Movies - Times Square

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	Movies - Times Square

Times Square is a 1980 movie starring Trini Alvarado, Robin Johnson, and Tim Curry.

The movie is about two teenage runaways, one of them (Nicky Marotta, played by Robin Johnson) from a poor family and the other (Pamela Pearl, played by Trini Alvarado) from a rich family, living in New York City and linking up with disc jockey Johnny LaGuardia (Tim Curry). The two girls form an underground punk rock band, The Sleez Sisters, and become a hit with the city's disillusioned youth after broadcasting their volatile songs and speeches on LaGuardia's radio station. The climax of the film features all the fans of The Sleez Sisters congregating in the streets of New York's Times Square for a rooftop concert.

Times Square was directed by Allan Moyle from a script written by Moyle and Jacob Brackman. The movie was inspired by the diary of a young mentally-disturbed woman, detailing her life on the streets (Moyle claims to have found the diary in a second-hand couch he bought). The film's narrative is essentially a punk rock ethic - misunderstood youth forming a band and, through music, articulating their frustrations toward adult authority (personified in the movie as parents, the medical establishment, and politicians).

The movie features a Soundtrack of punk rock and (mostly) new wave music with a wide range of artists including The Ramones, The Cure, XTC, Lou Reed, Gary Numan, Talking Heads, Suzi Quatro, Roxy Music, Patti Smith and The Pretenders. The soundtrack also features original songs sung by the film's actors, "Damn Dog" by Robin Johnson and "Your Daughter Is One" by Johnson and Trini Alvarado.The movie was not a commercial success; indeed, the soundtrack achieved far more notoriety as a compilation of some of the most important new wave and punk music from the era than the film did at the time.

Times Square was since rediscovered after its initial commercial failure and has become a cult classic and a staple at gay and lesbian film festivals, because of a perceived lesbian relationship between the film's two female leads. The original script contained more obvious lesbian content which was cut from the final version of the film, but the final version is still said to have subtle lesbian overtones. The movie was released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment in 2000. Audio commentary was provided by director/co-writer Allan Moyle and star Robin Johnson. Moyle revealed that the film's integrity was compromised by the removal of the more overt lesbian content, and the addition (at the insistence of producer Robert Stigwood) of several inappropriate songs to the film's soundtrack. These changes were made to make the film more commercial (Stigwood expected it to be another Saturday Night Fever
and insisted that the soundtrack be a Double album), but Moyle and Johnson remarked that the loss of key scenes made the narrative disjointed and damaged the story's emotion and characterisations (for example, the focus of the movie jarringly changes from Pamela to Nicky, and the increasingly outlandish and unrealistic story works against the movie's gritty, on-location documentary style). Moyle actually quit the movie before it was completed, and further scenes were shot under the supervision of others, mainly footage backed with the extra songs being added to the soundtrack. The version of the film released to theatres was not Moyle's preferred cut, but he has stated that a director's cut is unlikely to ever surface because the footage needed for its restoration is missing. Moyle however still acknowledges the finished film's importance as it documents a Times Square that no longer exists: the movie was shot on location and captured the area's seedy, grindhouse atmosphere before it was cleaned up in the mid-90s.

Welsh rock group, the Manic Street Preachers, have made several references to the movie in their career. They covered the film's song "Damn Dog" on their debut album, Generation Terrorists (1992), and one of Nicky Marotta's lines from the movie ("This one's for Brian Jones and all the other dinosaurs that got kicked out tha' band 1-2-3-4") was included in the album's liner notes. The song was not included on the American edition of Generation Terrorists. The Manics performed "Damn Dog" live at least once in 1992. They then named their song "Roses in the Hospital" (the third single from their 1993 album, Gold Against the Soul) from a line in Times Square (the song's Music video features images of a young woman confined to a hospital bed, reminiscent of early scenes from Times Square). In 1993, for stage performances and publicity shots, Manics bassist Nicky Wire wore bankrobber-mask-style eye makeup, like Nicky Marotta has in the movie.

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Movies - Times Square

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