Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette,
Verna Blume, Linda Fiorentino, Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong,
Teri Garr, John Heard, Catherine O'Hara, Dick Miller, Will
Patton, Victor Argo
Genre:
Drama
Director:
Martin Scorsese
Screenplay:
Joseph Minion
Cinematography:
Michael Ballhaus
Composer:
Howard Shore
Runtime:
96 minutes
"I just wanted to leave, you know, my apartment, maybe meet a nice girl,
and now I've got to die for it, you know?" - Paul Hackett
After Hours is the best black comedy I've seen. This may be a surprising statement
considering it's one of Martin Scorsese's least known films, and Scorsese
is a director known for his hard hitting dramas and crime pictures who has
only ventured into comedy twice (The King of Comedy) in his brilliant career.
Of course, with films like New York New York, The Last Waltz, & The King
of Comedy, Scorsese had already proved that he could excel in whatever genre
he chose to enter. One of the main reasons After Hours stands above the rest
of the black comedies is that Scorsese doesn't confine himself to the limits
of the genre. The movie is funny as hell no matter how many times you've
seen it, but also it is hell. Countless movies have been made where one thing
after another goes wrong for the poor protagonist, but this is the only one
I can recall that has the intensity and feel of a nightmare.
The film, which benefits considerably by David Cronenberg favorite Howard Shore's
unsettling score, may be the edgiest and tensest comedy ever made. It is
a masterpiece of atmosphere and pacing, starting off innocently, but slowly,
insidiously, and believably enough draining the audience. Although it's different
for everyone who enjoys this picture, there comes a point in the film where
you will not only be breathless and exhausted from laughing yourself out,
but also from the insanity inducing plight of the main character.
The picture, which owes a debt to Orson Welles surrealist nightmare comedy
The Trial, brings to life the wildest night in the life of Paul Hackett (Griffin
Dunne). Paul works on Wall Street, but he is merely a word processor. He's
an average Joe who has no real interest in his job, and is in need of a change
because he can't pay attention to anything or amuse himself in any way.
After work, Paul meets an attractive woman named Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) in
a diner when she lets him know that she's a big fan of the book he's reading,
Tropic of Cancer, which turns out to be one of the few books Paul liked enough
to read again. Although we get the idea that Marcy is at least a bit odd,
she seems to be nice enough and at least a viable candidate for a one night
stand. Marcy likes Paul, and gives him the number of her artist friend Kiki
(Linda Fiorentino), who she'll be visiting tonight, because she thinks Kiki
would like to sell him one of her Plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese
paperweights.
After Paul returns to the boredom of his home, he decides he needs some action
and calls Kiki's house. He seems uncertain whether he wants to buy the stupid
paperweight or date Marcy, probably because he wants to buy the paperweight
as an excuse to go over there and have sex with Marcy. In any case, Kiki
is too cool to be bothered selling some jabronie a paperweight in the middle
of the night. Instead, she facilitates a meeting between him and Marcy at
her place. Marcy is down in the dumps due to more boyfriend trouble, and
Paul is probably supposed to comfort Marcy since Kiki would rather go out
and isn't the type anyway.
Paul's crazy night starts out with one of most technically brilliant scenes
in the film where the taxi driver (Larry Block) speeds insanely down the
streets, weaving his way through the cars, even though Paul has expressly
stated that he's in no particular hurry to get to Kiki's place in the SoHo
district. The uneasiness of the way the scene is shot is such that your head
begins to throb. The comedy is that Paul, who is sliding around the back
seat like he's in a centrifuge, puts his only $20 in the ash tray only to
have it fly out the window before he can catch it because the cab is going
so fast. As is the case with most scenes in the film, it is exaggerated,
but that is what makes it fun. The film is a caricature of New York City
nightlife. It's also incredibly ironic. These two aspects work so well together
because Scorsese understands not only the state of mind of the city he's
so familiar with, but also of the outsider trapped in this parallel world.
