1185 After Hours

[DarkImbecile]

After Hours


Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman (Rosanna Arquette). So begins the wildest night of his life, as bizarre occurrences—involving underground-art punks, a distressed waitress, a crazed Mister Softee truck driver, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweight—pile up with anxiety-inducing relentlessness and thwart his attempts to get home. With this Kafkaesque cult classic, Martin Scorsese—abetted by Michael Ballhaus’s kinetic cinematography and scene-stealing supporting turns by Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, and John Heard—directed a darkly comic tale of mistaken identity, turning the desolate night world of 1980s SoHo into a bohemian wonderland of surreal menace.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, approved by editor Thelma Schoonmaker, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New program featuring director Martin Scorsese interviewed by writer Fran Lebowitz
• Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Scorsese, Schoonmaker, director of photography Michael Ballhaus, actor and producer Griffin Dunne, and producer Amy Robinson, with additional comments recorded in 2023
• Documentary about the making of the film featuring Dunne, Robinson, and Schoonmaker
• New program on the look of the film featuring costume designer Rita Ryack and production designer Jeffrey Townsend
• Deleted scenes
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley

[Peacock]

Finally people can stop asking for this film every month!

[jazzo]

Just for that, it's jumped to the top of my speculation list for August's releases next month.

[beamish14]

No involvement from writer Joseph Minion whatsoever, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. I’m sure Scorsese can’t speak publicly about the film’s lawsuit from Joe Frank. It’s truly unbelievable how much Minion lifted from Frank’s Lies

[dwk]

No involvement from writer Joseph Minion whatsoever, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. I’m sure Scorsese can’t speak publicly about the film’s lawsuit from Joe Frank. It’s truly unbelievable how much Minion lifted from Frank’s Lies

Piggybacking on the last few posts in the Kino Studio Classics thread, this is a special features topic that the studio would 100% veto right away.

[pistolwink]

Joe Frank is generous in noting that after the first reel or so Minion's screenplay is wholly his own. But the "lift" is truly bizarre.

Minion wrote two really excellent screenplays within a few years of each other (this one and Vampire's Kiss) and then nothing of much of note. strange.

[beamish14]

Joe Frank is generous in noting that after the first reel or so Minion's screenplay is wholly his own. But the "lift" is truly bizarre.

Minion wrote two really excellent screenplays within a few years of each other (this one and Vampire's Kiss) and then nothing of much of note. strange.

Motorama (1991) has been on my watch list for years. Like Scorsese, I believe he was an NYU student who subsequently became an instructor there

[oh yeah]

Pre-ordered this, very excited! Easily one of my favorite Scorsese films, right at the top with Goodfellas and Casino. Actually I think it's a more interesting film in some ways, just such a fascinatingly bizarre experience. It reminds me of a more comedic/absurd Eyes Wide Shut, also one of my favorites. They both have Greenwich Village as this dreamlike labyrinth, and both run very much on dream-logic.

[pistolwink]

Not Greenwich Village but Soho (which was a very different place in 1985 than it would become subsequently).

I love this movie in part because despite it being something other than a personal project in the usual sense, Scorsese's excitement and investment is evident absolutely everywhere. There's not a scene in it that isn't almost heroically inventive (and funny). I'm sure there are "better" Scorsese movies by many measures, but this is my favorite.

[hearthesilence]

I always think about this film when I'm around SoHo. FWIW, where Paul is stranded seems to generally fall in the area between the Angelika and the Anthology Film Archives.

