Scorsese Watch: After Hours (1985)

Watched:  05/03/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Martin Scorsese

I have massive gaps in my Scorsese viewing - just huge, unforgivable gaps - and this movie was among the missing pieces.  I've been intending to watch it since watching the one-off episode of Ted Lasso, "Beard After Hours", which, to me, is one of the best episodes of TV ever produced.  And, you will guess, took inspiration from this movie.

The movie was pitched on the Criterion Channel as part of a collection of movies that happen over one night, and I assume After Hours (1985) was the first one they put on the white board when working out the idea.   It's the rare Scorsese comedy, steeped in 1980's-ness - maybe specifically New York 1980's-ness - and has a cast that is both very of the era, and maybe helped make some careers.

If Woody Allen made kids think that moving to New York was going to be all upper-middle-class shenanigans and politely having sex off-screen, Scorsese was tuned into other neighborhoods, and what happened in the city that never sleeps after Woody had turned in for the evening.  

Griffin Dunne was riding a wave of "maybe this guy is our next star" around this period, as a sort of charming everyman.  How and why these things pivot is anyone's guess.  He's kind of perfect in the role here, a guy who just works a dull office job in what we'd now call data entry, and who - despite his relative youth - is already pretty jaded.  He can't even feign attention when his trainee (Bronson Pinchot!) starts talking about his *real* aspirations.  

But that night in a diner, while reading the notoriously libidinous Tropic of Cancer, he attracts the attention of Rosanna Arquette.*  This leads to Dunne later taking a cab to meet Arquette, but losing his sole $20 bill out the window on the way over - and effectively stranding him across town.  

The rest of the movie is a series of misunderstandings, odd encounters as - who the hell is still up at 2:00 AM like it's the middle of the day?  And a sort of odd, circular movie as Dunne tries over and over to get train fare, get his keys back, and just get the hell out of the neighborhood where he's found himself.

The movie features Cheech & Chong, Linda Fiorentino, Dick Miller, Catherine O'Hara, John Heard, Verna Bloom, Victor Argo and Teri Garr.**  

I'm fairly certain this movie would kill in a crowded theater with folks along for the ride as it builds and builds on the increasing absurdism.  Watching it alone, forty years on, is a different experience.  Not that the movie isn't funny - it is.  But the world of the film is long gone, some of the folks in it have disappeared, some are beloved stars (O'Hara!) and the New York of the film is a cultural memory - whether it actually still exists or not (I'm not a New Yorker - couldn't say).  There's almost a wistfulness one can feel watching the film at this point that was not part of the formulation, but a product of the ensuing years.

I *enjoyed* the film more than I found it laugh out loud hilarious.  It does come from a school of comedy that I dig, but I also think it's clear that comedy is hard, even for Scorsese.  A lot relies on your sympathy/ empathy for Dunne, and that's something he brings in spades to the role.  He's far from a perfect person caught up in circumstances, he makes some not great decisions, but his text and subtext lead the audience to a real "who among us?" point in almost every scene as he hopes for a good outcome and is once again thwarted.

Despite close the loop for Dunne at film's end, nothing that occurs over the course of the movie is actually resolved - which may be an entirely unique filmic experience and a bit jarring.  But also feels a bit more honest.  How many "in one night" or "over one day" movies have we seen where you figure "that night lasted at least 36 hours".  But it's not a movie where Dunne is there to save the day, he's there to survive.

Anyway, I generally liked it, but admit to feeling a certain distance from the film.  But would certainly rewatch it.

*For younger readers, Arquette was considered an 80's sex symbol, a notion which has kind of been forgotten except as immortalized in Toto's "Rosanna".

**Garr's hairdo is supposed to be funny, I think.  A dated relic of the mid-60's.  But Teri Garr can kind of do anything and look great, and all these years later you realize the beehive look was (a) never that bad and (b) dated better than a lot of what folks were doing in the mid-80's.