It's funny for us because we can enjoy all the shots taken at the crazy city
life, but we must also withstand all the paranoid based, misguided, and sometimes
deserved misfortune of the alien who can't enjoy it because he has to live
it.
One thing that makes the film so good is it's not simply one disaster after
another. Paul's early missteps - not being able to pay the cab driver and
Marcy catching him next to her slumbering bra clad roommate - are seemingly
forgiven. It's not until he decides that Marcy is too strange and creepy
for him that things begin to go downhill.
One point that becomes very obvious is how hard it is for adults to form lasting
relationships. So many people seem like they could be cool when you first
meet them because you find out things that you have in common with them.
Unfortunately, the more you get to know them, the more you find out how many
things you differ on, and these are the ones that stand out. Also, by this
point everyone has a long and storied history that tends to not be too appealing.
In the case of Marcy, she has been raped by a "boyfriend" and has
some mysterious burns that seem to have Paul picturing Mel Gibson's charred
friend in The Road Warrior. She also married a Wizard of Oz freak, but their
marriage fell apart immediately because she was creeped out by his inability
to not yell "Surrender Dorothy!" every time he came.
The film begins to resemble a demented Wizard of Oz after Paul starts tripping
on Marcy's bad "Colombian" joint that isn't even pot and, in his
first outburst, coldly ends their relationship.
Paul: Where are those Plaster of Paris paperweights, anyway? I mean, that's
what I came down here to see in the first place. Well, that's not entirely
true, I came to see you, but where are the paperweights? That's what I wanna
see now!
Marcy: What's the matter?
Paul: I said I wanna see a Plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight,
now cough it up!
Marcy: Right now?
Paul Yes, right now!
Marcy: They're in Kiki's bedroom.
Paul: Then get 'em, cause as we sit here chatting, there are important papers
flying rampant around my apartment cause I don't have ANYTHING to hold them
down with.
The night should end with Paul weathering the sudden rain storm and returning
to his Kansas via the subway, but as luck would have it the fair went up
to $1.50 at midnight and he only has a should be adequate 97 cents. From
here Paul is forced to rely on the good will and charity of the people he
comes across, largely eccentric women who are attracted to him but turn out
to be witches in all but the literal sense, to help him get home.
To keep with the ironic tone, it's a quiet night at the normally hopping bar
and the entire region seems to be a scantly populated labyrinth of mysteries
that are better left undiscovered. Tom the Bartender (John Heard) is willing
to give Paul the subway fare, but he can't get his register open. Tom is
ready to give Paul the keys to his apartment so he can bring him the key
for the register, but he has to think twice about it because there has been
a rash of robberies in the complex, including four tonight. Paul thinks the
errand for the fare is a fair tradeoff, and is able to convince Tom by leaving
his keys with him at the restaurant.
Paul, of course, doesn't steal anything (although he does damage the place
by taking off when the toilet is overflowing), but a few paranoid and incensed
tenants are all but ready to believe he did because he's a stranger. Tom
is also ready to believe it because Paul gets sidetracked on his odyssey,
getting convinced by Kiki and her intimidating masochist friend Horst (Will
Patton) to apologize to their depressed friend Marcy. It turns out that it's
too late for that though. Before you know it, both Paul & Tom have found
out that Marcy has committed suicide, and both believe it's their fault because
they made her feel bad that night. Tom doesn't know that Paul could be responsible
for his girlfriend's death, but having to keep this secret only increases
the stress on Paul. An especially difficult moment occurs when Paul would
like to comfort his new friend, but for reasons different than John assumes,
can only admit he doesn't know what to say. John responds, "What can
you say? It's not your fault."
