Thoughts on After Hours

 

via IMDB

"... 'A man was torn limb from limb by an irate mob last night in the fashionable SoHo area of Manhattan. Police are having difficulty identifying the man because no form of ID was found on his shredded clothing. ... His entire face was pummeled completely beyond recognition.' ... What does a guy have to do to get his face pummeled?"

I'm in charge again at work tomorrow and not feeling up to writing a traditional review of After Hours. Instead, let's take the Martin Scorsese-Joseph Minion (and Joe Frank) comedy thriller and play (more than) 20 Commentary-laden Questions.

1. Did Paul (Griffin Dunne) ever think he could do better than being a word processor?

2. Doesn't Bronson Pinchot know that by saying his job is temporary, he's already doomed himself?

3. If you knew nothing about how Hours ends, the initial scenes with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) could fool you. "Paul?" "Yes?" "I'm really glad you called." "Me, too." Would she have initiated conversation if he wasn't reading Tropic of Cancer?

4. Who takes the money for cab fare out ahead of time? 

5. Was Kiki (Linda Fiorentino) trying to give Paul a clue about Marcy's state of mind by talking about scars? Is she just fucking with him? Is it just idle conversation for her?

6. "What did you do to her?" Hmm ... might Marcy be more than a little jealous of Kiki?

7. How much does this speech owe to Masha's "All-American fun" spiel from The King of Comedy? 

"I knew there was something special about you. I hope you don't have to get up early tomorrow or anything? ... Because I think you're somebody I can really talk to. And tonight I feel like ... I feel like I'm going to let loose or something. I feel like something incredible is really going to happen here. I feel so excited, and I don't know why."

8. Does Marcy have body dysmorphia? Would she have eventually had sex with Paul that night, or was she going to keep prolonging their conversation?

9. There should never, ever be a remake of After Hours, but I briefly imagined Sarah Michelle Gellar playing a woman locked into the TRL, pre-9/11 era. Which brings us to Teri Garr as Julie, "Miss Beehive 1965." Seriously, how perfect was her casting?

10. Several contemporary reviewers felt the movie lost focus after Marcy died. It became an exercise in shocking the audience/Paul without actual stakes. Agree? Disagree?

11. Tom (John Heard) doesn't mention his flooded bathroom to Paul, who caused it?

12. This is the kind of question you only ask when you've seen a movie too many times and start wanting to deconstruct it ... Is it possible that Tom (John Heard) also has a dead girlfriend named Marcy, different from the Marcy who Paul met?

13. Did Marcy and Julie ever meet?

14. Were Neil and Pepe (Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong) geniuses to make legitimate purchases of Kiki's statue and TV on the same night they're committing burglaries?

*Paul is outside the Club Berlin, standing before a hulking bouncer (Clarence Felder)

"May I enter?"

"I can't let you in at the moment."

"Will it be possible to be admitted ... at a more convenient time for the club?"

"It is possible, but not at the moment."

"God."

"If you're so drawn to it, try and force your way in."

*This is not at all possible.*

"Got any money?"

"Yes, I have money. Is that what you want? Money? Why didn't you just ask that in the first place, man? Here. It's not much. But it's all I've got."

"I'll take your money 'cause I don't want you to feel you left anything untried. You keep the quarter. You'll still have to wait a few minutes."

15. Earlier this year, Arquette said Hours and Desperately Seeking Susan were filmed at Manhattan locations that no longer exist. Let's flip it: is anyone in Hours still a New Yorker?

16. Guess who has a Class Four New York State chauffeur's license? Gail (Catherine O'Hara), that's who.

17. What does a guy have to do to get his face pummeled?

18. "What do you want from me? What have I done? I'm just a word processor, for Christ's sake!"

19. How likely is the man in the park (Robert Plunket) to have remembered any of Paul's story? For that matter, did Paul ever tell anyone else? Does he remember it as something deeply scarring or just a crazy night he had in SoHo way back when?

