After Hours Scorsese (1985)

Editor's Note A surrealistic black comedy that plays on the paranoia and dread of everyday life in the Big Apple, Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS captures what is easily the worst night of one man's life. Computer programmer Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) makes a casual date with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), a woman he meets in a coffee shop, unaware that it's about to unleash a nightmarish odyssey through the bowels of lower Manhattan. Upon arriving at Marcy's spacious Soho loft, Paul meets her unnerving artist roommate, Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), and the night takes a turn for the worse. Sensing the bad vibes that lie ahead, he immediately decides to return to his home on the Upper East Side. Unfortunately, this isn't such an easy task. In a seemingly endless series of strange and dangerous encounters, Paul begins to fear that he might never make it home again. Working from a clever script by Joseph Minion, Scorsese's film is both hysterical and frightening in its depiction of an insane, neurotic New York City. As the unfortunate hero, Dunne delivers his lines with a baffled incredulousness that also works as a voice for the sympathetic audience, who doesn't know whether to laugh or cringe when things really begin to heat up.

	Griffin Dunne
	John Heard
	Rosanna Arquette
	Teri Garr
	Tommy Chong
	Verna Bloom
	Amy Robinson - Producer
	Deborah Schindler - Associate Producer
	Griffen Dunne - Producer
	Howard Shore - Musical Score
	Jeffrey Townsend - Production Designer
	Joseph Minion - Writer
	Martin Scorsese - Director
	Michael Ballhaus - Director of Photography
	Robert F. Colesberry - Producer
	Thelma Schoonmaker - Editor

Take an eventful one-night trip through the bizarre underworld of New York City as a regular guy (Griffin Dunne) is unwittingly thrust into a series of comic misadventures when he loses his cab fare late at night in Manhattan's Soho district. Joseph Minion's tightly constructed script, combined with Martin Scorsese's stylish direction, makes AFTER HOURS a highly entertaining ride that takes the "this night couldn't get any worse" concept to an entirely new level. New York Times
"...An entertaining tease, with individually arresting sequences that are well acted....Ballhaus's camera takes on an aggressive, willful personality of its own..." 09/13/1985 p.C6

Variety
"...A must for serious-minded filmgoers....Uniformly vibrant and interesting [actors]..." 09/11/1985

Los Angeles Times
"...Sweetly ominous....AFTER HOURS is dazzling movie making....The film is beautifully cast..." 09/27/1985 p.C1

USA Today
"Shot speedily at night in guerrilla filmmaking style....[A] wicked black comedy..." 08/27/2004 p.4E

Sight and Sound
"[T]he closest thing to an Alberto Sordi comedy in recent American cinema..." 10/01/2004 p.75

Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
...a brilliant film, one of the year's best. It is also a most curious film... a film that is so ori - Roger Ebert