I saw Times Square for the first time on TV in 1984, and it completely changed my life. The next day I formed my first band, with a friend, who had also caught the film the previous night. I saw Times Square for the second time yesterday, twenty years later. It's never been repeated on TV in the UK, at least if it has then I managed to completely miss it. This is a difficult film to see. Since the advent of the internet I have periodically hunted for it, but the only video release was in the US, and it was deleted in 1992, a year before I even heard of the internet. Then, a few weeks ago, it came up in conversation with an American friend, who told me that they had actually seen it on DVD three or four years ago. You might say I was alerted to it's presence. You might even say I felt its presence, a presence I had not felt since… Anyway, I renewed my search, to discover that indeed it had indeed been issued briefly on DVD in the US in 2000. So I began to scour the net for a shop that might have a dusty copy on a shelf or in a backroom. And I came up trumps. Twenty dollars. That's all it cost. Plus I had to sacrifice my PC DVD drive to Region One so that I could actually watch it. But that is quite alright. After all, this is the film that changed my life.

I was actually afraid to watch it, afraid that it wouldn't be as great as I remembered it. I was worried that it may prove to be nothing more than an early teen-flick. I was almost prepared to be disappointed. But I was not. Times Square is every single bit as great as I remembered.

I have read much about the movie over the years. At one point I even tried to contact one of its stars, Robin Johnson, to no avail. I'd heard the many myths about it. Like how director Alan Moyle had based the story on the diary of an unknown teenage girl with mental health issues. He found the book hidden in an old sofa that he'd bought. I'd heard about how producer Robert Stigwood had recut the film against Moyle's wishes in an attempt to blunt the lesbian subtext and tame the character of the rebel rousing DJ (played by Tim Curry in far and away his finest ever performance). Yet, despite Stigwood's best efforts to sanitise and commercialise the film, it remains all powerful. One can only guess at what might have been if the director's cut had seen the light of day.

As the title suggests, Times Square is set in New York. While every bit the urban punk rock movie, there are elements which identify with any city. It is not laden with landmarks, but is a film of the streets. Pammy (played by Trini Alvarado) is the disturbed thirteen year old daughter of a rich politician (played by the late Richard Coffield). She loves poetry and movies, and just wants to write and be heard. Nicky (Robin Johnson) is a fifteen year old street kid, who lives for punk rock music. The two meet when both are institutionalised for their apparently anti-social behaviour. Together they escape into the city, where they reinvent themselves as "The Sleez Sisters" when DJ Johnny Laguadia (Tim Curry) takes an interest in their case and gives them a platform on his radio show. The girls become punk rock folk-heroes, pursued relentlessly by the establishment. There are great one liners, such as the attempted stick up ("Freeze motherfucker, or I'll brain your blows out"), and the live radio broadcast ("The Sleez Sister dedicate this to Brian Jones, and all the other dinosaurs that got kicked out of the band"). And there are some incredible punk lyrics, such as Pammy's autobiographical rant to her father the politician ("Spick, nigger, faggot, bum/Your daughter is one"). The punk soundtrack provides many cherished moments; as Nicky is being chased around the asylum she, her cassette player is blasting out the Ramones’ "I Wanna Be Sedated", the hilarious and ultimate "fuck you" to her captors; and in their darkest moment, a deeply moving sequence is played out to Patti Smith's "Pissing in a River". When she breaks down in the studio, Nicky quotes the lyrics from Smith's "Pumping (My Heart)". Other classic musical moments include The Pretenders, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, XTC, New York Doll David Johanson, Gary Numan, and a stirring theme tune from Roxy Music.

At it's heart, Times Square is a movie about self-expression. Poetry, performance, music and the punk ethic are central to it's message. It is a story of rebellion and friendship, and of two teenagers finding themselves and their strengths through making their voices heard. It is extraordinary, in that whatever you need to find in it, you probably will. Gay audiences love it, because of what they see as a homosexual subtext, which I think is probably true, but of which I was completely unaware when I first saw the film. Feminists love it, because the protagonists are female, and boys don't enter into it. Which is also true. But what affected me most when I saw it was not any of these things, but it's remarkably liberating position on artistic freedom. This is a film that genuinely inspired people to be themselves. It is the embodiment of the punk ethic, that you can be anything you want, you do not need permission, all you need to do is be yourself.

Of course, entering my teens, I was completely ripe for this message when I first saw Times Square. I had already began to discover the music, and the film helped me place the punk ethic in the context of my own life. While to some extent it masquerades as a teen-flick, it is actually far, far more than this. You will not see performances of such depth and darkness in any teen movie. Times Square was made in 1979, before the teen movie formula was established, and right in the middle of the US punk rock explosion. Although very much a film of it's time, it is nevertheless timeless. It is wilder and infinitely more intelligent than any of the teen movies that followed in the Eighties and Nineties. It is also beautifully shot, Moyle's direction transcending that which one might expect of the later genre. Indeed Moyle always had more edge, and his later, perhaps more pedestrian movies (Pump Up The Volume, Empire Records) still owe much to Times Square. But for me what really elevates Times Square above any other film of its kind (not that I can really think of any that come close, not even the rather brilliant The Legend of Billie Jean, perhaps the closest comparison) are the performances. Although we are told that Stigwood truncated some of Tim Curry's key scenes, his character's struggle with his own inner demons is intact, thanks to the brilliance of his acting in the scenes which survive. Trini Alvarado is a revelation as the deeply unhappy young girl on the cusp of true self-discovery. Her performance gives the film a danger and an edge, because while self-righteously you think her character should be out of her depth, Pammy is in fact the one with nothing to lose and everything to gain from an urban street life. But the real energy of the film comes from Robin Johnson's performance as Nicky, the streetwise young punk with a hell for leather wild streak. Johnson is superb, and makes her character's rise to notoriety utterly believable, without ever playing down her vulnerabilities. It is a tightrope performance at the centre of a film which works completely because of it. And she has real stage presence. Alas, Times Square was never a big movie and it never made anyone a star. But its importance to those who saw it at a certain point in their own development can hardly be overstated. When I say it changed my life I mean it. And seeing it now, after all these years, I am not remotely surprised that it did. It helped set me on a path that I am still on, two decades later, a path that I am happy and proud to have taken. And seeing it again makes me want to take on the world once more. The influence it had on me was completely positive, and I am not the only one. Few, if any other films can alter the course of a life in such a wonderful way.