Dunne on After Hours (2024)

Griffin Dunne interviewed by Leigh Singer for Little White Lies, 20 March 2024, for the 4K re-release of After Hours (1985). Dunne played Paul Hackett and produced the film with Amy Robinson.

Good for

The ending, from inside the room. The library has Scorsese's account (sos 100–sos 101); this is the star's, and it differs in useful ways: test-audience cards rather than a family screening, De Palma rather than Gilliam.

What he says

On the first cut:

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.

On the womb ending and the man paying for it: "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."

On Powell: "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."

On the neighbourhood: "Soho then was uncharted territory for people who lived above 14th Street. We knew it, but no one else did."

Brackets are the magazine's. Used in After Hours — back at work, Paul was nearly born on the West Side Highway, Michael Powell wrote the ending and SoHo before the money, 1984.