Robin Johnson

“Words cannot express the sheer unbelievability of this …”

I’m nowhere near ready to post this. I wanted to have the best possible picture, and a post that had something a little more weighty to say about it… but it’s the 40th anniversary of Times Square’s general release today, and the 4K Blu-ray we were told was coming hasn’t appeared… so, happy anniversary.

As far as I know, with the exception of a select few people (myself not among them), this hasn’t been seen since Times Square’s initial run on cable TV. Starting about a minute in, it’s a very different edit from the later UK trailer that appeared on the Anchor Bay DVD in 2000. The most important difference is, this one contains the only surviving bit of the legendary lost footage, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it second of Nicky and Pammy splashing in the Hudson River on the Jersey side, with the George Washington Bridge in the background. I vividly remember watching every showing of Times Square on HBO, wondering how I kept missing that scene… it took years to figure out.

This also doesn’t quite match up to my memory of the trailer as I saw it on HBO, so it’s possible there was a special cable edit too… but it’s more likely that my memory of 39 years ago isn’t entirely trustworthy, especially since I’ve established that Times Square wasn’t shown on HBO in 1981. It was on The Movie Channel.

I may upload an improved version of this at some point, with some actual discussion about it. But for now, I give you the American trailer for Times Square: