New York · May 17, 2012 · A short film
Times Square
Distress
I made one wrong turn and walked straight into tourist central.
Enter the crowd ↓Before the film
I was only trying to get out.
Benny was wandering through Midtown while talking on the phone. One turn later, he found himself inside the one part of New York he usually tried to avoid.
“All it takes is going one block too far—and you end up here.”
— Benny Doro · 2012 commentaryThere was no planned shoot, no route and no second take. The crowd simply carried him forward.
So Benny did what he often did: turned an ordinary aggravation into something worth keeping.
The original film
Caught in the wave.
Play it with sound. The movement, soundtrack and street noise belong together.
“There’s really no other way out of here. Gonna brave the storm. Ride the wave.”
The original recording is preserved unchanged. This web copy is a viewing derivative.
Three moments from the film
Walking Through the Noise.
Why keep this?
Because not every New York memory needs a monument.
Sometimes the city reveals itself in the irritation: the crowd, the noise, the wrong turn and the decision to keep the camera rolling. This is not the polished postcard version of Times Square. It is the experience of being swallowed by it.
- Date
- May 17, 2012 · 7:09 p.m. EDT
- Location
- Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City
- Camera
- Apple iPhone 4 · 1280 × 720 · 29.97 fps
- Duration
- 2 minutes 32.6 seconds
- Audio
- Original embedded soundtrack · mono · 44.1 kHz
- Source
- IMG_1631.MOV · preserved unchanged
One wrong turn.
One useful little film.
Curated excerpts from Benny’s original live commentary
What I Was Thinking.
Repetitions and obvious speech artifacts have been removed while preserving the original thoughts, humor and observations. Select a time to return to that moment in the film.
How much fun is this? Stupid move on my part. I started talking on the phone, didn’t see where I was wandering, and all it takes is going one block too far—and you end up here.
There’s really no other way out of here. Gonna brave the storm, ride the wave.
It’s almost like that bad acid trip that comes on. You know you’re just not gonna get out of it unless you deal with it. Not that I’ve ever done acid—but I can assume it’s the same theory, because it’s about how I’m feeling right about now.
I think I saw that guy in Target earlier. Wait a minute—I don’t even know this guy. Oh, he’s in the tour group.
Two brief remarks are unclear beneath the soundtrack and crowd noise.
I wonder how many waiters at this Bubba Gump Shrimp just want to slit their throats at the end of the night. How many Forrest Gump jokes do you think they’ve got to listen to in a night? Everybody thinks they’re the first to tell it.
They probably get training for it. When they hear certain words, their brains just have to block it out. “Life is like a box of chocolates.” Shut up. Eat your bad, deep-fried, over-battered shrimp, will ya?
Oh, here’s the Hard Rock. This is where you can get fifteen-dollar chicken fingers. Really good ones, though.
Museum Note (2026): In 2012, fifteen-dollar chicken fingers were expensive enough to complain about.God bless America. God bless the NASDAQ. Tomorrow Facebook goes public. There’s gonna be a zoo. Watch all the idiots chase the stock up to seventy bucks.
All right, here I am. I’m still walking.
Draft curator’s transcription · Machine-assisted locally · Awaits Benny’s final review