Usually the best comedies have great individual scenes, but don't add up to
anything as a whole. One of the strengths of After Hours narrative is the
way all the characters and scenes are so carefully linked. Again, it makes
New York seem like a small town rather than a big nameless city, but the
significance is the way it alienates the outsider. The best example is the
scene where Paul tries to stop Pepe (Tommy Chong) & Neil (Cheech Marin)
from stealing Kiki's television and Plaster of Paris sculpture. We already
know that Pepe & Neil are the crooks, so it seems like Paul has done
a good deed by running them off and returning the sculpture to Kiki (the
TV screen shattered when they dropped it to take off). The brilliance of
the scene comes when Paul calls for Kiki to throw him down the keys like
she did earlier and she has to do it with her teeth because she's gagged
and bound. We think the bumbling thieves had to go to extremes, but as it
turns out, the only things Kiki's friends Pepe & Neil bought all night
were those two and Kiki is simply into bondage.
The funniest scene in the movie is Cheech & Chong's discussion on the value
of art. Neil thinks he's getting the sculpture he bought from Kiki back,
which he should know she made Kiki, but really it's Paul trapped underneath
a hurried Plaster of Paris by non-artist June.
Pepe: Hey man, is it worth taking this thing?
Neil: What are you crazy, man? THIS is art!
Pepe: Art sure is ugly, man.
Neil: That's how much you know, man. You know, the uglier the art the more
it's worth.
Pepe: This must be worth a fortune, man.
Neil: That's right. It's by that famous guy Segal.
Pepe: Yeah
Neil: Yeah, you see him? He's on the Carson show, man. Plays banjo all the
time.
Pepe: I never watch Carson.
Neil: Well that's how much you know about art.
Pepe: I don't know, man. I'll take a stereo any day.
Neil: What do you know, man? A stereo's a stereo. Art is forever.
As the film progresses and Paul becomes increasingly desperate, Paul's standards
in women drop considerably. Rosanna Arquette & Linda Fiorentino were
young at this point and are still quite sexy, but from there the women get increasingly
older and less desirable. Teri Garr plays the hopelessly dated Julie a.k.a.
"Miss Beehive 1965," a waitress caught in a time warp who finally
quits her job at Tom's bar that night seemingly because she's tired of getting
yelled at for screwing up the bills (later she tells Paul "my (phone)
number is 54433, very easy to remember"). When she starts playing The
Monkeys I can't help thinking of the Married With Children episode where
Marcy D'Arcy tells Anthrax that she used to chase The Monkeys like everyone
else, and the band replies "I bet they ran like hell…" Anyway,
Beehive 1965 traps Paul into saying he likes her hairdo then asks "then
why don't you touch it?" Right before Tom finds out that Marcy committed
suicide, he convinces Paul to desert Julie by saying "What's she gonna
do, kill herself?"
Catherine O'Hara plays Gail, a disturbed ice cream vender who believes describing
all the "exciting" details of her job and robotic reciting of numbers
when Paul is trying to get the phone number of someone who can get him out
of his jam is entertaining. She brings him home to mend the cut she gave
him by opening a taxi door into his arm and winds up trying to mend his plaster
infected arm by burning it.
Verna Bloom plays June, the perpetually shunned reject in the back corner of
the nightclub. Paul's night is so bad that he practically begs her to pay
attention to him. She saves Paul from the angry mob led by Gail that believes
he's the one that's been robbing the apartments by covering him in Plaster
of Paris. Unfortunately, she doesn't want to let seemingly the only person
that's been nice to her in years go, so she puts a piece of plaster over
his mouth to shut him up and continues to statify him after the mob has taken
off.
Most people who don't like After Hours complain that Paul is unlikable. While
it's true that Paul is a self-centered little liar who tends to "get
out of" situations by hurting people's feelings, you have to consider
that he's cracking up from the unrelenting pressure and all encompassing
paranoia the city is putting on him. He acts more irrationally and has more
furiously explosive outbursts as the film progresses and his plight and desperation
increases to the latest boiling point. Paul is a pretty simple guy, and like
most of us one that's ill equipped to deal with an angry mob that plans to
tear him limb from limb and pummel his face beyond recognition for something
he didn't even do. Even if you don't like him, it's hard to root against
him when all he wants to do is get out of the foreign land and get back to
the familiarity of his home where he can enjoy some level of comfort and
rest.
