Thoughts on Times Square

    On Criterion, I watched Times Square, a 1980 film directed by Allan Moyle, and starring Trini Alvarado, Robin Johnson, and Tim Curry. 

    Allan Moyle directed Pump up the Volume (1990) and Empire Records (1995), and those films, about rebellious teenagers using rock music to express their frustrations and challenge authority, falls in line with the themes of this movie, his first major film.

   A very much of its time movie from 1980 starring a very young Alvarado (best known as Meg from the 1994 Little Women adaptation) and Johnson as teen girls in NYC who escape from a mental institution to run around Times Square, back when it was seedy and grimy and full of porno theaters and peep shows and shady street types. Nicky (Johnson) is a brash, outspoken teen who is punk rock to the core, came from a rough family background (dad left, mom OD'd), arrested several times, screaming her pain and frustration and not having a healthy outlet. She and Pamela (Alvarado), a slightly younger, quieter kid, race around the city dropping TVs from building rooftops, evade cops in chases, do petty shoplifting, and Pamela even works as a clothed dancer in a topless bar despite obviously being underage. The girls crash a radio station, with Tim Curry as the star DJ, and blast their punk rock jams, achieving cult hero status as the Sleez Sisters.

    Good use of Patti Smith's "Pissing in a River" during a friendship breakup montage.

    It reminds me of movies around this time like Foxes and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabolous Stains, about teen girls with no adult guidance growing up fast on the streets, Gen-X teen kids in sleazy underground environments and not knowing how to direct their anger and frustration.

    Robin Johnson has this fire to her that I really like at just 15, with a raspy New Yawk voice that makes her sound older, and her character feels more lived-in. Trini Alvarado at 13 has this innocent sweetness to her that makes her character more naive. Both characters are very vulnerable, though Nicky tries to hide her fears with a lot of big tough talk.

    It's interesting to watch as a look at a Times Square that no longer exists, as it's much more commercialized and gentrified now and not as dangerous as it was decades ago.