Trivia for
After Hours (1985) More at IMDbPro »

• The conversation between Paul and the bouncer at Club Berlin is mostly from Franz Kafka's "Before The Law."
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Martin Scorsese] shining a spotlight from a platform in the club.
  
  
• The scene with Griffin Dunne at the subway station is a reference to his earlier appearance in An American Werewolf in London (1981).
  
  
• Martin Scorsese told Griffin Dunne to refrain from sex and sleep during filming in order to get a more realistic feeling of paranoia.
  
  
• The building used for Hackett's office building is the Met Life Tower near Madison Square Park.
  
  
• Tim Burton was the second choice for director after the producers saw Vincent (1982). When Martin Scorsese became available after production delays on The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Burton, according to Griffin Dunne, gracefully bowed out of the project, saying he didn't want to stand in the way of Scorsese.
  
  
• A technique known as "end slating" was used to capture Paul's reaction as he enters the nearly-vacant Club Berlin. Right before filming the shot, Griffin Dunne went to a bar around the corner, ordered drinks for the customers, then ran out without paying. The scene opens on him after this had just happened off-camera.
  
  
• Joseph Minion's script was his thesis for Columbia Film School. He got an "A" from his teacher, Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev.
  
  
• The "key drop" shot, where the camera drops vertically while tracking on Griffin Dunne, was done in two takes. In the first take, the camera lens was put through a hole in a wooden board and then the board was dropped from the roof with bungee cords. After the first take was done, producer Amy Robinson, director Martin Scorsese, and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus refused to do the shot like that again for fear of Dunne's safety. According to Robinson, the bungee cords started smoking. Dunne, on the other hand, was oblivious to the danger and was ready to do another take. Ballhaus filmed the second take with a fast crane move.
  
  
• This is the only film by Martin Scorsese to be released on a Friday the 13th, long considered to be an unlucky day for studios to release films.
  
  
• When Paul rings Kiki's doorbell, one of the buzzers is labeled "Czapsky Gallery". This is in honor of Stefan Czapsky, who served as gaffer on this film. He would later go on to shoot critical darlings like Ed Wood (1994) and box-office blockbusters like Blades of Glory (2007).
  
  
• Scorsese designed the film as a parody of Hitchcock's style. The elaborate camera movements echo sequences in Marnie (1964), while Howard Shore's score emulates the style of one of Hitchcock's most frequent collaborators, Bernard Herrmann.
  
  
• The original cut of the film was 45 minutes longer.
  
  

• SPOILER: Test audiences rejected an alternate ending in which Paul remains trapped in the statue.
  
  
• SPOILER: Many ideas were considered for the film's ending. One idea that made it to the storyboard stage had Paul crawling into June's womb to hide from the angry mob, with June giving "birth" to him on the West Side Highway.
  
  
• SPOILER: British director Michael Powell was around quite a lot while the film was being made (he and editor Thelma Schoonmaker married soon afterwards). Nobody was sure how the film should end. Michael Powell said "He must finish up back at work" but this was initially dismissed as too unlikely and difficult. They tried many other endings, a few were even filmed. But the only one that everyone felt really worked was to have Paul finish up back at work just as the new day was starting.
  
  

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