Paul's night is going so bad that the only thing he can think to say when he
witnesses a murder while hiding from Gail and the ice cream truck mob is
"I'll probably get blamed for that." Scorsese, always interested
in religion and man's search for redemption, eventually has a birds eye view
scene of an exhausted Paul kneel down in the middle of a street and raise
his arms to the heavens asking god "What do you want from me? What have
I done? I'm just a word processor for Christ's sake!" Paul gets down
on his hands searching for an answer, and when he looks up he sees a man
at a distance walking in his direction.
Paul thinks god has sent him an angel, but it turns out to be a male prostitute
(Robert Plunkett) who is quite apprehensive about his first trick with a
member of the same sex. When the police hang up on Paul because his story
sounds so ridiculous he asks the street pickup if he can crash at his house
for a few hours. The pickup is nice enough that he's probably let him, but
he'd like to make some money on someone else so he uninterestingly asks Paul
"why don't you just go home?" Paul responds, "Pal, I've been
asking myself that all night long" and winds up not getting any sleep
because he proceeds to tell the street pickup the entire blow for blow. This
is a really basic scene with simple audio and video dissolves to condense
the scenes of Dunne pacing around quicker and quicker, getting louder and
more insanely animated as he acts out his nightmarish night. In addition,
there are straight cuts to the bored pickup trying to act semi-interested
as he raises his eyes as if to say "yeah right" or "sure,
pal." As with all Scorsese movies the techniques and soundtrack are
excellent, but one of the things that makes him a great filmmaker is he knows
when to keep it simple. This is the best scene in the movie because it captures
the alienation, insanity, and implausibility that sums up the entire tale
he's telling.
This film is by far Dunne's best performance - good enough that you won't be
disappointed that the string of Scorsese & Robert De Niro collaborations
temporarily ended here - but in particular this description of his night
scene is probably the best acting Dunne has done. He's constantly verging
on his breaking point, but you can't tell if he's going to babble on until
collapse, jump out the window, attack the pickup who is about the worst possible
audience for Paul in this time of crisis, or what. Countless actions would
be justifiable, but unlike overrated mediocrity such as Fatal Attraction
that starts off promising but then has a ridiculously forced by the numbers
conclusion that sinks below Friday The 13th level because it's easier to
do something implausible and ridiculous than write the intelligent conclusion
the movie deserved, Scorsese never dumbs his movies down.
In spite everything written in defense of Paul's actions, Scorsese's biggest
accomplishment here actually plays into the fact that sometimes you don't
like Paul. After Hours is a rare film that evokes several emotions at once.
I didn't like the way Paul was acting at times, but I understood what was
driving him to this behavior and would probably be just as selfish if so
many bad things were happening to me. Other times I did like the way Paul
was acting, but I enjoyed his misfortune anyway. At the same time though,
it was nerve wrecking. There just isn't a sense of good character and bad
character here.
You can sympathize with each of the characters because they are drawn so sharply,
cast so perfectly, and acted so well. I don't think Scorsese cares if you
know how to take things at every moment: I think he wants to create a sense
of confusion and uneasiness. That said, in their own odd way, everyone acts
fairly rationally and justifiably based on who they are and the present situation.
Most of them don't have large roles, but in most cases they immediately intrigue
us. In almost every case, we feel like we've gotten to know them by the time
they are done, which is something lost on current filmmakers and one of the
reasons why this film comes off as believable enough rather than absurd and
outrageous. Not only have we met them, we've also been entertained by their
odd and funny lines and overall bizarreness.
If this film doesn't sound all that funny, it's partly because I'm unable to
translate the genius of Scorsese onto paper. At times he's made a classic
farce, but as a whole the brilliance of the picture is that he made a situation
that doesn't read that funny into one that's not only funny for most of it's
96 minutes, but also constantly gripping, riveting, and entertaining. More
than a decade and a half later, the dizzying nightmare still bombards you
with the same power and relevance it did when it was released.
