When Canadian filmmaker Allan Moyle moved to New York City in the late 70s, he bought a second hand couch to furnish the seedy 42nd St. loft apartment he shared with writer Leanne Unger. Unbeknownst to him, a teenage runaway had tucked her private journal into the sofa cushions. When Moyle discovered the journal, he couldn't stop wondering about the anonymous girl whose scribbling and doodles hinted at an unbalanced, street-smart, magnetic personality. That mystery runaway inspired Moyle, Unger, and co-writer Jacob Brackman to create the character "Nicky Marotta", one half of the runaway duo "The Sleaze Sisters" on the run in
Times Square (1980).
Nicky (Robin Johnson) is vastly different than Pamela (Trini Alvarado): She's fearless and impulsive where Pamela, the neglected daughter of a self-absorbed politician, is sensitive and anxious. There's no way the two girls would ever cross paths, until Nicky fakes a seizure to avoid being arrested and ends up in the same hospital where Pamela's been taken for neurological tests. She tries to intimidate her roommate with crazy stunts, like eating the rosebuds out of Pamela's get-well-soon bouquet, but Pamela is secretly impressed, writing poems like "Your ribs are my ladder, Nicky/I'm so amazed." When Nicky busts out of the hospital, Pamela escapes with her, and the two embark on a charmed existence as runaways in the decadent, electric atmosphere of Times Square, while iconoclastic late night radio personality Johnny LaGuardia (Tim Curry) cheers on their exploits from the airwaves.
Although the thirteen year old Alvarado, the daughter of a flamenco musician father and dancer mother, had previous film and theater credits, Robin Johnson was an acting newcomer. She was spotted loitering - and smoking - outside Brooklyn Tech High School by a talent scout who asked the throaty-voiced teenager, "Are you sixteen?" Invited to audition in Manhattan, the Park Slope native won the role over three thousand other contenders, by improvising the kind of tantrum Nicky would throw while being observed behind a two-way mirror in a juvenile facility. (Johnson shrugged off claims of having natural talent by saying "It's easy to play someone like yourself.") The actresses got along well during the location shoot in Times Square, although both endured catcalls from local prostitutes because of the eccentric, punkish costumes their characters wore.
Moyle, an independent filmmaker who had never made a big studio movie before, was given a $20 million budget by Australian music mogul Robert Stigwood through his multimedia conglomerate RSO. Part of RSO's interest in the project were the punk and new wave songs (by performers like Patti Smith, The Pretenders, Talking Heads and XTC ) that were threaded through the movie, as well as the original tunes "Damn Dog" and "Your Daughter Is One" (a song hinting at the lesbian aspect of Nicky and Pamela's partnership.) RSO's marketing strategy always included releasing soundtrack albums in conjunction with its movies, a safety net that paid off big in the case of
Saturday Night Fever (1977) and
Grease (1978), two albums still in the top ten best-selling soundtracks of all time.
However, RSO was nervous not only because the company was barely solvent after the colossal flop
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), but because their cash cow The Bee Gees had just sued them for mismanagement and were seeking $200 million in restitution. Not willing to release a movie without the insurance policy of a saleable soundtrack, RSO insisted Moyle cram in more songs. Moyle protested, claiming rightly that the film's continuity would suffer, but to no avail. Surviving promotional photos are all that's left of scenes that probably included the tantrum that won Johnson her role, as well as other scenes rumored to clarify a lesbian relationship between the girls. (Moyle was so frustrated by the struggle to retain his movie's integrity that it's rumored a stress-related condition made all his hair fall out.)
Despite a formidable $6 million promotional campaign and wide release in twenty-five cities,
Times Square died at the box office, earning not only critical scorn but moral outrage for daring to suggest, as David Denby of
New York magazine put it, that sordid 42nd street was a "harmless hangout" for fun-loving teenage girls. (Denby went as far to demand Stigwood donate all profits from the resulting double-disc soundtrack album for this "evil, lying little fantasy" of a movie to finance a fund "for every girl mugged, raped, or battered in Times Square.") However, this flawed film has been rediscovered in recent years by a cult audience, not only New Wave fans in love with its time capsule soundtrack, but Lesbian audiences enthralled by butch sexpot Nicky and the passionate relationship only hinted at between the two runaways.
Producers: Jacob Brackman, Robert Stigwood
Director: Alan Moyle
Screenplay: Alan Moyle, Leanne Unger (story); Jacob Brackman
Cinematography: James A. Contner
Music: Blue Weaver
Film Editing: Tom Priestley
Cast: Tim Curry (Johnny LaGuardia), Trini Alvarado (Pamela Pearl), Robin Johnson (Nicky Marotta), Peter Coffield (David Pearl), Herbert Berghof (Dr. Huber), David Margulies (Dr. Zymansky), Anna Maria Horsford (Rosie Washington), Michael Margotta (JoJo), J.C. Quinn (Simon), Miguel Pinero (Roberto).
C-111m.
by Violet LeVoit
Resources:
"Arrivals" Us Magazine, December 23, 1980
"Spotlight Close Up: Robin Johnson."
Seventeen, October 1980
"Two Girls"
New York, November 3, 1980
Denisoff, R. Serge, William D. Romanowski.
Risky Business: Rock In Film. Transaction Publishers, 1991
RobinJohnson.net
