Taxi Gourmet TV

Layne Mosler – taxi driver, TV star…

Layne Mosler drives a NY City taxi.

She also has a good eye for where to eat.

And she has a video camera.

This is a good combination.

Mosler understands that most taxi drivers have a much better sense of where to eat in a city than most people who write ‘tourist guides’. After all, the taxi drivers do nothing but ‘drive around’ the city all the time.

She began her understanding while in Buenos Aires, then translated it to NYC, where she herself works as a taxi driver.

She began blogging about it on her website, TaxiGourmet.

But this is something that cries for video.

Personally, I thought it would be a great show for The Travel Channel, so I got in touch with Mosler and told her so.

It’s got all the elements they like, with an interesting twist with the taxi thing.

Mosler told me that she had shot a ‘sizzle reel’ with a friend, a TV producer named Nobu Adilman, and she sent me a link to the sizzle reel they had put together. (see above).

Here, I think, is where the thing falls apart.  First rule: stay away from TV producers.  Second rule: stay away from TV producers who want to put themselves into the sizzle reels.

Nobu’s sizzle reel is just that – all sizzle, no content. No heart. No compelling character, and worst of all, no Mosler.

Mosler has a great story to tell. She knows her stuff. She’s the classic ‘impassioned insider’.

But look at the sizzle reel. Where is she? Do you get to know her? Do you get to ‘bond’ with her, to care about what she thinks, what’s happening to her, where she is going? Is there a story here?

Not at all.

If you met Mosler on the street or in her cab and spent 10 minutes talking to her, you’d probably come home and tell your wife or husband or doorman ‘you’ll never guess what happened to me today. I met the most interesting person….’\

Does the sizzle reel convey any of this? Does it make you want to know Mosler more? To spend any time with her.

Not at all.

So this is a classic example of great idea, great person, great concept, great access and terrible execution.

By a ‘professional’, no less.

Oy.

So listen Layne.

Trust your instincts.

Look at your own web page.

It’s got great content. You have a great story.

You don’t need… you don’t want (trust me), a ‘producer’.

Get yourself a video camera and do with the video what you already do so well with the text.

Tell a story.

Yourself.

Then, call me.