Grif­fin Dunne: ​‘Scorsese’s ener­gy and enthu­si­asm was infectious’

Before 1985, Grif­fin Dunne was prob­a­bly best known for being the side­kick first-vic­tim-turned-rean­i­mat­ed-wise­crack­ing-corpse of hor­ror-com­e­dy An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don. Search­ing for decent roles led him and pro­duc­ing part­ner Amy Robin­son to devel­op their own films, includ­ing a script they offered to direc­tor Mar­tin Scors­ese (Robin­son had starred in his 1973 break­through Mean Streets), him­self then strug­gling to get projects made.

After Hours, a break­neck, black­ly com­ic, noc­tur­nal night­mare of Man­hat­tan yup­pie Paul Hack­ett adrift in a strange, sin­is­ter Soho, wasn’t a hit. Nev­er­the­less, the film rein­vig­o­rat­ed Scorsese’s film­mak­ing pas­sion, gave Dunne his biggest role and has been reassessed as an influ­en­tial gem. Near­ly 40 years on, to cel­e­brate its 4K restora­tion and re-release, Dunne, who went on to direct Hol­ly­wood hits like Prac­ti­cal Mag­ic, recalls his career highlight.

LWLies: Is it true that, when your part­ner Amy Robin­son found Joe Minion’s script at the Sun­dance Lab and sent it to you, you read it stand­ing up, turn­ing the pages with your toe because it made you so anxious?

Grif­fin Dunne: I did. I would get to where some­thing ter­ri­ble hap­pened and be like, ​‘Oh my God…’, and walk away from it. And then approach it again and [mimes peer­ing down] just keep going… Amy FedExed it to me with just a note, ​‘This part is you!’ And she was right. It’s one of those rare times you just see your­self so com­plete­ly in the role.

When you approached Mar­tin Scors­ese to direct, he was in a slump after The King of Comedy’s com­mer­cial fail­ure and The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ’s can­cel­la­tion. Was he an obvi­ous choice? Even if you love Taxi Dri­ver or Rag­ing Bull, After Hours is a very dif­fer­ent tone.

It was an out-of-the-box idea, in that there was noth­ing pre­vi­ous [that com­pared]. I mean, King of Com­e­dy, which is anoth­er movie that peo­ple were slow to appre­ci­ate, I found hilar­i­ous but, yeah, very dif­fer­ent in tone. But Amy knew Mar­ty quite well, and his sen­si­bil­i­ty of find­ing humour in dis­as­ter. You know, he had his own After Hours expe­ri­ence – when Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ was falling through, that was his Paul Hack­ett moment! He saw the humour in it.

You also had a pri­or, unusu­al work­ing encounter with Mar­ty, right? Did he recall that at all?

He did, because it was so ridicu­lous. He had an agent, Kit­ty Hawks, who was Howard Hawks’ daugh­ter. She was a friend of my par­ents, and she told me, ​‘There’s a won­der­ful part in a movie called Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any­more, you should go meet the direc­tor.’ So, I go over to Warner’s, knock on Marty’s trail­er door, and he goes, ​‘Can I help you?’, look­ing to see if I’m deliv­er­ing a sand­wich or some­thing. And I said, ​‘Yeah, I’m here to meet you for your movie.’, He’s like, ​‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any­more? The kid [part] is 12 years old! Why would Kit­ty send you?’

How old were you at the time?

I was 18, 19 years old! [laugh­ing] But it left a huge impres­sion on me that instead of send­ing me off, he invit­ed me in and we just talked for half an hour. We laughed a lot.

While film­ing, Mar­ty want­ed you on edge for Paul’s anx­i­ety to show and even imposed a sex ban on you! Did it work?

