“We gave them a voice to talk about their experiences rather than deciding who they were ahead of time,” he says. But she now reveals she was pushed out the door. Prostitutes were frequently featured on “Taxicab Confessions,” sharing details of their lives that weren’t usually portrayed in the media.ĩ Nevins left in 2017, saying it was time to have a life. Gantz remembers visiting a sex workers convention in Las Vegas and receiving a standing ovation. “Taxicab Confessions,” which ran till 2006, could be vulgar and titillating, but according to co-creator Harry Gantz, it also “helped you see the humanity in people who were different from you.” And they never told me I did a good job.” “They left me alone,” says Nevins, who was promoted to president of Documentary and Family Programming in 2004. “There were even scenes of actual fornication in the backs of cabs.”Īs she raked in critical acclaim, HBO gave her complete creative autonomy. Her first big success was “Real Sex,” followed in ’95 by “Taxicab Confessions,” where New Yorkers were secretly recorded in cabs sharing “poignant tales of loss and longing to ribald stories of semi-salacious sex,” Miller writes. And we’re not going to rub your nose in liberal-only thinking.”ĩ “Real Sex” was Nevins’ first big documentary series success at HBO. We’re going to tell you things you don’t know about, plus things you’re curious about. “We’re going to give you hot stuff at night. “Why should you pay for television when you can get it for free?” Nevins asks. She brought to the network a clear vision of how HBO could stand apart. Watching the way people responded to her mother, sometimes with pity but often with revulsion, inspired Nevins to “champion stories about those less fortunate … anonymous victims of unfairness, deprivation and poverty,” writes Miller.ĭuring the ’70s, she bounced between TV producing jobs until 1985 when she was made HBO’s Vice President of Documentary Programming. Nevins grew up in the ’50s and ’60s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the child of a Russian immigrant bookie and a mother suffering from Raynaud’s disease, which resulted in the amputation of her left arm below the elbow. “Was I too old? Was I costing them too much money?” “Why was I beaten up and kicked out the door?” she asked. Nevins was, in fact, pushed out of HBO after 38 years, and as she filled a garbage bag with her office belongings, she felt more confused than content about how her career was ending. I was, like, born at HBO and I don’t have to die there.”īut five years later, Nevins tells Miller that this was a complete lie. In 2017, the New York Times reported that Nevins, the “profane, glamorous and gloriously inappropriate” president of HBO Documentary Films, had decided to step down. She told the Times that “I have deprived my life of a life. “More times than not, what she suggested was better than my original thought.”īut all the accolades weren’t enough. “She wouldn’t just let you go and make what you wanted to make and not say anything,” Lee says. Spike Lee, who collaborated with her on “When the Levees Broke,” a 2006 documentary about the devastation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, says Nevins could be aggressively opinionated. She won so many awards that HBO created a Nevins trophy room and nicknamed it “the Holy Shrine of Sheila.”ĩ Spike Lee, who worked with Nevins on “When the Levees Broke,” said, “More times than not, what she suggested was better than my original thought.” Charles Sykes/Invision/AP Nevins, who’s now 82, first joined HBO’s documentary division in 1979, serving as president since 2004, and during her reign won 26 Oscars, 32 Primetime Emmy Awards, 35 News and Documentary Emmys and 42 Peabody Awards. The people in them lived a life I couldn’t live.” I liked them as much as I liked the serious docs. “Everybody thought I did the sex shows so I could make serious docs, like Peter to pay Paul,” continues Nevins. She was often ahead of her time, producing shows like 1985’s “What Sex Am I?” - which chronicled the personal and professional struggles of transgender people “at a time when even support for gay marriage was still a minority view,” writes Miller - and 1987’s “AIDS: Everything You and Your Family Need to Know … But Were Afraid to Ask.” Long before “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Game of Thrones,” Nevins helped establish HBO as the place to find shows you couldn’t see on network TV. 9 Nevins won HBO some 135 awards, including Oscars and Emmys.
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