20. "Why are you doing this? ... You flirt with me. You share your cigarette with me. You dance with me. You're nice to me."

21. How did June (Verna Bloom) know Paul's name? Did she send out the invite? Also, is she ripping off Kiki by making her own screaming man statue? Or did Kiki rip off her?

22. "Do you at all sense the pressure here?"

23. Remember, Martin Scorsese could have easily been written off as one of the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls crowd who peaked early on. With that in mind, how incredibly sweet is this quote?

"I asked myself, 'Can I make a picture with the same energy I had when I was 32?' And I did."

-- Interview, January 1987

Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "I'm not too good at this. Just know a few basic moves." "Just make it hurt and you're on the right track."

-- Box Office: Grossing $10.6 million on a $4.5 million budget, this opened wide at No. 9 (according to Box Office Mojo) and came in at No. 80 for 1985.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "At best, an entertaining tease," Vincent Canby wrote. "There is no satisfying resolution to the tension." "The tensest comedy I can remember," Roger Ebert wrote in 1985. In 2000, he declared it "approaches the notion of pure filmmaking; it's a nearly flawless example of -- itself ... It is The Perils of Pauline told boldly and well." David Denby: "Perhaps the most painful film ever made about the hell of being a single person in New York ... its single joke of disorientation (is) repeated over and over." Variety felt Hours "would have been pretty funny if it didn't play like a confirmation of everyone's worst fears about contemporary urban life." Pauline Kael: "What's surprising about After Hours is that, given the opportunity to show downtown funkiness from the inside, and to show us how the square Paul recoils, Scorsese adopts the square point of view." 

-- Critic's Corner, the actors: "Griffin Dunne is too small a personality to command anyone's unqualified loyalty," Denby wrote. "The wide-eyed, full-lipped Arquette is comic quicksilver," Paul Attanasio wrote, later saying Dunne was at his best opposite her. Garr, Heard and O'Hara, according to Attanasio, were "all offbeat, versatile actors who seem oddly bland and routine." Kael liked Teri: "has a glittering eccentricity .. plays this kind of role better than anyone else has ... makes (Julie's) nuthead scariness pretty damn scary." Kael also liked Heard, saying he gave the standout performance and the movie's only rooted moments. Canby called foul on Cheech and Chong's casting, wondering why two quintessentially West Coast performers/personas would be on the streets of SoHo.

-- Awards Watch: Dunne was nominated for a Golden Globe, losing to Jack Nicholson. Arquette was nominated for both a BAFTA (in the supporting category) and Independent Spirit Award (in the lead category). She lost both times, to Judi Dench for A Room with a View overseas and Geraldine Page for The Trip to Bountiful in the states. Scorsese's direction was honored at Cannes and the Independent Spirit Awards (tying with Joel Coen for the later), while Hours was a nominee at the former (losing to The Mission) and a winner at the later. Finally, the cinematography and screenplay were Spirit nominees.

-- Memorable Music: The score is 41-33, still favoring pieces written for movies. Hours receives points for Howard Shore's score, Mozart's symphony No. 45 in D major and "Is That All There Is". Honorary mentions go to "You're Mine" and "Last Train to Clarksville."

-- I love all the sketches on Julie's wall: Edie Sedgwick, Joni Mitchell, James Dean, Cher, The Beatles.

-- Fanservice Junction: Let's hear it for Fiorentino's boobs and Will Patton smoldering as Horst.

-- One more question: According to IMDB, Lorraine Bracco was considered for a role. I see her as Kiki, but let's hear your thoughts.

-- Hey, It's ...!: Dick Miller.

-- "Art sure is ugly, man." "Yeah, that's how much you know. The uglier the art, the more it's worth." "This must be worth a fortune."

-- Next: Silver Bullet. On deck: Re-Animator, Dreamchild. Coming soon: Sweet Dreams, Krush Groove.