After Hours (1985)

A 1985 American Black Comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese. To date it's Scorsese's only "pure" comedy and a very dark one too.

The film takes place in New York City over the course of a single night. Unhappy office drone Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) meets a beautiful girl in a cafe and ends up calling over at her place in SoHo. After things work out badly and he ends up leaving hurriedly, the remainder of the movie chronicles his attempts to get home and the often surreal obstacles he faces.

The film's cast also includes Rosanna Arquette, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O'Hara, Verna Bloom, John Heard, Dick Miller, and Cheech & Chong.

It was the second of three somewhat similar movies in which a milquetoast guy meets a very worldly girl, with things then taking a turn for the dark, preceded by Into the Night earlier in 1985, then followed by Something Wild in 1986.

Not to be confused with the Cracked web series of the same name, the Seinen yuri romance manga of the same name, the fan video series Marvel/DC: After Hours, or the Twilight Zone episode "The After Hours".

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This movie contains examples of:

• 555: Julia states that her phone number is "Five, Four, Four, Three, Three." When Paul notes that there are not enough numbers, Julia clarifies that it's KL5-4433. KL5 is the fictional exchange name for 555.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Julie to Paul, who wants nothing to do with her flirting or advances and leaves her apartment with an obviously empty promise to call her later. Paul's brushoff comes back to bite him when a scorned Julie starts putting up fake wanted posters of him.
• Actor Allusion: Julie, played by Teri Garr, dancing to "Last Train to Clarksville" and enthusing over The Monkees. One of Garr's early film appearances was in the Monkee movie Head. The clip of Julie was part of the opening video montage played during the 2013 Monkees reunion concert tour.
• Ambiguous Situation: Marcy claims to have been raped by a boyfriend, but it's unclear if she's referring to an ex-boyfriend, her husband, or her current boyfriend, Tom. It's made even more ambiguous by the latter appearing to be a Nice Guy.
• And I Must Scream: Paul's brief entrapment in a statue, complete with his mouth being taped up. As originally written, he was going to end up that way. He eventually breaks out of it thanks to him being unintentionally kidnapped by the burglars and falling out of the back of their van.
• Bad Humor Truck: Mild example with Gail's Mister Softee truck: it is the only vehicle amongst the angry horde that is hounding Paul, and is driven by one of its craziest members.
• Bathroom Stall Graffiti: At the pub's bathroom, Paul sees a graffiti with a shark biting a man's large penis off, which makes him stop peeing.
• The Big Rotten Apple: An absurdist take on it with burglars who never get caught, rather unstable citizens, apathetic police, and the usual domestic murder.
• Black Comedy: A man is set up to be killed by a pissed-off lynch mob by a crazy woman and nobody he meets being willing to help him and even going out of their way to make his night-time escapade just that much more of a living hell. It's an exercise in laughing or cringing.
• Book Ends: Paul ends up right back in his desk the very next morning.
• Bouncer: He only lets people with Mohawks into Club Berlin.
• Brains and Bondage: Kiki is a SoHo artist, and Paul mistakenly believes she's been tied up against her will.
• Brick Joke:
  • Paul goes into a diner to use a restroom, but the owner tells him it's for customers only, so he orders a burger and coffee and then ducks out. He later unwittingly ends up in the same diner where the bartender from earlier requests he get a glass of water. The owner silently brings the water, along with the burger and coffee.
  • En route to SoHo, Paul's only dollar bill (a twenty) ends up flying out of the cab, forcing him to ditch and leaving behind an angry driver. He later manages to get some money and finds the same driver again, who is all too happy to take the money and leave him stranded to his fate.
• Butt-Monkey: The entire movie is centered around Paul having an absolutely horrible night.
• Caught in the Bad Part of Town: The plot is Paul Hackett's odyssey to survive one night in New York's SoHo district while the world decides to make him an incredibly dark example of the Butt-Monkey (as in, "he may end up lynched by an angry mob that mistook him for a thief" kind of Butt-Monkey). At one point he even drops to his knees in the street and begs God and/or the universe to tell him what he did wrong to warrant everything happening to him. When he witnesses a murder near the end, he's so far into Giving Up on Logic that he can only snark that the lynching mob will blame him for it somehow.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Subverted with the $20 bill he spots on Kiki's sculpture. He eventually does steal it, but he loses it immediately afterwards.
