Apparently, in 1980, RSO sent this videotape to record retailers to play in-store to promote the soundtrack to Times Square. It features the two songs performed in the film, “Your Daughter Is One” and “Damn Dog.” The fact that the lyrics to “Your Daughter Is One” consist primarily of curse words and racial slurs guaranteed that it would never be played in any store for more than thirty seconds. The fact that nobody at RSO, from the tape’s conception to its distribution, realized that would happen, boggles the mind.
The middle portion of the tape is an edit of the dance the girls do along 42nd Street to “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads. Much of this sequence is made up of shots that do not actually appear in the film; unfortunately here they’re only four or five frames long. Even more unfortunately, this digitization is at such low resolution that individual frames turn into pretty smears of color.
This video was originally digitized and uploaded on February 24 2012 by “PsychoticNorman”. I’ve offered to buy or borrow the tape to make a higher quality transfer, but have not received a reply. I have fixed the aspect ratio and brightened and sharpened the image a little. You can see PsychoticNorman’s original upload here. My file is technically at a higher resolution, but that’s an artifact of my editing software refusing to save at the small resolution of the original file. I’ve tried to make it easier to look at, but there isn’t really any more detail.
(video modified 25 December 2015 from the file digitized by PsychoticNorman at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38UzHtkmeA)
Related Posts
The Mystery of the Double-Sided Poster, Side One
I think this was the first promotional piece I found after Times Square had come, been, and gone. (Not this copy, but I'll get to that.) I don't recall exactly where it came from... it was a tiny store dealing in rock memorabilia in Manhattan somewhere, probably between 34th and…
42nd & 6th
So: the girls are east of Times Square and headed for it. They've already traded clothes, and are on foot. In the film, this happens after they've been on the subway in those outfits, except they're on their way to "the hideout" (as it's called in the script).…
Times Square movie poster, Australia, February 1981
The Australian movie poster featured the glorious Mick Rock photo of Robin that graced the earliest piece of Times Square advertising, which is possibly my favorite image used to promote the movie. Once I'd found this I was looking forward to having it framed, but unfortunately not…