General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Times Square (1980 film)

Times Square is a 1980 American drama film directed by Allan Moyle about two runaway teenage girls, Pamela Pearl (Trini Alvarado) and Nicky Marotta (Robin Johnson), who escape from a New York psychiatric hospital, form a punk band called the Sleaze Sisters, and become underground celebrities with the help of an all-night disc jockey, Johnny LaGuardia (Tim Curry).¹^•² Produced by Robert Stigwood's RSO Films, it was a box-office failure on release but later became a cult film, particularly among New Wave fans and lesbian audiences.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Release	17 October 1980, United States; R rating; 111 minutes¹
Director and writers	Allan Moyle; story by Moyle and Leanne Unger; screenplay with Jacob Brackman¹
Producers	Robert Stigwood and Jacob Brackman, for Butterfly Valley N. V. and RSO Films Ltd.¹
Main cast	Tim Curry (Johnny LaGuardia), Trini Alvarado (Pamela Pearl), Robin Johnson (Nicky Marotta, introducing)¹
Budget and promotion	A $20 million budget from RSO; a $6 million promotional campaign with wide release in twenty-five cities³
Soundtrack	Double LP with Patti Smith, The Cure, Lou Reed, The Ramones, The Pretenders, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, Suzi Quatro, Gary Numan, XTC, and others²
Reception	50% on the Tomatometer (16 reviews) and 74% on the Popcornmeter at Rotten Tomatoes; 6.6/10 at IMDb⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Plot and characters

Nicky Marotta is a volatile sixteen-year-old street kid and aspiring punk musician who is taken to the New York Neurological Hospital for a psychological exam after smashing a car's headlights and being arrested.⁷ There she becomes the roommate of Pamela Pearl, a sheltered, sensitive thirteen-year-old whose father, David Pearl (Peter Coffield), is a city commissioner in charge of rehabilitating Times Square.¹^•⁷ Each girl admires what the other has: Nicky responds to Pamela's poetry, and Pamela to Nicky's fearlessness.⁷

The two escape from the hospital in a stolen ambulance and set up home in an abandoned warehouse on the docks, supporting themselves with window washing, petty theft, and hustles such as three-card monte.⁷^•⁸ LaGuardia, the overnight DJ on WJAD whose studio overlooks Times Square, realizes that one runaway is the commissioner's daughter, who calls his station regularly as "Zombie Girl," and he promotes the pair on air as the punk duo the Sleaze Sisters.⁷^•⁸ After a falling-out over Nicky's habit of dropping television sets from rooftops, and a failed suicide attempt by Nicky in the Hudson River, the story ends with a free concert Nicky performs on top of a Times Square theater marquee while hundreds of teenage fans cheer from the street.⁷^•⁸^•⁹

Origins and development

The film grew out of Moyle's own address. A Canadian filmmaker newly arrived in New York in the late 1970s, he lived in a loft on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues with his partner, the writer Leanne Unger.¹ According to a Turner Classic Movies account, Moyle bought a second-hand couch for the loft and found a teenage runaway's private journal tucked in the cushions; the anonymous girl's voice inspired the character of Nicky Marotta.³ In early 1979 Moyle invited the screenwriter Jacob Brackman and the singer-actor Tim Curry to the loft, and the project took shape as an original screenplay about an all-night disc jockey who supports services for teenage runaways.¹^•¹⁰

Robert Stigwood, whose RSO company had produced the youth-market hits Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978), gave the first-time studio director Moyle a $20 million budget.³^•⁴ Principal photography began on 3 October 1979, with locations including the Bowery, the Hudson River waterfront, Greenwich Village, midtown Manhattan, Times Square, and the New Jersey palisades; the end credits state that the film was shot entirely on location in New York City.¹ For the finale, traffic around Times Square was redirected and five hundred background actors were hired.¹

Casting

Trini Alvarado, then thirteen, had previous film and theater credits, including Rich Kids (1979).³ Robin Johnson was an acting newcomer spotted smoking outside Brooklyn Tech High School by a talent scout; the Park Slope teenager won the role of Nicky over three thousand other contenders by improvising a tantrum her character throws while being observed behind a two-way mirror.³ Curry, already famous on the cult circuit as the star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, received top billing but shot his role in two days.³^•¹¹

Soundtrack

The music was central to RSO's plan. The company had made its fortune pairing films with soundtrack albums, and trade publications predicted the companion record would do for new-wave rock what the Saturday Night Fever album had done for disco.³^•¹ The double LP gathered songs by Patti Smith, The Cure, Lou Reed, The Ramones, The Pretenders, Roxy Music, Robin Gibb, Gary Numan, Suzi Quatro, Talking Heads, Joe Jackson, and XTC.² Original numbers included "Damn Dog," sung by Johnson, and "Your Daughter Is One," sung by Johnson and Alvarado, with lyrics by Brackman; "Your Daughter Is One" hints at the lesbian dimension of the girls' partnership.³^•¹² RSO, nervous after the flop of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) and a lawsuit from the Bee Gees, insisted that Moyle add more songs over his objection that the film's continuity would suffer.³ A Musician magazine account adds that the Clash refused to supply a new song, declining association with a Hollywood production.¹³

Release, reception, and cuts

The film premiered at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York on 14 October 1980, with Stigwood, Lou Reed, Carly Simon, Andy Warhol, and Abbie Hoffman among the guests; Moyle did not attend.¹⁴ It opened commercially on 17 October.¹

Critical response was divided. Roger Ebert, the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013 and winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, gave it two of four stars, writing that it "rarely comes together into anything more than a good idea that fails," while crediting the two young actresses and Moyle's visual sense.⁹ Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "the new movie most worth ducking," objecting to what he saw as the glorification of runaways in a picturesque version of the neighborhood's squalor.⁸ Time Out's review took the opposite view, calling the film "socially irresponsible and refreshingly optimistic: a Wizard of Oz for the '80s."¹⁵ David Denby of New York magazine criticized the film for suggesting that sordid 42nd Street was a harmless hangout for teenage girls.³

Despite the $6 million promotional campaign and a wide release in twenty-five cities, the film died at the box office.³ Production had its own fractures: IMDb trivia records that Moyle was fired before production was finished.¹⁶ Moyle later commented that crucial lesbian scenes between the two girls were cut by the producers, who feared the material would hurt the film's box office; promotional photos are said to survive from scenes rumored to have clarified the relationship.⁷^•³

Cult standing and legacy

The film found its audience later. Frameline, the San Francisco LGBTQ film organization, describes it as "something of a cult film for gay and lesbian audiences who can readily see a lesbian romance between its main characters," intentional or not.⁴ The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge has screened it as a "cult/queer/riot grrrl classic," and the art collective Ridykeulous presented it at the IFC Center in 2010 as a "Dyke Cult Classic" and a document of pre-gentrification Times Square.¹⁷^•¹⁸ Rotten Tomatoes notes that fans the film made, such as the band Manic Street Preachers and Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, "would make their own noise soon enough."¹²

The film also serves as a record of its setting. It was shot on location in and around Times Square while the district was still home to prostitutes, sex shops, and porn theaters, before its later redevelopment.¹⁸^•⁷ Kino Lorber released a special edition on home video, and the film has remained in circulation on home video and television since its theatrical run.²^•¹¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026