FILM & VIDEO REVIEWS


Reviews of The Gods of Times Square


"'The Gods of Times Square': The Gods Hovering in Times Square" - New York Times (September 20, 2000)

The Times Square of legend takes a last loopy bow in Richard Sandler's engaging documentary "The Gods of Times Square."

In its foreground a study of urban theology as it examines the relationship of man and God in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Sandler's film, opening today at Cinema Classics, has as its background the earth movers and cranes that transformed the seedy Times Square of yesteryear into the Disneyfied magnet for tourists and families of the new millennium.

At the same time, "The Gods of Times Square" is a good-humored, tolerant celebration of New York City's diversity and eccentricity and of its incubation of sidewalk philosophers, like the homeless man who discusses Einstein and atoms while the camera seeks out a flashing sign that illustrates the lecture. read more...


"The Film File: The Gods of Times Square" - The New Yorker

Watching Richard Sandler’s documentary is like discovering a box of old photographs. Here are the sidewalk preachers, pleasure seekers, and urban malcontents that populated Times Square before it was cleaned up, when the theatres showed films with titles like “Horny Frat Girls.”

Sandler is an accomplished street photographer, and his practiced eye does much with limited means; he builds atmosphere by framing his subjects against the oversized fashion ads and news zippers. He accumulates impressions, theologies, and rants, and presents them virtually without narration; the result is a tone poem of the righteous and the possessed. Some characters are vanishing originals, like James, a bearded cleric who answers every question with one of his own, and Jim, a sallow Englishman who re veals himself to be Jesus Christ and adds that “starting in 1994, he’s going to do rock music, marry Madonna,” and then “get into international affairs.” read more...

"Prophets and Loss" - The Montreal Mirror (September 30 to October 6, 2004)

Photographer and filmmaker Richard Sandler fell in love with New York City's Times Square at the turn of the '60s, at the age of 14. He saw the real Minnesota Fats hustle at the pool rooms and soaked in the surrounding porno shops, grindhouses, jazz joints, theatres, strip clubs and pizza parlours - the true Times Square, before Disney took over.

"It had always been this place where uptown could meet downtown, black culture could meet white, jazz could meet classical and burlesque and Shakespeare," says Sandler over the blower from Martha's Vineyard, where he's currently working on his latest doc. "I mean, there was so much there. read more...


"Gadzooks over Disneyfication of God kooks!" - Snubdom (2004)

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"The Gods of Times Square" - Film Threat (April 23, 2003)

For those who never got the chance to enjoy the pre-Disneyfied Times Square in New York, “The Gods of Times Square” exists as the ultimate trip back in time with filmmaker Richard Sandler hitting the streets and talking to absolutely everyone who will stop in front of his camera to reveal what it was really like before Mickey Mouse pulled those cute little red shorts down around his ass and laid a nice, steaming log right in the middle of the city.

There is a theme here, however, and perhaps you’ve guessed it from the title of this film. Yes, religion is on the menu tonight and Sandler had no problem whatsoever in finding people to open up about their belief of choice, whether they’re casual believers, foaming at the mouth fanatics, or total space cadets with ideas that perhaps have been formulated by too much LSD. For example, Sandler talks, on a few different occasions, to a guy who believes that he in fact is Jesus and that he’s destined to recor d a multi-platinum grunge rock album and marry Madonna. Yes, things were pretty interesting in good old Times Square. read more...