RFI: Classical Music in Scorsese's "After Hours"

God, this is such a brilliant movie. Hard to believe it was panned when it came out. I also love "The King of Comedy," another neglected Scorsese gem.

It was panned? I thought I remembered (at least) Siskel & Ebert liking it.

this and king of comedy are great, some of my favorite scorsese movies; I'd rather watch either of them than Gang of New York any day

I've seen specious speculation online to the effect that Joe Frank and Joseph Minion are in fact (no lie!) THE SAME PERSON!

But yeah, I'm failing to see any scandal here. The guy was caught and they reached a cash settlement. And twenty years went by. And nobody can remember some guy-they've-never-heard-of giving money to ANOTHER guy-they've-never-heard-of, and that's evidence of some kinda COVER-UP?? Jesus.

And yeah...a fine, fine movie. But so's "Vampire's Kiss". (If only they'd gotten a bigshot like Scorsese or (even) DePalma to direct.)

CONSPIRACY!

I'm trying to think of other movies/stories that have a similar plot device to this: ie., the "through the Looking Glass" kind of thing where a person's regular life is suddenly interrupted and they are taken into a kind of alternative universe by an improbable series of coincidences and events,

Something Wild is the other classic example of this plot strategy.

The Yuppie Nightmare was a well used theme at the time; Something Wild, Pacific Heights, Into the Night, Fatal Attraction, Desperately Seeking Susan. No doubt several others I've long since forgotten.

I don't think Pacific Heights has much to do with Something Wild/After Hours.

ALL STARRING GRIFFIN DUNNE

Pacific Heights was much later actually

I guess Bonfire of the Vanities is the mother of all stories where this is concerned

Yeah, was a little later (1990) than the others, that genre was pretty played out by then.

Good for Joe Frank he's terrific...I love that movie too, used to live down there and whenever I watch it I get misty for my lost city :(

If anyone cares.. click here!

always liked use of that peggy lee song in this underrated movie

Watched this again last night, and read Ebert's Great Movies writeup afterward. Is it just me, or does Ebert totally misread this scene?

Another device was to offhandedly suggest alarming possibilities about characters, as when Kiki describes burns, and Paul finds a graphic medical textbook about burn victims in the bedroom of Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), the girl he has gone to meet at Kiki's apartment. Are the burns accidental or deliberate? The possibility is there, because Kiki is into sadomasochism. Trying to find a shared conversational topic, Paul tells Marcy the story of the time he was a little boy in the hospital and was left for a time in the burn unit, but blindfolded and warned not to remove the blindfold. He did, and what he saw horrified him. Strange, that entering the lives of two women obsessed with burns, he would have his own burn story, but coincidence and synchronicity are the engines of the plot.

I always thought the whole reason he broke it off with Marcy (using the bad pot as an excuse) was that he thought she had major burn injuries and he was still traumatized by the childhood experience (which we never get to hear in full)- he thought she was who Kiki was referring to with the "some women I know are covered with scars" line, was increasingly freaked out by the tube of 2nd-degree burn cream, the medical textbook, Marcy's refusal to wear anything that didn't fully cover her, her shutting the door and turning off the lights, etc. We don't even know about Kiki's S&M thing until later in the movie, when Paul brings the sculpture back to her loft. In Ebert's reading, I don't see how one of the bleakest jokes in the movie even works (where Paul starts gingerly pulling the covers off of Marcy's body to look for burn wounds and becomes hysterical when he doesn't find any).

Didn't know that was Bad Brains in the club scene.

Ebert is a dirty old man. I

Speaking of Scorsese soundtracks, even if I don't get around to seeing Shutter Island, I'm going to pick up the Robbie Robertson-curated soundtrack:

CD 1
1. Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes
2. Krysztof Penderecki - Symphony No. 3 - IV. Passacaglia - Allegro moderato
3. John Cage - Music for Marcel Duchamp
4. Nam June Paik - Hommage a John Cage
5. György Ligeti - Lontano
6. Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel 2
7. Johnnie Ray - Cry
8. Max Richter - On the Nature of Daylight
9. Giacinto Scelsi - Uaxuctum - III. (untitled)
10. Gustav Mahler - Quartet in A minor for piano and strings

CD 2
1. John Adams - Christian Zeal and Activity
2. Lou Harrison - Suite for Symphonic Strings - IX. Nocturne
3. Brian Eno - Lizard Point
4. Alfred Schnittke - Four Hymns - II. For Cello and Double Bass
5. John Cage - Root of an Unfocus
6. Ingram Marshal - Alctraz - I. Prelude: The Bay
7. Kay Starr - Wheel of Fortune
8. Lonnie Johnson - Tomorrow Night
9. Max Richter/Dinah Washington - On the Nature of Daylight/This Bitter Earth

love this fucking movie so much

i know this is kind of challopsy, but sometimes i think this + king of comedy are scorsese's best films. he was really firing on all cylinders.

Glenn Kenny: http://decider.com/2015/10/14/after-hours-turns-30-soho-then-and-now/?_ga=1.192694638.590912087.1354119766

I watched this movie too many times and when I see it now it just feels like a nostalgia trip :(

nice piece, great movie

Funny, I used to go to Sway Lounge on Spring St. a lot circa 2000 - I didn't realize then that the Emerald Pub across the street from it was the "Terminal Bar," or that Miss Beehive '67 Teri Garr's apartment was right next door to Sway!

I still find it odd that Scorsese's only ever made two straight up comedies, given that they're both all-time classics

three

What am I missing? Are you counting Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore?

the wolf of wall street i assume?

scorsese is usually pretty good at comedy. goodfellas is almost one, the departed has moments funnier than most actual comedies etc

OK yeah, I totally avoided that one

nomar otm

"I'm the guy who does his fuckin job" cracks me up every time

fuckin

Ellerby: Our target: microprocessors. Yes, those. I don't know what they are, you don't know what they are, who gives a fuck?

I was referring to WOWS but yeah I think a credible argument could be made that the Departed is a comedy, albeit a gruesome one. Watching it I certainly don't feel any kind of concern or sympathy for any of the characters or the overall plotline, feels like almost everything - the violence, the combative dialogue, the betrayals - are played for laughs.

Not the rigth thread but this is a nice podcast on King of Comedy: http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/film-comment-podcast-martin-scorsese/