The Times Square story

by Geoffrey O'Brien

The Times Square Story evokes the one-time glitter, the glamour, and the grunge of this fabled piece of real estate before it became Disneyfied - its grind houses and strip joints and freak shows and novelty stores and night clubs and peep shows and fleabag hotels. It also celebrates the world of below-the-line film-making as the kid, the producer, the broken-down actor, and Miss Columbus 1952 struggle to bring Fury of Macumba to the big screen - their artistic impulses crippled by financial reality and human frailty. With more than fifty evocative photographs from the golden era of this mythic patch of asphalt, The Times Square Story is a roller-coaster ride through gaudy, seedy, glorious cultural territory.