After Hours (1985) is top 5 Martin Scorsese

I see your After Hours and raise you one King of Comedy.

I agree.

After Hours would have been better with Shelley Hack.

My Scorsese Top 5...

5. Last Temptation of Christ

4. After Hours

3. King of Comedy

2. Taxi Driver

1. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

After Hours is top 5 Martin Scorsese? Quite possible. It was reasonable well received at it's release, but seemingly forgotten until the last decade or so, when a remastered release was given very high ratings by critics.

R4

Excellent choices. I would try to fit in Goodfellas somehow.

No Goodfellas?

This is an AMAZING film! It gets better with every repeated watching. I especially love Teri Garr's character!!

My favorite scene:

R6,

6. Goodfellas

7. Casino

8. Cape Fear

9. The Age of Innocence

10. Raging Bull

Honorable Mention...

Boxcar Bertha

OP is Griffin Dunn.

Dunne* Buy my book.

Catherine O'Hara and her Mister Softee truck get me every time; I love this movie way too much, gay burglars, park cruising, Kiki & Horst, Surrender Dorothy, and wow a lot of it was gay-adjacent.

Agree about the King Of Comedy too..

^I wonder: Was it the first mainstream (or mainstream-ish) movie to feature two guys making out (the two guys at the bar)?

Voted #3 favorite film by the Paper Mâché Fetishist Society* 5 years in a row

I memorized Teri Garr's monologue is a gay teen:

What was that? What's a matter with people today, you can't say anything without getting some sort of smart remark. I hear them talking behind my back in the coffee shop. I make mistakes on the checks. So what! Eight and a half percent is a bitch!

After Hours is sui generis. Hard to compare it to anything else. I do admit it was a crazy, compelling movie, though. I haven't watched it for a long, long time. But I remember really feeling the angst of the main character, just wanting to go home after a long night of odd people and odd situations.

I loved after hours!

R14, aside from Deathtrap, I can't think of anything mainstream..

Surrender Dorothy!

"Cruising" had more than kissing at the bar.

It was always on my top 5 of all movies, in the days when I thought about such things.

It perfectly captured late-night weirdness, and squares vs lowlifes, nightlife denizens, bohemians. So many images still in my head: "Is that all there is?"; Griffin Dunne falling off the truck, the papier mâché cracking, and finding himself back at the office.

Manhattan used to filled with interesting characters without much money.

This thread is making me want to watch it tonight.

For me the weakest link is Griffin and since he is the protagonist that is a big minus for the film.

I will forever love After Hours for capturing the visage of a young and still handsome John Heard, and more importantly introducing me to the song "Is That All There Is?" Saw it when it came out when I was around 18.

[quote] Griffin Dunne falling off the truck, the papier mâché cracking, and finding himself back at the office.

Reportedly that was a last minute addition to the completed movie when the original ending tested poorly. The original version ends with Dunne encased in that paper mache and being driven off to God knows where for what will likely be an unfortunate ending for him. That was deemed too dark, so they switched it to a marginally more uplifting end about drudgery.

Reminds me of how they also changed the ending of "Death Becomes Her" for a more in-your-face "funny" conclusion. The original ending (slow fade out of the two still-beautiful women sitting in the Alps bored with life after 50 years of eternal youth) much better.

This movie always left me cold

That aforementioned scene with the two guys at the bar was a nice little treat.

I visited New York just as After Hours opened but I can't remember if I saw it at the cinema. I DO remember going to see Plenty, and Wetherby which came out around the same time.

King of Comedy also starred Shelley Hack who improves everything she’s in as far as I’m concerned.

After Hours did capture late-night NYC in the late 80s.

[quote] The original version ends with Dunne encased in that paper mache and being driven off to God knows where for what will likely be an unfortunate ending for him. That was deemed too dark, so they switched it to a marginally more uplifting end about drudgery.

I saw this movie (in a theater, IIRC) when it came out. I remember the Dunne encased in paper mache being the ending. Did they issue two endings?

I remember seeing it late one hot summer night at the Public at their equivalent of a midnight madness series (we also saw Dreamchild in the same series). I was visiting an old high school friend who’d moved to NYC from Chicago. We were still young, the plague (which took my friend) was not yet in full swing, and we could still stay up all hours. I remember loving the movie—I almost don’t want to see it again for fear of losing that younger self.

Loved this film. Saw it several times when it came out in 1985. Haven’t seen it since then, but this thread is making me want to watch it again.

Anyone know where its streaming?

I remember actually having nights like that (not in NYC). There was a popular club in my town that had very limited parking in the vicinity. There was two-story office building close by and I parked in the lot, thinking that I probably wouldn't get towed due to it being night time. Sure enough, I got towed. It was super late / or early-morning. I had to get a ride to the tow lot, pay the tow fee, blah blah blah. Horrible.

Not exactly the same, but I just wanted to go home.

It’s on Criterion until June 30.

R35 it's on the Internet Archive.

It's currently on Tubby and Roku channel.

Which of the Tele-Tubbies would that be?

The ending where he returns to the office worked for me; it was a bit like Dorothy waking up back in Kansas.

I thought Alice was Marty Ritt

“I could get drunk, go to a party. Talk.”

R32 It feels much more early 1980s to me.

I also enjoy Liquid Sky for a related ambiance.

And there's Desperately Seeking Susan from 1985, as well.

Of course After Hours is better than these two.

"My God! What does a man have to DO get his face pummeled by angry mob?!"

Everyone is brilliant in that movie. Perfectly cast, and perfectly balanced tone between comedy and existential despair.

Pauline Kael in her review made a comparison with that other Soho screwball fantasy Desperately Seeking Susan which was shot after After Hours. She writes Scorsese's movie isn't in the ditsy-sentimental-romantic mode - he's too savvy for that. This isn't necessarily an advantage: audiences may get more to respond to from DSS' think-pink fairy tale of life among the punks than from Scorsese's cooler more controlled approach. And Susan Seidelman's film isn't motiveless, like After Hours.

Kael was right. Susan was a bigger hit.

I’m watching it now. I “get” it but I’m not sure I’m enjoying it.

It’s really good.

Italian American - the one that started his parents. Great doc!

*starred

The New York portrayed in that movie no longer exists. However, it's spot on for 1985. Soho during that period was my haunt and this movie is true to life, wacko people and all.