Taylor first won notice as a filmmaker with his NYU graduate thesis, the short "The Burning Question" (1990), which was inspired by a sequence in Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (1960), and focused on three people who take the subway to see if a rejected lover is really going to set himself afire. Shown at numerous film festivals, and the winner of the Mobil Award for best graduate film of 1990, "The Burning Question" was seen by director Barry Levinson, who hired Taylor to direct an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street" (NBC) in 1993. (He subsequently directed a second episode in 1995.) Taylor has also directed episodes of the Canadian TV series "Catwalk" (shown in the USA on MTV) and "Traders" (shown in the USA on Lifetime) as well as music videos, including two featuring his sister, singer Anna Domino.