[Randall Maysin Again]

I don't care for this film or think it's funny, like at all. I just find its alleged humor cutesy and painful, and Scorsese keeps hot-footing the damn thing with his nervous excitation and little camera doo-dads which just serves to make the film more unpleasant. There's really nothing for me to whole-heartedly enjoy here, the film is a silly little curio, confidently stylized but totally arid, with its hermetically-sealed "world", that doesn't even work on its own terms. It has two semi-dubious virtues: Michael Ballhaus's highly accomplished cinematography, although Pauline Kael is dead-on in her verdict that the film leaves the cinematographer with nothing to express but the film's pointlessly stylized shallowness. I did also enjoy seeing Teri Garr for once get to play a role that is both tailored to her warped sweetness and charm but that also has a hilarious psychotic edge to it--her deranged aerosol-can-collecting waitress could be the ultimate Teri Garr role, but although I don't think the script is a complete let-down in the material it gives her, her role remains little more than a tantalizing idea that has basically nothing in the way of real comic pay-offs for the actress. The entire film is like that, though, only worse. John Heard is purportedly good in this too, but truth be told I don't even remember his scenes. Not recommended!

[pistolwink]

I can imagine a film like this being "cutesy" but I think what keeps it from that is the basic venality of the central character and the way even the most seemingly innocuous interactions carry an implicit threat. I have problems with some of Scorsese's stylistically over-amped later films but here the flashy style seems very purposeful and expressive.

[FrauBlucher]

Not Greenwich Village but Soho (which was a very different place in 1985 than it would become subsequently)

Back in the day and I mean way back (50s, 60s, 70s and maybe even further then that) Soho was more like an extension of Little Italy. The neighborhoods butted up against each other. People that lived in Little Italy would do their shopping in Soho. In the 80s that started changing when the younger Italians left Manhattan and the older generation died off, Little Italy started shrinking and then was overtaken by the Chinese as Chinatown grew, which was the neighborhood on the other side of Little Italy. Now Little Italy consists of one block and has become a tourist attraction (ugh).

At the same time Soho started changing. Soon many of those stores became vacant. Younger people moved into Soho because it was near the night spots of the East and West Villages. Also there were many lofts that businesses vacated, now became available that were tuned into homes to artists and musicians in Soho which then turned that neighborhood into the trendy place it became and still is today.

[Computer Raheem]

Beaver Hours

Interesting that the 4K restoration looks more white-balanced that the DVD

[feihong]

I don't care for this film or think it's funny, like at all. I just find its alleged humor cutesy and painful, and Scorsese keeps hot-footing the damn thing with his nervous excitation and little camera doo-dads which just serves to make the film more unpleasant. There's really nothing for me to whole-heartedly enjoy here, the film is a silly little curio, confidently stylized but totally arid, with its hermetically-sealed "world", that doesn't even work on its own terms. It has two semi-dubious virtues: Michael Ballhaus's highly accomplished cinematography, although Pauline Kael is dead-on in her verdict that the film leaves the cinematographer with nothing to express but the film's pointlessly stylized shallowness. I did enjoy seeing Teri Garr for once get to play a role that is both tailored to her warped sweetness and charm but that also has a hilarious psychotic edge to it--her deranged aerosol-can-collecting waitress could be the ultimate Teri Garr role, but although I don't think the script is a complete let-down in the material it gives her, her role remains little more than a tantalizing idea that has basically nothing in the way of real comic pay-offs for the actress. The entire film is like that, though, only worse. John Heard is purportedly good in this too, but truth be told I don't even remember his scenes. Not recommended!

Agreed. Never understood the appeal of this movie.

[jazzo]

And to me, it’s not only my favourite Scorsese, but one of my all-timers - a film , like Demme’s Something Wild, that changed the cinema processing chemicals in my brain.

[MichaelB]

I managed to see it five times in the 1980s, because it kept getting double-billed, and of course back then you had to watch every film in a repertory double/triple bill otherwise you wouldn't get your £2.50's worth.

And yes, very much one of my favourite Scorseses too. I remember when it came out, someone observed that some directors create pleasure by striving for the extraordinary while others create it by being effortlessly in command of their material - and while Scorsese is often the former, here he's the latter.

