Still on the black comedy tip, After Hours is a buried and forgotten Scorsese movie. We unearthed it from a list of classic ‘New York Movies’. Olof often craves New York movies after the Knicks win the basketball.
After Hours stars Griffin Dunne (otherwise known as the undead bestie from American Werewolf in London)as a kind of neurotic, misogynistic whinger who pursues Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), a girl he met in a cafe, across town to Soho. Once there he loses his money, finds that he doesn’t like the girl, and is stranded in Soho were a series of seemingly atomised mishaps draw together into something resembling conspiracy.
Each time Paul meets a new Soho personality the action becomes isolated. We enter into a beautifully framed and totally complete world, the loft, the bedsit, the diner all production designed to Almodovar standards. Here interactions contain their own conflict and climax and are linked to the next only technically, and by the city, which is (as in most New York movies) a character in it’s own right.
The screenplay was written by Joseph Minion while he was still studying screenwriting in college. And it certainly has that college, hyper-referential absurdist thing going on. A little bit Ionesco, a little bit Beckett and sometimes a little bit too smart for it’s own good. For instance I was not surprised to read that some of the dialogue was adapted from Kafka, and only mildly amused to find that Minion was actually successfully sued by playwright Joe Frank for plagiarism.
Hell, it’s hard to be original while you are still in college.
Actually for much of the film I was reminded of Woody Allen’s Death! A Play which was adapted from Eugene Ionesco’s The Killer and later adapted in turn to become Allen’s 1992 film Shadows and Fog. The two scripts share the sense of isolation and paranoia as a man travels around the city meeting various freaks and fiends whose motivations are complex and often psychotic. Even their climaxes are the same – with protagonists hunted down by neighbourhood vigilantes.
What After Hours has that I don’t remember from Death! (Woody is a romantic) is a distinct misogynistic attitude made palatable only by the stylised beauty of the scenes and the obviously flawed asshole-ism of the protagonist.
Soho after hours, for protagonist Paul, is populated by undesirable women (too old, too weird, too crazy, too drunk) who seek to pray on him, take advantage of him and generally fuck with his mood. It’s strange that a man who has travelled across town on the smell of sex spends much of the rest of the night avoiding having it and this fact, along with the constant and obvious homophobic caricaturing makes it tempting to read After Hours as a closet movie.
Paul’s worldview is paranoid to say the least. But also there is something about his up-town jerk persona that sits uncomfortably. He continues to pursue that which frightens him. This pursuit takes him to punk clubs and dive bars and leads him to steal and cheat and philander, however the consequences are always someone else’s fault.
“I’m just a word-processor,” says Paul in his own defence. But it is clear to us in the audience that Paul doesn’t really hold this humble opinion of himself and that the threat is generated by his paranoia which is generated by an ego that asserts it’s unique value over everything else. When Paul needs people, he has licence to do what he wants. When people need Paul it’s a pain in the arse and even repulsive.
Actually, it’s a fairly common affliction for young men I believe, so in terms of the black comedy check list lets tick box a: scathing social comedy.
For my part I always find these kinds of characters hard to deal with. While I think that Seinfeld is funny, I find it’s existence and popularity pretty depressing. And as for Curb Your Enthusiasm… well, it’s tempting to go on my own decline of the roman empire, signs of the end rant about that one. I mean really, these men are just appalling in every respect. My question in these narratives is always – why on earth are all the other characters in the text putting up with them? And then by extension – why am I?
Having said this I really enjoyed After Hours. Partly for it’s absurdist theatricality, partly for its artful directorial flourishes and great camera work. I have spoken before about my love of blue neon and subway steam. I could probably sit through a film consisting of nothing more than that, some jazz and a monologue and come out singing the news. In fact, that does sound familiar…
Girl and Gun 