Jake takes us well into the After Hours (1985)

By Jake Dee

Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette
Released: 1985

Marty Scorsese’s work is synonymous with a dark, gritty realism. Usually steeped in the crime or gangster genre, Scorsese actually takes many of his cues from one of the originators of independent cinema John Cassavetes, where themes and characters transcend category; instead representing an honest look at every day people. Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, while sensationalistic, these are really character driven movies about the struggle a person has on the inside, as well as fighting exterior turmoil. But aside from New York, anyone who intimately knows Marty’s work is aware that another common thread brightly stitched thru a majority of his movies; and that is humor! Pesci in Goodfellas, Casino for that matter. Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; DeNiro in Mean Streets and King of Comedy, etc. However, in 1985 Scorsese released a criminally underrated dark comedy called After Hours.

After Hours follows the travails of Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), a Manhattan yuppie who gets stuck in SoHo for one long nightmarish stretch of time between roughly 1 and 8 AM. After meeting a gorgeous woman named Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) in a coffee shop, he gets the number of her roommate, a sculpturist called Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino). Why does he get her number? He’s convinced Marcy that he wants to purchase a bagel and cream cheese paper weight that Kiki sculpted, but really we know he just wants to get closer to Marcy. From this point on, everything goes down hill for Paul. His night continues to get worse and worse, all he wants to do is find his way home and get some sleep.

Dunne Face #2: “I said I wanna see a Plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight, now cough it up.”

In fact, his bad luck initiates right there in that cafe. As soon as he gets Marcy’s number (Kiki’s really), the pen he tries to jot it with runs dry, he has to borrow one before he forgets the digits. Then on his way downtown, his last twenty dollar bill flies out the window, a non sympathetic cabbie punts him out of the car right then and there. When he arrives at Marcy’s, only Kiki is there, half dressed dabbling in a paper Mache art project. The two of them flirt, and by the time Marcy shows up, Kiki is passed out Paul’s lap. Doesn’t look too good for Paul, does it? Well, that’s just the tip of the floating ice!

Along the way, Paul encounters a roster of off beat characters. We’ve got a Dick Miller cameo, spouting the title of the film. Cheech and Chong pop up as a pair of thieving hoods named Neil and Pepe; Terri Garr as a whacked out ‘60s nostalgic; John Heard as a high strung bar tender; Catherine O’Hara as a flaky ice cream truck driver; Verna Blume as a reclusive semi-mute club-dweller; Victor Argo as the petulant owner of a diner. The dead pan reactions of Paul while interfacing with these people make for some pretty good laughs. Through it all, Paul becomes implicated in burglary and murder; a classic victim of wrong place wrong time circumstance. As the night progresses, he becomes more and more high strung; just a nervous wreck of a lost man doing all he can to avoid the reproach of his surrounding mayhem.

Dunne Face #3

A lot of the film’s charm has to do with how incredibly self contained it is. We can credit Joseph Minion’s script for this, there’s a tight efficiency where characters and items reappear in a mien that sort of lets the audience in on the joke, or jokes as it may be. There’s a real circulation here, and it’s not just chalked up in unfathomable coincidence. Part of it has to do with the time in which the story takes place. I mean, how many different people in the same 5 block radius are out and about at 3, 4 AM? It’s plausible therefore, that the same band of regulars shows up on screen again and again. But it’s not just the delicate screenplay that works so well, it’s the way Scorsese handles the material.

Scorsese’s direction is very focused, but its also very low key. The humor here is subtle and understated; not flamboyant or done in slap stick style. In fact, there are some sight gags that could go unnoticed unless looked for hard enough; which also feed into this notion of audience interaction or involvement. For example, a skull key-chain is shown a number of times in the movie. Then at one point, we see a similar skull tattoo on Marcy’s leg. I don’t want to spoil it, but this connects a vital plot point, and it took me 2 or 3 viewings before I noticed it. It’s some nice foreshadowing, sly enough to remain unpredictable (albeit not that funny, per se). Some may consider this movie lame, I would never.

Favorite Part: The scene when Paul first enters the bar. The music, the camera work, the introduction to characters with little dialogue, it’s all masterful. Great sequence!

The Overall Dee-Cision: Watch It!

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