Candid Cabs

Carl: Ever got lucky at the Palladium?
Todd: Oh, yeah.
Carl: Tell me about it, I'm kind of bored.
Todd: I've messed with a lot of girls in there. Good-lookin' girls. I get phone numbers a lot. But I don't buy them drinks anymore.
''Does he have a girlfriend?'' prompts Gantz through Carl's earpiece.
Carl: Got a girlfriend?
Todd: Yeah.
Carl: What's your excuse tonight?
Todd: Oh, she knows I'm going out. But what she doesn't know won't hurt her.

"I've got a little surprise for you," announces Carl once he reaches the Palladium. "We're taping a documentary for HBO." The drivers make the first stab at the passengers to sign a release form; Gantz believes a casual ( approach is the most effective. Coolly surveying the situation, Todd thinks his homies will be mighty impressed, so he signs (Gantz says he'd still have to get parental permission). As for the girlfriend who might find out more than is good for her: "I probably won't be dating her in January, anyway," Todd reasons. (In the end, he doesn't make the final cut.)

Gantz says about 85 percent of the passengers agreed to sign the release. He figures they wanted their 15 minutes of fame. "Either that," surmises Carl, "or by the end of the ride they'd forgotten the ridiculous things they said in the beginning." As for those who refuse, Joe says, "We're respectful of their feelings. I don't feel like we're violating them."

10:57 p.m. A buzzed horde of giggling girls piles into the cab. The backseat overflows with legs, noise, and big hair. Their fashion motto: "Nails and shoes, girls!" they chime. "Nails and shoes!" The five girls have ditched their husbands and boyfriends and are off to the clubs in search of a little fun. One can't wait even that long. "Pull over! I've got to stop, just for two minutes," she demands, yanking off her wedding ring. The cab stops, and she runs into a bar for a quick encounter with her "gorgeous" boyfriend. The surveillance van erupts in excitement. "This is great!" Gantz says. "But, dammit, they'll never sign now. No way."

After the ride, Gantz wheels out his most persuasive big gun, little Felicia Caplan, a production assistant who plays backup for the cabbies when their spiels fail to reel in signed forms. Cute and unimposing, Caplan has a way of persuading even the most reluctant passenger. "A lot of times I tell them, 'What you had to say was really important,' or, 'You're an interesting person,'" she says. Tonight she compliments her quarry shamelessly. Fifteen minutes of telling the five how great they look on film, and Caplan gets the signatures. (One asks if this means she'll get HBO for free.) Gantz's grade: A-. With their passing grade, they'll end up on the air. They plan to tell their husbands it was all a joke, really it was.

12:50 a.m. The cab radio crackles with a hot tip: An odd-looking young woman a few blocks away needs a ride. Carl welcomes her into his interrogation chamber, and Gantz lets the questions fly: "What's the point of having so many pierces in her ears? Is it painful? How do her parents feel about that?" Her name is Christina Calamia. She informs Carl that she has nine studs in her ears, plus a pierced eyebrow, belly button, tongue, even a pierced, well, unmentionable part of the anatomy. "Why'd she do that? What does her boyfriend think?" directs Gantz, eagerly leaning forward in his seat. Maybe she likes to hurt herself because everyone else already has. Her mother and her brother are dead. Her father, a drug addict, doesn't speak to her. The van is quiet, engrossed in her sad story. Gantz, holding the radio close to his ear, has the intense look of someone who knows he's capped off his final night of filming with a winner. "Look at me," Christina says to the cabbie. "I'm telling you my whole life story!" What Christina really wants, she tells him, is to find a good, exciting career, like acting. "But it's so hard to get on TV," she laments. "You have to know somebody." Back in the van, Joe turns to the gang and winks.