[Randall Maysin Again]

I've decided that I ultimately quite like Scorsese, but the amount of praise he gets reaches a pretty ridiculous level. He's a wonderful, accomplished filmmaker, but why So. Much. Praise. and exaltedness exactly? Why does his Church of Obsessiveness and Cinema Worship have so many parishioners? The extreme obsessiveness is the Scorsese i want to get away from. And the idea that he's never made a bad or significantly wanting film... Let's see, Mean Streets, New York, New York, this film we're tawkin' about here, The Age of Innocence (with significant caveats I admit--but they just pruned too much out of it and all that's left is this little twig, and DDL makes a real douche of himself), Gangs of New York, The Departed. It sounds there are a few other semi- or total stinkers out there, but this is of what I have seen.

[Randall Maysin Again]

But a Scorsese stinker is not like your usual terrible movie. I mean, Gangs of New York is the closest he's come, I think, to a critical fiasco, and while its an unholy mess and some of the visual decisions I remember being quite distasteful, it's still pretty darned entertaining, I just don't admire it hardly at all. I think of all the films I mentioned, only After Hours is a complete failure for me as entertainment.

[MV88]

I've decided that I ultimately quite like Scorsese, but the amount of praise he gets reaches a pretty ridiculous level. He's a wonderful, accomplished filmmaker, but why So. Much. Praise. and exaltedness exactly? Why does his Church of Obsessiveness and Cinema Worship have so many parishioners? The extreme obsessiveness is the Scorsese i want to get away from. And the idea that he's never made a bad or significantly wanting film... Let's see, Mean Streets, New York, New York, this film we're tawkin' about here, The Age of Innocence (with significant caveats I admit--but they just pruned too much out of it and all that's left is this little twig, and DDL makes a real douche of himself), Gangs of New York, The Departed. It sounds there are a few other semi- or total stinkers out there, but this is of what I have seen.

All of the films you mentioned here are considered among his best by quite a few people, although of course I acknowledge that you’re far from alone in thinking they are subpar. But I kind of think that adds to his legacy overall…the fact that he’s not only made several films that are almost universally praised as masterpieces, but also a few that continue to generate wildly divisive reactions. It makes it more interesting to read people’s takes on his best (or worst) films, because there is a lot of room for debate. Personally, I’d rank Mean Streets and The Age of Innocence among his very best, and while I would personally agree with you about The Departed being one of his lesser works, it definitely has its ardent fans, and I find that very interesting. Honestly, as much as I like Taxi Driver, it doesn’t have the same appeal to me that it did when I was younger, and it would probably just barely crack my top 10 Scorsese films at this point. But the relative lack of consensus regarding the hierarchy of his filmography only makes him more interesting to me, so I guess what I’m saying is I don’t agree that it makes him any less great that he’s made several films that tend to polarize people (and for the record, I was under the impression that Mean Streets was one of the consensus picks for top-tier Scorsese, so that may just be one for which you are in a very small minority for not liking…which is totally okay, by the way).

[pianocrash]

He's a wonderful, accomplished filmmaker, but why So. Much. Praise. and exaltedness exactly?

Besides him being a master craftsman, and being blessing to be working in a prime spot of the timeline of moviemaking, some people don't want to put the work into digesting the lifetime of film form he has experienced, and by that rationale, he has become the living centerpiece of the best version of the form available today. It's a blessing and a curse, probably, but I agree with your point that even his worst films are highly entertaining (same could be said for PT Anderson or Tarantino, two other popular American filmmakers who have followed in his footsteps, sometimes in the most literal sense), but it's also extremely easy to pinpoint the top of the mountain when you're stuck at the bottom, or forever reaching for the top (I say this in regards to other filmmakers who won't even approach the pulpit, mostly). And I don't think a majority of popular entertainment is really reaching for anything, or has much ambition past turning a dollar over, so in that dignity of the form and the film as an art becomes Scorsese most. When Hitchcock was alive, was that the case? Or Kurosawa? I don't know, because we aren't so glutted with opportunity of having everything available immediately, and the form was even more astoundingly difficult to reach for, let alone talk about with strangers across the world so instantly.

