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.
"After Hours" could be called a "hypertext" film, in which disparate elements of the plot are associated in an occult way. In "After Hours," such elements as a suicide, a method of sculpture, a plaster of Paris bagel, a $20 bill and a string of burglaries all reveal connections that only exist because Paul's adventures link them. This generates the film's sinister undertone, as in a scene where he tries to explain all the things that have befallen him, and fails, perhaps because they sound too absurd even to him. One thing many viewers of the film have reported is the high (some say almost unpleasant) level of suspense in "After Hours," which is technically a comedy but plays like a satanic version of the classic Hitchcock plot formula, the Innocent Man Wrongly Accused.
With different filmmakers and other actors, the film might have played more safely, like "Adventures in Babysitting." But there is an intensity and drive in Scorsese's direction that gives it desperation; it really seems to matter that this devastated hero struggle on and survive. Scorsese has suggested that Paul's implacable run of bad luck reflected his own frustration during the "Last Temptation of Christ" experience.
Executives kept reassuring him that all was going well with that film, backers said they had the money, Paramount green-lighted it, agents promised it was a "go," everything was in place, and then time after time an unexpected development would threaten everything. In "After Hours," each new person Paul meets promises that they will take care of him, make him happy, lend him money, give him a place to stay, let him use the phone, trust him with their keys, drive him home - and every offer of mercy turns into an unanticipated danger. The film could be read as an emotional autobiography of that period in Scorsese's life. The director said he began filming without an ending. IMDb claims, "One idea that made it to the storyboard stage had Paul crawling into June's womb to hide from the angry mob, with June (Verna Bloom, the lonely woman in the bar) giving 'birth' to him on the West Side Highway." An ending Scorsese actually filmed had Paul still trapped inside the sculpture as the truck driven by the burglars (Cheech and Chong) roared away. Scorsese said he showed that version to his father, who was angry: "You can't let him die!"
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46ana2domK1sMHRrGRqcWhqenI%3D