Times Square is a 1980 American drama film directed by Allan Moyle and starring Trini Alvarado and Robin Johnson as teenage runaways from opposite sides of the tracks and Tim Curry as a radio DJ.

The plot embodies a punk rock ethic of misunderstood youth articulating their frustrations toward adult authority through music.

Nicky Marotta and Pamela Pearl are two teenage girls who meet in the New York Neurological Hospital, where both are being examined for mental illness.

Pamela is depressed and insecure, and neglected and exploited by her father, David Pearl, a prominent and wealthy commissioner running a campaign to "clean up" Times Square.

Both girls escape the hospital, steal an ambulance, and hide out in abandoned warehouse on the Chelsea Piers, making a pact to scream out each other's names in times of trouble.

Radio DJ Johnny LaGuardia, who broadcasts from a penthouse studio overlooking Times Square, realizes that David's missing daughter is the same "Zombie Girl" who sent him letters, telling him how sad and insecure she feels.

LaGuardia, who resents David's "Reclaim Rebuild Restore" campaign to gentrify Times Square, uses his radio station, WJAD, to reach out to Nicky and Pamela.

The girls start writing songs together and form an underground punk rock band, named The Sleez Sisters, with the help of LaGuardia, who sees them as an opportunity to undermine David.

When an open letter to Pamela from Rosie is printed in the newspaper (with the help of David), calling Nicky troubled and dangerous, the girls perform a defiant Sleez Sisters song live on WJAD, making them even more famous.

Pamela calls all the local radio stations, announcing an impromptu, and illegal, midnight show in Times Square on the rooftop of a grindhouse on 42nd Street.

The movie was inspired by a diary, found in a second-hand couch bought by Moyle, detailing the life on the streets of a young mentally disturbed woman.

[1] The script caught the attention of Robert Stigwood, the impresario behind the musical films Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978), and Sgt.

Allan Moyle and Robin Johnson remarked on the audio commentary that the loss of key scenes made the narrative disjointed, and damaged the story's emotion and characterizations.

They also note that the film's focus changes, jarringly, from Pamela to Nicky, and that the increasingly outlandish and unrealistic story undermines the movie's gritty, on-location documentary style.

Johnson, in fact, signed an exclusive three-year contract with the Robert Stigwood Organization, with the understanding that RSO would develop film and music projects for her.

RSO intended to market Johnson as "the female John Travolta," and her contract legally barred her from accepting offers or auditions from rival companies.

[citation needed] Johnson therefore turned down calls from agents, producers and casting directors, but the projects RSO promised her never came to fruition.

Johnson did some minor film and TV roles, but by the late 1980s, she gave up on acting and got a job as a traffic reporter on a Los Angeles radio station.

Extra features on this DVD include audio commentary by director/co-writer Allan Moyle and star Robin Johnson, and the film's original theatrical trailer.

The soundtrack comprises pre-existing songs as well as original songs commissioned for the film, and features a wide range of artists, including the Ramones, the Cure, XTC, Lou Reed, Gary Numan, Talking Heads, Garland Jeffreys, Joe Jackson, Suzi Quatro, Roxy Music, Patti Smith and the Pretenders.

", which plays over the film's closing scene, is a duet between Robin Gibb (of the Bee Gees) and Marcy Levy (later to join the duo Shakespear's Sister).