This Is Not A Times Square Site

Posted on 22nd February 2015 in Code Name: Foxfire

To prove it, I’m taking a moment to jump about five years ahead, to Code Name: Foxfire.

This is an 8×10″ black and white publicity still promoting Robin’s short-lived tv series. While there’s not nearly as much Foxfire material around as Times Square, since it was a prime time show on a major network there’s more than from most of her other projects.

It’s dated on the back “1/18/85.” The 2-hour pilot movie was broadcast on January 27, and the series itself debuted February 8 (as it also says on the back). There’s at least one more photo with this same date, and two more dated the next week, and a color shot with nothing on the back. They all seem to have been taken on the same day, judging by the costuming, probably sometime in late 1984.

I don’t think Robin ever wore anything in the show remotely like what she’s wearing here. Her character, Danny O’Toole, was something of a tough street urchin (maybe a bit of typecasting there?), who was shown to be supremely uncomfortable “dressed up.” The show only lasted eight episodes, though; who knows what might have happened had it been renewed.

I don’t know what the handwritten request for “X-ref’s please” means either, but whoever wrote it was also kind enough to leave some big blue fingerprints on the front, which I have, for better or worse, mostly painted out. If you’re desperate to see them I suppose it might be arranged.

Thanks for indulging me. More Times Square stuff coming up.

(With about 30 minutes until this page goes “live,” I just noticed that this is the same picture posted four years ago by Karen at DefeatedandGifted’s “Times Square” Fandom blog, and that she used the same word I did, “uncomfortable,” although in a slightly different context. Also, the person who originally had her copy had a different color pen.)

 

 

[Code Name: Foxfire B&W Publicity Still] (A)(SFP #1 & 2) (1/18/85) RSK 13577
8 in (W) x 10 in (H) (work)
1080 px (H) x 850 px (W), 96 dpi, 317 kb (image)

 

[Code Name: Foxfire B&W Publicity Still] (A)(SFP #1 & 2) (1/18/85) RSK 13577 [back]
8 in (W) x 10 in (H) (work)
1080 px (H) x 859px (W), 96 dpi, 191 kb (image)

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

“The Trend Settles in New York”

Posted on 13th February 2015 in "Times Square"

I confess I don’t quite understand what that title means. Am I missing something clever?

 
"The Trend Settles In New York," by Tony DeSena, "The Aquarian," April 23-30, 1980, p. 22 (10-A)

This article was published at the end of April 1980, from an interview done when there were two weeks left of principal photography, and is chock full of things to raise an eyebrow at. To start with, director Allan Moyle starts off saying that the lab ruined the footage of the crane shot of the crowd at the concert in Times Square. Evidently enough survived to edit into the film, since the movie closes with a shot exactly as he describes, but more interestingly, that was one of the first things shot, and he’s only now finding out that the footage was destroyed? Wasn’t it shot in November of 1979? How long was the shooting schedule anyway? I’m guessing the interview was probably done in December 1979, and then held until the timing was better for advance publicity. (On the Anchor Bay Times Square DVD commentary track, Moyle describes all sorts of things going wrong during the concert shoot, and footage being destroyed during production isn’t one of them.)
 

Moyle is described as “optimistic,” and Robert Stigwood

has been described as “very supportive,” which usually translates into, “He’s not breathing down our necks — he’s letting us work.”

Stop laughing. Oh, you’re crying? I’m sorry.

Regarding the soundtrack, the first artist mentioned is Tom Petty, who isn’t on the soundtrack. This announcement is later repeated in other pre-release articles.

On the day I spoke with him, Allan Moyle was shooting inside the old San Juan Theatre, on 165th Street on Upper Manhattan’s West Side. The scene being shot was a tender reconciliation between father and daughter, near the end of the film.

No such scene appears in the film, or in the early draft of the screenplay we have. This theater must have been doubling for another location, or perhaps had a set built inside it, or the article’s author was describing the scene incorrectly… we may never know. Maybe it was a wrong description of Mr. Pearl’s speech that sets Pammy off?

Also, unlike the movie, the article spells Allan Moyle’s first name correctly.

The article concludes saying the production is “aiming for a late summer release date next year,” which would be 1981. Times Square opened October 17, 1980; assuming the article was written in 1979 and not re-edited when it was published five months later, it’s correct.