  • The flyer for Club Berlin given by punk to Paul at the diner, which narrowly saves him from the angry mob.
• Chekhov's Skill: Julie's portrait-sketching abilities and her second job at a Xerox place. After Paul rejects her advances, she uses these to print fake wanted posters falsely identifying him as the neighborhood robber.
• Chick Magnet: Every female character Paul meets is attracted to him. Marcy is instantly smitten by Paul and invites him over for a fling. Kiki is also interested in Paul and is visibly disappointed when Marcy gets in the way. Later, Julie throws herself at Paul and is upset when he does not return her affections. Gail also seems to want to keep Paul at her apartment. In the end, June seems to want to keep Paul imprisoned in her apartment inside a sculpture.
• Closed Circle: Paul does not have the money to pay for transportation away from the SoHo neighborhood that the events of the movie happen in, nor is he able to contact anybody who can help him (the one person who loans him a phone makes him forget his friend's number in a Troll act). And by the end of the movie, Paul can't even try to walk away because the risk of him being found by the lynch mob is too high.
• Cloudcuckoolander: As you'd expect from SoHo in The '80s, all the women Paul encounters are this, but especially Julie, who lives in some kind of '60s time warp.
• Cosmic Plaything: Paul ends up on his knees, begging God and/or the universe for an answer as to why he keeps being tormented. Once he sees a murder through a window in the middle of running away from an angry mob, he's so tired of his torment that he just snarks that someone will blame him for that.
• Creator Cameo: Martin Scorsese as the spotlight operator at Club Berlin.
• Cringe Comedy: When Paul isn't being a Cosmic Plaything, he's either embarrassing himself or interacting with someone who is behaving bizarrely, much to his befuddlement.
• Dies Wide Open: The first clue that Marcy is dead is that her eyes are open and staring.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Yes, it was rude of Paul to swat away the paperweight Julie wanted to give him (even if he had a reason to), but then what did she do about it? Spread a series of flyers identifying Paul as the infamous SoHo burglar, so that he'll be hunted down by an irate, murderous mob.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Marcy's naked corpse is fully revealed when Paul checks to see if she really did have the burn scars he thought he saw. She doesn't.
• Extremely Short Timespan: It begins at night and ends in the morning.
• Fell Asleep Standing Up: Kiki falls asleep sitting wile Paul is giving her a massage.
• Funny Background Event: A shelf overflowing with cans of Aqua Net hairspray can be seen in Julie's apartment, which she probably uses to set her distinctive Beehive Hairdo.
• Gag Haircut: The punks try to shave Paul's head. It is Mohawk Night, after all. He escapes with a small bald patch on his scalp.
• Genre Mashup: A prime example of the “yuppie nightmare cycle” sub-genre; which combines Screwball Comedy elements with Film Noir thriller ones.
• Good All Along: You'd be forgiven for thinking that when Horst shows up, he's going to straight up murder Paul, but he really just wants Paul to remember to mind his manners.
• Homage: Paul's conversation with the club bouncer is directly inspired by Kafka's The Trial.
• Irony:
  • The one time the two robbers actually paid for the merchandise they load into their van is the one time they're chased away. Neil the robber notes the irony.
  • Paul is inadvertently saved from the angry mob and his possible imprisonment in June's apartment as a plaster sculpture by the same burglars that the mob mistook him for.
• It's a Long Story: When Tom asks Paul why it took him so long to get Tom's keys, Paul responds, "Long, difficult story."
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Paul may be a sleazy, self-absorbed yuppie, but he genuinely tries to keep his promises, apologizes whenever he realizes he's done something wrong, and is horrified when he finds Marcy's corpse.
• Just Take the Poster: Paul rips off the Wanted Posters of him in the streets.
• Kafka Komedy: One of the most frequently cited examples. The bouncer's dialogue is even taken from "Before the Law".
• Magical Realism: Club Berlin, Marcy's disappearing and reappearing burn scars, amongst others.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Marcy is exactly the plucky type Paul seems to need to get himself out of his boring rut. However, this trope is very darkly subverted — she has a husband as well as a boyfriend, and ends up killing herself after Paul walks out on her. Gail is also a dark subversion, in that she starts very chipper, but torments Paul (denying him the ability to contact someone who can help him) and later leads a lynch mob after him, partly because she thinks he's a thief and partly (apparently) out of murderous spite. Julie seems to fancy herself as one, but Paul isn't interested.
