Filming for Your Life: Making 'After Hours'

Film for Your Life: Making 'After Hours' (2004)

*** (out of 4)

Star Griffin Dunne, producer Amy Robinson, editor Thelma Schoonmaker and director Martin Scorsese are interviewed in this 14-minute featurette that takes a look at the making of AFTER HOURS. Those wanting to see a lot of footage from Scorsese will be disappointed as he only briefly appears twice. The majority of the film has Dunne and Robinson doing most of the talking as they were the ones who got this film off the ground and sent it to Scorsese. We learn that originally Scorsese had to turn it down because he was filming THE LAST TEMPTATION OF Christ and the project was then offered to Tim Burton. However, after the Scorsese picture got shut down he jumped back on board. Dunne talks a lot about the way Scorsese directed him as well as giving us a pretty good idea of how he got into certain scenes. Dunne also talks about Scorsese having a shot list made up so that people knew exactly what they were going to do each day. Some of the best discussion comes about the ending and the various ways they thought about ending it including one crazy bit where Dunne would crawl up into a woman and she would later give birth to him! I'm sure that would have been surreal and you're imagination will be running wild trying to figure out how Scorsese would have shot it.