Last fall, to help ring in the 70th birthday of Martin Scorsese, we ran down our list of 5 Of His Most Underrated Films, and among them was 1985’s dark, surreal, screwball and utterly hilarious black comedy “After Hours.” And if you still haven’t seen the movie — and you really, really should — hopefully this will convince you to make room for it on your Netflix queue.
The folks at No Film School have found the 20-minute documentary “Filming for Your Life: Making ‘After Hours‘ ” — which appears on the DVD release of the film — along with about ten minutes worth of deleted scenes from the movie. It’s a pretty concise look at the film, going into Scorsese’s reasons for taking it on (his latest attempt at the time to mount “The Last Temptation Of Christ” had fallen apart) and talks with the key actors and collaborators who helped bring it to life.
An absolutely fantastic Griffin Dunne leads as Paul, whose encounter with a a girl (Rosanna Arquette) at a coffee shop, and his subsequent plans to meet her, turn into an unforgettable night in an almost Kafka-esque New York City, where anything that can go wrong does, and things get worse and worse for our hero. It’s flat-out funny and features a wonderfully frenetic turn by Dunne and some of the most electric filmmaking Scorsese has ever committed on camera. He hasn’t quite made a movie like this since, but man, we’d love to see him go back to comedy mode again.
Anyway, watch the doc and deleted scenes below.