I have fond memories of watching After Hours on FLIX twenty years ago at least three or four times a week for months on end, but despite owning that Scorsese box on DVD, I never did a rewatch since. It almost didn't register as a Scorsese film for me for a very long while (Griffin Dunne can do no wrong), but the paranoia haze of this film has been permeating the last five or six years of recent filmmaking for me to remember that feeling, all over again.

[therewillbeblus]

I think Scorsese is at his best when he's making more tonally complex films. The Wolf of Wall Street is both as simple as its superficial pleasures and far more complex, and Scorsese doesn't overstate any of that underlying complexity, he only overstates the absurd behavior that overstates itself. It's in that indulgence of id and cinema that he establishes his punchlines that come when he makes adjustments to film grammar to inform depth of character, psychology, and existential and sociopolical themes on Americana. Taxi Driver, Bringing out the Dead] and The Irishman are also a lot more complex, tonally and thematically and emotionally, than they appear to be - so much so with Bringing out the Dead] that it just doesn't land with mass audiences at all. But I think it's Scorsese's masterpiece.

After Hours is a fun tonal mix that's also a lot more interesting and complex than it lets on, but so are all the best "One Crazy Night" pitch-dark noir comedies from the 80s. Into the Night is my favorite, Foul Play used to be fun when I was a kid but sucks today because it's as paper-thin as that subgenre tagline. I think a lot of people are comfortable with Scorsese in Montage Mode of cinematic digestibility and flair, but I love his left-turns. Taxi Driver is one of the few tonally-risky projects he made that seemed to hit everybody hard. I've seen it tens of times over the years since I was a kid, and it's only started to really reveal its intricacies in the last few. I haven't seen After Hours since I was young either, but I loved it then, and I'm excited to see how it plays as an adult

[Rupert Pupkin]

Hi there,

There is not "Timeline" option in After Hours whilst the movie is chaptered. It does not appear on the pop-up menu and it is even so not there.
Raging Bull had a timeline option.
I wonder if this was a deliberate choice by Martin Scorsese (like David Lynch's movies) or a Criterion decision to stop the Timeline option; or "mistake" during the authoring.
I have always liked to bookmarks scene almost like OCD a-la "DVDBeaver" and this was an option included at the beginning of Criterion Blu-Ray, and in my humble opinion so simple and intuitive for instance to switch between 2 different audio commentaries without having to push the audio button.
That is what I use to do : go back to my favorite scenes which I have bookmarked and listen to the audio commentary. This is even more useful where there are 2 different audio commentaries (which often are not chaptered).

After Hours is Criterion number 1985; I have Thelma & Louise 1980 : on R.Scott's disks there is the "Timeline" option which makes easy to switch between the 2 audio commentaries.
So, I can bookmark Brad Bitt's "tablette de chocolat" in his cowboy ahoy silver outfit, but can't bookmark Rosanna and Linda ?
Looks like a Paul Hackett's syndrome.
That said, the transfer is absolutely gorgeous; way better in terms of details, film texture than the WEB 1080 version which I have seen recently.
The inner artwork has Martin's drawing in the toilets (the one with the shark)
And it is the first time that I can see the reproduction (on the booklet) of Paul's "wanted" drawing.
Bonus were very interesting. It's a bit odd, I think I have already seen the deleted scenes (perhaps on the Warner DVD ?) but some seems familiar to me like the stroboscopic frantic scene which (which is perhaps a dark clin d'œil to "Looking For Mister Goodbar" ?) makes me wonder if one day the French TV did not broadcast one day an alternate cut (if there is of this movie).

[therewillbeblus]

Hi there,

There is not "Timeline" option in After Hours whilst the movie is chaptered. It does not appear on the pop-up menu and it is even so not there.
Raging Bull had a timeline option.
I wonder if this was a deliberate choice by Martin Scorsese (like David Lynch's movies) or a Criterion decision to stop the Timeline option; or "mistake" during the authoring.

This has been recently discussed in another thread, starting here

[cdnchris]

Yes, all of July's titles are missing the feature, except the standard Blu-ray on Breathless (because it's the old disc). They said they will no longer be adding the feature to new releases.