Times Square (1980) on Netflix
Nicky Marotta, a street kid with musical ambitions, breaks Pamela Pearl out of the hospital where both were sent for behavioral evaluation. The pair hole up in a vacant warehouse.
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- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb6.6/102,476 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
Pamela Pearl is a depressed, insecure teenager whose wealthy father David, a commissioner, devotes himself to cleaning up Times Square. Nicky Marotta is a brash street kid who wants to make music; after an altercation, her social worker Rosie has her sent to a New York hospital for behavioral evaluation, hoping to keep her out of juvenile detention. The two meet there. Once let out, Nicky gives Rosie the slip and returns to free Pamela. They take an ambulance and move into an empty warehouse on the Chelsea Piers, getting by on petty theft, odd jobs, scavenging and dancing in a club. David reports Pamela missing, says she needs medical care and accuses Nicky of abducting her. Radio DJ Johnny LaGuardia links the case to letters from a listener who wrote that she felt alone.
Cast
- Ronald "Smokey" Stevensas Heavy
- Billy Mernitas Blondell
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Times Square (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Allan Moyle's film was inspired by a diary he found in a second-hand couch, which detailed the life of a young mentally disturbed woman on the streets and her arrests in bars; she said she had no intention of reaching 21.
- Most of the original cut's lesbian content was deleted from the final print; Allan Moyle said in the DVD commentary that the film's integrity was compromised, and that producer Robert Stigwood insisted on adding "inappropriate" songs and a double album to make it another Saturday Night Fever.
- After Times Square, Robin Johnson signed an exclusive three-year contract with the Robert Stigwood Organization, which intended to market her as "the female John Travolta" and barred her from rival offers; the promised projects never materialised and she took a job as a bank teller.
- Robin Johnson's casting was a fluke: she was cutting class when a supposed talent scout told her she should audition for the film; she never saw the man again and no one on the crew knew him.
- David Bowie was commissioned to provide a song for the film's soundtrack, but his record label at the time would not let the filmmakers use it.
- The Manic Street Preachers covered the film's song "Damn Dog" on their 1992 debut album Generation Terrorists and quoted its dialogue in the liner notes, though the cover was left off the American release.
- Allan Moyle left production before Times Square was completed, and other people supervised scenes to accompany the added soundtrack songs; the sequence of teens preparing for the Sleez Sisters' final concert was shot by the second unit.
- Moyle acknowledges the film's importance in documenting a Times Square that mostly no longer exists: shot on location, it captured the area's seedy grindhouse atmosphere before the district was cleaned up in the mid-1990s.
