After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985)

[Antoine Doinel]

Since there's no thread for this, I figure this is as good a way to start it as any: Much of the plot setup and some of the dialogue in the film—a significant portion of the movie’s first 30 minutes, —were brazenly lifted from “Lies,” a 1982 NPR Playhouse monologue by Joe Frank, an L.A.-based radio artist.

[kaujot]

In no way does that take away from it being one of the best undersung films of the 1980s.

[Polybius]

The piss-poor casting of the tiresome Griffin Dunne pretty well killed this film for me.

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

Recently wrote about this movie for a series on my blog I call "In 250 Words or Less." Check out the blog itself or read below.

In 1984, the Bulletin of the Atomic scientists, thanks to an escalating arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, set the doomsday clock to three minutes to midnight. The last time the clock’s arm was moved so close was thirty years prior, when both superpowers first tested thermonuclear weapons. 1984 was also the year that Martin Scorsese, freshly disillusioned by the failure of his first attempt to make The Last Temptation of Christ, directed what is perhaps his most under-appreciated movie, After Hours. That clocks feature prominently in After Hours is probably a coincidence; it is, after all, a movie about a guy who stays up too late on a work night. But is it paranoiac to connect the clocks to all the other apocalyptic motifs? Empty streets? Mad-Max-esque vigilante gangs? References to burned flesh? A reoccurring sculpture that looks like a Pompeii victim? If After Hours isn’t explicitly about “the end,” it certainly feels like an end—of the world, the counterculture, of movies, of Scorsese’s own career*, etc. At one point, a diner owner claims that “after hours” means that “different rules apply.” Yeah, sure, he’s talking about free coffee, but he could just as easily being talking about the film itself, a movie that—even though it lacks the passion and scope of Scorsese’s more beloved works—really sticks with you long after its own clock stops ticking.

*This was fortunately not the case. Before the decade was out, he’d get to The Last Temptation of Christ, his passion project and a legitimate masterpiece. And after that, well, you know.

[aox]

Finally caught this last night as I am trying to fill in my Scorsese gaps. This was his twentieth feature movie (non-short; non-documentary) I have seen now.

The piss-poor casting of the tiresome Griffin Dunne pretty well killed this film for me.

I was really happy to find out this film has a thread. And even with only a few posts, it contains this proclamation.

This could easily be a Top 3 Scorsese; the script, the plotting, the dialogue, the editing, the secondary characters and the performances. Absolutely incredible. However, twenty minutes in I just kept wondering what was wrong with it all, and by the time the credits rolled I felt confident that it was solely the lead who was completely miscast. And that doesn't mean Dunne isn't a fine actor and didn't have specific scenes where he nailed it in AH. The dramatic scenes he carries quite well but his comedic timing is so completely off it causes any of the humorous reprieves to fall almost completely flat. And, I didn't think the humor in the script was overly complicated. It's such a shame, but really emphasised the importance of casting to me.

[hearthesilence]

This could easily be a Top 3 Scorsese; the script, the plotting, the dialogue, the editing, the secondary characters and the performances. Absolutely incredible. However, twenty minutes in I just kept wondering what was wrong with it all, and by the time the credits rolled I felt confident that it was solely the lead who was completely miscast. And that doesn't mean Dunne isn't a fine actor and didn't have specific scenes where he nailed it in AH. The dramatic scenes he carries quite well but his comedic timing is so completely off it causes any of the humorous reprieves to fall almost completely flat. And, I didn't think the humor in the script was overly complicated. It's such a shame, but really emphasised the importance of casting to me.

I didn't think Dunne was bad at all, and honestly I didn't get the impression he undermined any of the humor. I've grown to like this film even more after moving to NYC, particularly when Dunne...

SpoilerShow

rants off-camera at the subway while his male prostitute sits in boredom, listening. When we hear Dunne yell off-camera something like, "The toll went up at MIDNIGHT! Did you know that?" it's fucking hysterical how he nods, "...yes..." Such is life when it's dependent on public transportation.

[Murdoch]

It's my favorite Scorsese, even if I think he's made better films in his career. I think the reason I like it so much comes down to nostalgia, since I first saw it in college and had never seen anything that had the sort of real-time feel to it before nor seen anything that showed the chaos of NYC in such a casual way (the sudden voyeuristic murder scene, the punk club, Dunne and Marquette in her apartment). I think Pauline Kael's take that the film has a problem with women (not her direct words but she highlighted how they're characterized as unhinged temptresses or off-putting) is a fair one, and a lot of the film comes across as a cautionary tale to young men looking for a one night stand. But its main appeal to me now, roughly a decade since I graduated college, is it's a story of one night that goes horribly wrong and doesn't give Dunne any relief or catharsis, but instead ends by literally dropping him right back off to where he started, where he just has to shrug off the experience and return to normal. It's such a charming mess of a movie that I can't help but love it.

[hearthesilence]

It's probably the only Scorsese vision of NY that I've come close to experiencing as the others have been lost to history or involve a side of NY - specifically organized crime - that I'd rather not dip into. If I could somehow transplant never-ending nights in Williamsburg from a decade ago to SoHo, it's pretty close.

[Maltic]

This always reminds me of Naked (1993), the parallel scenes where the young protagonist dude goes to the apartment of a middle-aged Miss Lonelyhearts... then leaves.