The goal with CrushedPlanet, and with this blog, is to reach out to the people who look around and say to themselves:  That's it?  That's all there is?  It seems like Art continues to get squeezed into tiny boxes by a few huge corporations that, as keepers of the gate, are picking out all the content they feel we need to see, or that we supposedly can handle.  We're in a democracy that has freedom of expression but the range of expression is incredibly stifled.  Well, CrushedPlanet is about passion, innovation, creativity, a strong point of view, and a refusal to relent to the pressure of conforming to the mainstream.  We want to showcase art, media and personal expression that is off the charts.  That shouldn't be too hard, right?   I think we have some great examples of that on CrushedPlanet already, and I'll be curious to know what you think.

Okay, so that felt pretty good for a first time.  And whoever reads this first blog will always have a special place in my heart.  Hey, I may just like this blogging thing.  Now it's time to towel off and get back to work.  Thanks for checking us out and stay tuned...