• Mistaken for Gay: One man mistakes Paul's tattered request for temporary sanctuary as him wanting a tryst with him and brings him to his apartment to that reason.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Any time Paul actually tries to do the right thing, it backfires horribly. Tries to return a sculpture? Finds out that it wasn't actually stolen and that Marcy just killed herself. Goes back to Julie like he promised? She gets pissed at him for leaving and frames him for the burglaries. Tries to repay his cab fare? The cab driver takes off without him. The list goes on.
• No Fame, No Wealth, No Service: The bouncer seems to be doing this to Paul, as there is no line outside the nightclub. However, it turns out it's because he lacks a Mohawk, yet another one of the ways he is viewed as an outsider.
• One Crazy Night: All Paul wants to do is go home, but a series of increasingly bizarre things keep happening to him.
• The Operators Must Be Crazy: When Paul calls 911 to report being chased by a Vigilante Militia, the operator hangs up on him thinking he is being pranked.
• Quiet Cry for Help: Played with. Julie leaves a note for Paul at the pub reading "Help! I hate this job".
• Please Dump Me: Marcy is smitten with Paul, but he gets spooked by the clues that he's horribly scarred, so he decides to break it off. Rather than come clean or just make some excuse, he suddenly acts extremely rude to her and flees, apparently hoping that this will help her get over him. Ultimately, it backfires and makes Marcy so distraught that she commits suicide.
• Random Events Plot: Paul stumbles from one bizarre situation to the next.
• Rape as Backstory: Played with to the point of Black Comedy with Marcy. She tells Paul that a man tied her to the bed in the room where they're sitting and had his way with her "for six hours." Paul sympathizes, seemingly thinking this could explain her odd behavior, only for Marcy to nonchalantly admit she slept through most of it.
• Really Gets Around:
  • Kiki. She hits on Paul hoping to snag him before Marcy arrives and later shacks up with Horst for some bondage games and clubbing.
  • Marcy also counts given that besides trying to seduce Paul, she apparently has a husband overseas in addition to a boyfriend.
• "Rear Window" Witness: While hiding from an Angry Mob in a Blind Alley, Paul observes a domestic murder in a window across the street.
• Red Herring: Marcy's suicide ultimately does not factor that much into the plot other than influencing some of Paul's more tense and tired actions with other women. Tom never knows about Paul's involvement in his girlfriend Marcy's suicide and the angry mob doesn't even know that Marcy died at all.
• Riddle for the Ages: Since Marcy doesn't have any burn scars or wounds, the reasons for her having burn ointment and a book on burn victims are never explained.
• Shout-Out: Paul says that Kiki's sculpture reminds him of Edvard Munch's The Shriek. She correct him: "The Scream."
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: At one point late into the night, Paul breaks down in the street and asks God what he wants from him.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: Paul ends up back at his job which he seemingly doesn’t care for, but he managed to survive the craziest night of his life in spite of the many ludicrous things that he had to endure. No doubt when his work day is finished, he’ll head straight home for a well-earned rest.
• Title Drop: Pete the diner owner mentions that "different rules apply" when it gets to be "after hours".
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • By the end of the film, Paul finds witnessing a murder just interesting enough to snark that he will probably be blamed for it somehow, what with the way the universe is acting keen on making his life hell.
  • In the very last shot, Paul sits at his desk covered head to toe in the plaster dust that he didn't bother to clean up because he's that fed up, with the few office workers that are in the same room just carrying on like nothing is happening.
• Weirdness Magnet: Paul. He meets all of the crazies that come out at night in New York… and manages to piss off every single one of them in some way, shape, or form.
• Wham Line: Marcy committing suicide via overdose on pills is shocking enough; however, this line one-ups that moment:

  Bartender: "My girlfriend just killed herself a little while ago. Took some sleeping pills."

• Wham Shot:
  • Halfway through the movie, when Paul returns to Marcy's apartment, he discovers she killed herself by overdosing on pills.
  • When Paul reluctantly spends time with Julie, she sketches a portrait of his face. Two-thirds into the movie, she has created many of them as fake “wanted” posters to wrongfully incriminate Paul out of spite. It proves to be quite effective as it also, eventually, results in the formation of a lynch mob.
• World Gone Mad: There doesn't seem to be a completely damage-free person alive or awake late at night.
• Wrong-Name Outburst: Marcy tells Paul about her husband who is a huge fan of The Wizard of Oz and always screams "Surrender Dorothy!" during orgasm.

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