Christy by Request — After Hours
“After Hours” is a decidedly un-Scorseseish Martin Scorsese film: a light, goofy and surreal comedy with no real stakes. And yet all that brilliant craft is on display, the muscular cinematic energy, the taste for danger and the vivid sense of place within New York City that’s so often his trademark.
I hadn’t seen the 1985 film in a long time, and the pieces of it that I remembered were fleeting. But that was the latest Christy by Request selection that Nicolas randomly chose for me — the suggestion of Chris Ronson (@loamguy), a Twitter follower of mine in Vermont — so I was happy to revisit this bizarre, underappreciated gem. Within the master director’s prodigious, hugely influential filmography, “After Hours” remains a kicky lark in retrospect, but one with a fascinating ensemble cast that’s definitely worth experiencing.
Working from a screenplay by first-timer Joseph Minion (who was only 26 at the time), Scorsese takes us on an exploration of Manhattan nightlife — or, rather, middle-of-the-nightlife — through the eyes of a naive and ill-prepared word processor named Paul. Griffin Dunne plays him as a blandly inoffensive everyman; the character is described in various reviews as a yuppie, but that would suggest specific characterization. He’s harmless and spineless, but it’s supremely enjoyable to watch him squirm as he gets in further over his head.
Paul is clearly miserable both at his work (where we see him barely tolerating a pre-“Perfect Strangers” Bronson Pinchot) and his home, a small, spare apartment that’s the same shade of beige as his wardrobe. When he meets cute at an Upper East Side coffee shop with Rosanna Arquette’s flirty and alluring Marcy, he can’t help but accept her offer to visit her downtown. With her big, blue eyes, pouty lips and spontaneous personality, Marcy would seem to represent the exact jolt Paul needs to escape his doldrums. She ends up being that, and so much more.
But Paul may very well die during the crazy, sped-up cab ride he takes when he heads downtown to see her at 11:32 p.m. Along the way, the only money he has — a $20 bill — goes flying out the window, a detail that will come back to haunt him over and over as the night wears on. It’s also an early indicator that this entire evening, romantic as it may have sounded at the outset, is actually fraught with peril.
Marcy shares a loft in SoHo — an edgier, artsier place to live back in the mid-1980s — with a sculptress who specializes in Plaster of Paris paperweights shaped like bagels with cream cheese. (This is just the beginning of a series of delightfully weird details that make “After Hours” pop.) But before we even see the magnificent Linda Fiorentino as Kiki in her black bra and miniskirt, we see her toss a set of keys down to Paul from the top floor when he buzzes to come upstairs. Scorsese’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (“The Last Temptation of Christ,” “GoodFellas”), makes the keys look light as a feather and almost dreamlike as he shoots them from underneath against the night sky.
Still, we’re on edge early as “After Hours” asserts its own peculiar rhythms. Misunderstandings and missed connections abound. When Paul shows up at the loft, Marcy isn’t even there; instead, he’s trapped awkwardly with the dominant and sexy Kiki, who forces him to help her with her sculpture of a screaming man, then insists that he take off his shirt so she can wash it for him. (This is more of a command than a kind gesture.) When Marcy finally returns, she’s a jumble of nerves — giddy and giggly one second as she exclaims: “I feel like something incredible is really going to happen here!” but by turns defensive, evasive and even combative.
“Desperately Seeking Susan,” in which Arquette starred as a bored suburban housewife who goes on a mistaken-identity adventure in Manhattan, had come out about six months earlier in spring 1985. This time, Arquette gets to play the free-spirited New Yorker, and she’s just radiant. She has this buzzing energy about her that makes her completely unpredictable at all times, and she brings out the best in Dunne, even though there’s always something off about their characters’ dynamic. They talk a lot, but they never communicate.
From here, Paul bounces around between a series of seemingly random but increasingly connected people within the same SoHo neighborhood — but those ties only serve to make the night seem stranger, rather than making it make sense. Among them are Teri Garr as an unhappy waitress and John Heard as the bartender at a dive where the jukebox exclusively plays romantic, 1950s oldies. It’s a surreal touch reminiscent of David Lynch, superficially harkening to a more innocent, wholesome time but portending danger.
Garr’s Julie is one of several women who invite Paul into their apartments with the intention of helping him, but they only worsen his conundrum. (The perfectly lined-up, hot pink cans of Aqua Net hair spray in Julie’s tiny studio are a nice, creepy touch.) Garr is her charmingly delirious self, veering between effervescence and despondence. But Catherine O’Hara may be even more insane as the volatile driver of a Mister Softee ice cream truck who offers to take Paul back to the Upper East Side. Again, Scorsese takes something sweet and makes it chilling, as the tinkling of the ice cream truck’s jingle takes on a sinister tone.
All Paul wants to do is go home, but he’s stuck in this purgatory. The great Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese’s editor from the very beginning, navigates the drastic tonal shifts as Paul swings from one person and one adventure to the next without ever actually going anywhere. There’s also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from the maestro himself at a German-themed punk bar, shining a roving spotlight on various leather-clad, mohawked dudes as they jump around and slam into each other.
While the hodgepodge of characters and events makes “After Hours” singularly strange, it reminded me of another movie about another clueless dude going on a bizarre ride through a city’s underbelly: “The Big Lebowski.” Like “After Hours,” the Coen brothers’ comedy wasn’t nearly as appreciated when it came out in 1998 as it is now. And both films have a cosmic through-line to their seemingly random encounters, with the repetition of various lines, images and ideas creating a rhythm.
All the women in Paul’s orbit have a similar hairstyle, for example (except Garr, whose hair is swept up in a twist, but she’s also blonde). They all wear yellow or at least cream at some point. Keys keep getting tossed down to the street, while Plaster of Paris sculptures keep popping up. Paul consistently doesn’t have enough money for the things he needs, yet an elusive $20 bill floats around. And the deathly image that adorns a crucial keychain appears later on a tattoo.
It might not make any sense. It might not even matter. But it’s a blast while it lasts, and it brings the most perfect of endings along with the sunrise.
As far as weirdo 80’s Scorsese goes, i prefer King of Comedy a little to this, but how could anyone not love After Hours? What a beautiful, one of a kind walking dream. You know Eyes Wide Shut owes something to this movie. In a weird way, i think Hugo many years later is a companion pair to this, still the story of a lost soul in a world they hardly understand. I love Teri Garr in this too, and Griffin’s ramble about the paperweight. A nice paring with Rumble Fish, by F.F. Coppola.