Martin Scorsese: After Hours

After Hours

Director – Martin Scorsese
Writer – Joseph Minion
Cinematographer – Michael Ballhaus

Actor Character
Griffin Dunne Paul Hacket
Rosanna Arquette Marcy Franklin
Verna Bloom June
Tommy Chong Pepe
Linda Fiorentino Kiki
Cheech Marin Neil

After Hours is a comedy that goes 100 miles per hour about a poor shlup on the worst night of his life. Paul Hackett is a typist who lives his life in complete cyclic boredom. He is emotionally comatose and without any sense enthusiasm for anything. His luck, so he thinks changes when one sleepless night he goes to a diner to read a book. He meets an interesting blonde. Scorsese is particularly fond of blondes in is films not unlike Alfred Hitchcock. She begins commenting on the book he is reading and as things progress he agrees to buy her friend’s paperweight at her apartment hoping to get lucky. Paul reads “Tropic of Cancer” in a restaurant that uses a dolly shot that reminds one of the scene in Taxi Driver where Travis Bickle and Betsy are talking in her campaign headquarters. It expresses movement, opportunity and disorder. Scorsese’s movies are frantic with camera angles in order to show the inner turmoil of his characters.

His character Paul played by Griffin Dunne is just a normal guy trying to be happy and trying to get laid. Not demanding goals in life. Everyone around him is a nutcase to which he tries to glide through unaffected. When Marcy, the girl from the coffee shop, invites him to her place the expression on his face is priceless. He looks like he is going to faint from joy. There is an interesting shot on him on the telephone with Marcy. The close-up goes from his mouth to his ear then to his eye. It starts as uncertainty to joy then hesitation again.

Things quickly descend from bad to shit as Paul loses his 20-dollar bill that flies out the taxi window. The scene is shot in a hyper kinetic fashion similar to the scenes with ambulance in Bringing Out the Dead.
He meets Kiki, a plaster sculptress, and in one of the best lines of the movie:

Paul: Is Marcy here?
Kiki: She has to go to the all night drugstore.
Paul: Is she alright?
Kiki: It’s under control.

To further Griffin Dunne’s realistic portrayal of anxiety and paranoia in the film Martin Scorsese told him to not have sex or sleep during the filming of the movie. Every scene he seems agitated and on edge because of this. In the film Paul is a shy horndog trying to get lucky with whomever. As he gives Kiki a massage he tells her a story to which she falls asleep. When Marcy comes in she sees her asleep on the couch with only a bra on with Paul beside her. The tension is so thick in this scene. When he goes to Marcy’s room he sits on the bed while she is in the shower and we see two people having sex in the background out of focus in the next building. It shows what’s constantly on his mind and his frustration. He tries to seduce her but quickly goes into the dry crotch “friend zone.” Instant death.
Marcy tells him a story about being raped:

Marcy: I was raped once. As a matter of fact it happened right here in this very room. I lived here once. He came in through there on the fire escape. He held a knife to my throat and said if I made a move, he'd cut my tongue out. He tied me to the bed... he took his time... six hours.
Paul: My god... Was he, uh... did they get this guy?
Marcy: No. Actually it was a boyfriend of mine. To tell you the truth, I slept through most of it. So... there you are.

He escapes the apartment and her weirdness and as the weirdness ensues a low angle Dutch-tilts show Paul’s impending doom. As he tries to buy a subway ticket he again is down on his luck as the fare went up that night leaving him stranded:

Paul: Couldn't you just give me one token, please?
Subway Attendant: I can't do that. I may lose my job. 
[Paul looks around and sees no one else in the station]
Paul: Well, who would know... exactly?
Subway Attendant: I could go to a party, get drunk, talk to someone... who knows?

Spoilers

As he goes to Terminal Bar the bartender agrees to give him subway fare in exchange for a ticket. They exchange keys as a deposit of trust. He goes to his apartment and is accused of being a burglar. After this he goes to Kiki’s apartment he finds Marcy dead overdosed on pills. He goes back to the Terminal Bar finds a woman there who looks as if she stepped out of the 1950s who seems interested in Paul. His luck looks as if it begins to change but everything this guy touches turns to shit. She turns out to be psychotic emotional mess after he makes a joke trying to lighten the mood. He gets her to shut up and stop crying after agreeing he will see her again. She then gives him a bagel paperweight as a reward to returning to him.

He meets Gale who is another nutcase who offers to drive him home in her ice cream truck of all vehicles. Once she sees a sign of Paul as a falsely accused burglar she blows a whistle to the mob and they chase after him. Once atop a stairwell he witnesses a woman murdering her husband and wisely says, “I’ll probably get blamed for that.”

Just as he finds his bartender friend and explains the craziness that has happened, the bartender tells him he will get his keys. He then tells Julie and the angry mob he is in the diner.
He hides in an alternative goth club and tries to seduce the only woman there. He needs anything or anyone to calm his nerves. She helps him hide by putting him in a plaster statue while the mob looks in the bar and her workspace. After everyone leaves Cheech and Chong enter in and steal the plaster statue that Cheech is fond of. Saying:

Pepe: Art sure is ugly.
Neil: Shows how much you know about art. The uglier the art, the more it’s worth.
Pepe: This must be a fortune, man.
They load him in the van and drive across New York having him fall out on the street in front of his job. He brushes himself off as if nothing happened.

What’s so great about this film is how Scorsese can work wonders on a small budget. They use every zany opportunity to torture this poor guy which flows from one situation to the next seamlessly. The camera is always moving adding tension and paranoia throughout the film.