Times Square movie poster, Thailand, 1981

Posted on 21st November 2018 in "Times Square"

TIMES SQUARE movie poster from Thailand, 1981. Possibly unauthorized.  Text (translated from Thai):  ONE GIRL GROWS TOUGH, ANOTHER BECOMES COURAGEOUS THESE TWO JOIN TOGETHER TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF THEIR REBELLIOUS LIVES         Presented by  Oriental Artist Treasury of Entertainment  ROBIN JOHNSON TRINI ALVARADO TIM CURRY  TIMES SQUARE ‘TWO’  NOW BEING SHOWN AT                                      ON  (Flyer inserts in the newspaper today) Printed in Thailand by The Siam Offset Co., Ltd. Tel 2860359 By Surat Pukkavesh, Printer/Advertiser               2864074

 

 

 

Movie posters in Thailand are an art form unto themselves. Google “Thai movie posters” and you will go down a rabbit hole you may take days to emerge from. Thai film distributors discard the authorized promotional materials and commission original painted montages in glorious colors. Some of the pages I looked at seemed to say that this practice ended in the 1990s… if so, we are all the poorer for it. But luckily for us, Times Square got the Thai treatment in 1981. The artist went a little heavy on Nicky’s eye shadow, but I can forgive this since the overall poster is so spectacular.

 

 

Unlike the Japanese materials I posted earlier, I hired a translator for the Thai items: Joy Busai at Thai English Headquarters — I can’t recommend her highly enough. (Although, her website seems to be down now, and my attempts to contact her to translate the article in my previous post went unanswered.) Here’s what the poster says in English:

 

ONE GIRL GROWS TOUGH, ANOTHER BECOMES COURAGEOUS
THESE TWO JOIN TOGETHER TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF THEIR REBELLIOUS LIVES

Presented by
Oriental Artist
Treasury of Entertainment

ROBIN JOHNSON
TRINI ALVARADO
TIM CURRY

TIMES SQUARE
‘TWO’

NOW SHOWING AT _____ ON _____

(Flyer inserts in the newspaper today)
Printed in Thailand by The Siam Offset Co., Ltd. Tel 2860359
By Surat Pukkavesh, Printer/Advertiser 2864074

The only thing missing is the artist’s name. I think that’s a signature there in the lower right, but I’m not sure.

As in Mexico, Robin again gets top billing, and Tim Curry third. The Thai promoters may have been the first to have the insight that led them to give Times Square the secondary title, “Two”.

 

 

Times Square : “Two”
Thailand : poster : AAT ID: 300027221 : 77.9 x 55.7 cm : 1981 (work);
Times_Square_movie_poster_Thailand_1981_1080px.jpg
773 x 1080 px, 96 dpi, 555 kb (image)

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

Filmstar, Vol 1 No. 3, Thailand, August 1981

Posted on 9th November 2018 in "Times Square"

Cover of movie magazine from Thailand with article about TIMES SQUARE (1980)

 

 

 

By August 1981, Robin might already have figured out that neither she nor Andy Gibb were going to get a call telling them when to report to the Grease 2 set. Most of the world had already forgotten about Times Square. But it wasn’t quite over yet.

 

Thailand’s Filmstar magazine devoted four pages and the back cover to the upcoming release of Times Square. I tried and failed to get a professional translation of the article. Google Translate makes nearly as bad a hash of Thai as it does Japanese, but from what I can make out, this is a purely promotional article summarizing the plot, like the articles in Sonido No. 56 and Film Review Vol. 31 No. 2.

 

The caption and drawing on page 63, the first page of the article, are from the European movie poster, and the photo of Pammy and Nicky is TS-72-8A/14, the most-used photo of the girls together.

The image from the poster also appears on page 64, above UK Press Kit photo #4 of Tim Curry. The large photo of Robin, as far as I know, made its first appearance here. As she’s looking directly into the camera, I suspect it was taken at the same time as this pre-take shot, but since the background is cut out there’s just as good a chance it was taken at Pier 56.

The large image of Trini on page 65 looks to be from the same origin as that photo of Robin. Based on what I can make out of the lighting, I tend to think it’s from the outside location. It’s the only photo I’ve seen of Trini in that costume where she isn’t holding the boom box. The inset of the cops pushing Nicky into the back seat is another previously, and as far as I know, otherwise unpublished publicity still. The only matching shots in the film are from the opposite side of the car, and the film camera’s setup from this reverse angle is several feet to the left.

The shot of Robin as Nicky as Aggie Doone singing “Damn Dog” in the Cleo Club is yet another photo making its first appearance. But not its last… there’s a slightly better version yet to come.

So, amazingly, the Times Square publicity campaign was nearing its end, yet the places it was being published were being furnished with new material, despite it being highly unlikely that the local audiences would have seen any of the already-used photos. Unless, perhaps, the EMI/AFD publicity departments had decided that what they’d been doing was failing, and if they could only find the right photos, they could turn Times Square into a hit in the next country…

The back cover of Filmstar was a reproduction of the collage first published in Screen International No. 246 in June 1980 and used in February 1981 as the Australian movie poster, with the addition of Robin’s name in English. If there’s one thing all the local contemporary film publicity outlets agreed on, it’s that Robin herself was the most marketable aspect of the movie.
 

TIMES SQUARE Robin Johnson poster on the back cover of a movie magazine from Thailand

Posts mentioned above but not linked to:

Times Square Press Material folder (post 4 of 5)
Times Square UK Press Kit (post 2 of 4)
On Location
Times Square Program Book, Japan, June 1981, pages 20-24 (post 4 of 5)
Times Square Australian Daybill

 

 

Times Square (article, AAT ID: 300048715)
Filmstar Vol. 1 No. 3, 15 August 1981, pp. 63-66 (magazine (periodical), AAT ID: 300215389)
25.9 x 18.9 cm. (work);
Filmstar Vol 1 No 3_front_cover_1080px.jpg
1080 px (H) x 789 px (W), 96 dpi, 553 kb
Filmstar Vol 1 No 3_p63_1080px_2.jpg
235 px (H) x 787 px (W), 96 dpi, 474 kb
Filmstar Vol 1 No 3_p64_1080px.jpg
1080 px (H) x 774 px (W), 96 dpi, 428 kb
Filmstar Vol 1 No 3_p66_1080px.jpg
688 px (H) x 771 px (W), 96 dpi, 514 kb
Filmstar Vol 1 No 3_back_cover_1080px.jpg
1080 px (H) x 777 px (W), 96 dpi, 679 kb
(images)
 

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+