I can’t say with 100% certainty, but so far it looks like the two images that accompany this article were published in other magazine articles, but didn’t appear in any of the publicity packages released by AFD or EMI. If I find them, though, you’ll be the first to know.

One last thing: although I may very likely have been reading The Aquarian in April 1980, I never saved any of them, and this article at the time wouldn’t have meant anything to me anyway. This item is a photocopy I came across while going through my Robin Johnson stuff for this project, and I don’t know where it came from.

 

 

“The Trend Settles In New York”
DeSena, Tony; “The Aquarian,” April 23-April 30 1980, p. 22 (10-A) [photocopy of article]
8.5 in (H) x 11 in (W) (work)
839 px (H) x 1080 px (H), 96 dpi, 685 KB (image [jpg])

 

 

Times Square Blue

Posted on 4th February 2015 in "Times Square"

Promotional slide "18-5" of Robin Johnson as Nicky Marotta at the conclusion of "Times Square" (1980) This is the last of the… well, what should I call them? The objects that have no publication information printed on them, or aren’t contained in some other package (although some of them turn up again later that way). Although… there’s at least one more image that fits that definition coming, the difference being that it wasn’t created by the production company.

It’s also the last of the slides. Well, no, that other image I mentioned above is also a slide. We’ll get to that in good time.

And when I say “the last of the” anything, I mean the last ones I have. I know there’s more out there, because I’ve seen them on the Web. At some point I’ll collate and re-post those too.

This slide has 18-5 written on the mount, and shows Nicky as she looks during the final concert scene. Another photo taken at the same time was printed in black and white and used in the US Press Kit. The lights behind her would seem to indicate that she’s on street level, and I know there’s at least one photo of Robin and Trini on the street in the outfits they wear in the final sequence, even though in the film they’re never both on 42nd Street dressed like that.

So this picture was taken either before she went up to the marquee, or after she came down. (Or, I suppose, during a break in the filming, but it would have had to be one long enough for her to come all the way down and go all the way back up. Doesn’t really matter. Moving on.) When the time came to get the image ready for posting, I was struck by how blue her sweater was, especially since I remembered it being a sort of sea-green. In the stills, it certainly looked greenish, although they were a little yellowed with age themselves. So I went to the film and compared it with frames like these:

So, yeah, green… I figured something had gone screwy with my original scan of the slide, and altered the color balance so that the sweater matched the bluish-green in the film. It was surprisingly easy, which I took to be proof that I was right, and then I went to find the “closest frame from the film” which I knew (since the slide is just a headshot and doesn’t represent a moment from the movie) took place in the previous scene, before her costume change and makeup touch-up… and there was this:

Robin Johnson as Nicky Marotta, resigned to her fate - frame grab from "Times Square" (1980)

Bright royal blue. I looked in some of the magazines that published photos from this scene… some were green, some were blue… Did she change into an identical sweater of a different color? Was it just a costume or continuity error? As we’ll see in the next post (I think), at least some of the footage from the concert was destroyed by the processing lab… was there a reshoot with the wrong sweater? Well, none of the above… thanks to the last few posts, I’ve been through the concert scene way too many times, and for every shot where the sweater looks green, there are two where it looks blue. And worse, there are no shortage of shots like this one:

Nicky leaps into the air - the closest frame from the film to B&W still 34

Blue on one side, sea-green on the other. I dug out the actual slide and had another look at it, and my scan was accurate: the sweater was pure blue. Under proper controlled lighting, it’s blue. But anywhere else, out on the street, running back and forth under the neon lights of Times Square, it changes color and looks more or less greenish. It’s a case of wool vs. film and there’s no clear winner.

There is a series of minor continuity errors in the concert scene: if you watch it too closely, the sweater’s sleeves jump up and down Nicky’s arms several times of their own accord. But it’s not really changing color. The blue in the slide above is the sweater’s true color. I’m pretty sure.

 

 

18-5
2 in x 2 in (including mount) (work);
1080 px (H) x 730 px (W), 96 dpi, 758 kb (image)

1979/1980
inscription: [written on slide mount:] 18-5

 

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853 px (W) x 480 px (H), 72 dpi (images)
frame captures from Times Square (1980)
captured 2015-01-114

 

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853 px (W) x 480 px (H), 72 dpi, 882 kb (image)
frame capture from Times Square (1980)
captured 2015-01-04

 

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853 px (W) x 480 px (H), 72 dpi, 848 kb (image)
frame capture from Times Square (1980)
captured 2014-05-04

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+