He did catch me being a lit­tle too relaxed with mas­sag­ing the sex­i­est woman on earth, Lin­da Fiorenti­no. We’d shot the day before, and I was appro­pri­ate­ly breath­less with desire. But then the week­end hap­pened. And I slipped and had a… fuck­ing acci­dent… and sud­den­ly [we’re shoot­ing again], I’m mas­sag­ing her like Pepe LeP­ew. Mar­ty goes, ​‘Cut, cut, cut! You got laid!’ And I’m like, ​‘I know, I’m sor­ry…’ And Marty’s like, ​‘You ruined the whole fuck­ing movie! We should just go home.’ The fear kicked in so high and it turns out that fear and loss look just the same.

You’ve gone on to direct suc­cess­ful movies, but dur­ing the shoot, were you able to real­ly observe and learn from Mar­ty at work?

Every day I was learn­ing some­thing. He would shotlist and the shotlist – I’ve nev­er seen this since –was on the call sheet, so every­body knew what they were doing. And his ener­gy and enthu­si­asm was infec­tious. I’m a very excitable per­son and behind the mon­i­tor, I kind of live through the dia­logue. And I felt free to do that because I saw Mar­ty do that. It just looked so much fun.

The film’s end­ing feels per­fect, but it wasn’t the orig­i­nal choice.

It used to end with me still in the [papi­er-mâché] cast in the car Cheech and Chong drove away, but pret­ty much all the [test audi­ence] cards said, ​‘What hap­pened to him?’ There was no release.

Mar­ty showed it to his col­leagues, Bri­an De Pal­ma and Steven Spiel­berg and var­i­ous peo­ple, so we had ideas thrash­ing around, and we came up with one we all just loved: where I climb inside Ver­na Bloom’s char­ac­ter, and then she gives birth to me on the West Side High­way, and I roll out cov­ered in pla­cen­ta, naked. And we just think, ​‘Oh, that’s brilliant.’

I called up David Gef­fen, who financed the film, he’d been very anx­ious to know, and I tell him… He takes a beat, and goes, ​‘Have you lost your fuck­ing minds?’ And, uh, I guess we had.

So how did you land on what we now see?

We have Michael Pow­ell to thank for that. Michael was mar­ried to [edi­tor] Thel­ma [Schoon­mak­er] and he would come and vis­it [the set], no mat­ter how late, this elder­ly man in a but­ter­scotch plaid suit and bright red tie. I don’t know that he ever knew my name, he just called me ​‘Boy’. But it was so delight­ful. And he just thought of the most sim­ple, ele­gant, sat­is­fy­ing end­ing that was right in front of us all, you know, the cir­cu­lar­i­ty. Back at work, it’s perfect.

After Hours didn’t do great busi­ness on its release, but it’s had this impres­sive after life. Would you say it was actu­al­ly ahead of its time?

Yeah. I went through this ear­li­er with Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don, where peo­ple didn’t like humour and hor­ror in the same genre. There weren’t any anx­i­ety-dri­ven come­dies then, so peo­ple weren’t sure what to make of it. But it’s been appre­ci­at­ed over the years; ​“after hours” has become an adjec­tive for a bad date or a movie where every­thing goes south. A cou­ple of months ago I saw the restora­tion for the first time with a live audi­ence and peo­ple went crazy. It plays great with a [full] house.

It’s also an amaz­ing snap­shot of a par­tic­u­lar time in New York, and of your own life. How do you look back at that whole experience?

Soho then was unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry for peo­ple who lived above 14^th Street. We knew it, but no one else did. Behind the win­dows of those lofts were [Jean-Marc] Basquiat and [Kei­th] Har­ing and all these artists doing the work of their lives, there were all these under­ground clubs… Being that age, hav­ing that end­less ener­gy and being in New York, which was then an all-night town, the movie feels to me the way I felt then. It was an incred­i­bly excit­ing time.

You also helped reen­er­gize Mar­tin Scorsese…

He’s often said that this movie put him back in touch with the urgency and pas­sion he had when he became a direc­tor and made Mean Streets and Taxi Dri­ver. It got him back on the path he was orig­i­nal­ly set up to be on.

After Hours’ 4K Restora­tion is re-released on March 22nd.