{"id":233340,"date":"2021-04-22T20:16:59","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T17:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-case-for-paul-hacketts-hell\/"},"modified":"2021-04-22T20:16:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T17:16:59","slug":"the-case-for-paul-hacketts-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-case-for-paul-hacketts-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"#The Case for Paul Hackett&#8217;s Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#The Case for Paul Hackett&#8217;s Hell<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n                <\/aside>\n<p><!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 3.7.9--><em>In our monthly column\u00a0<strong>Laughed to Death<\/strong>, we look at the way comedy and existentialism go hand-in-hand in seemingly unlikely ways. For this installment,\u00a0Brianna Zigler makes the case for how Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1985 black comedy After Hours discreetly portrays a dead man damned to his own endless eternity.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you want from me?\u201d Paul Hackett shrieks to the heavens, to the black, neglectful, and uncaring abyss that hovers above and taunts him with silence, \u201cWhat have I done? I\u2019m just a word processor, for Christ\u2019s sake!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the surface, Paul Hackett (<strong>Griffin Dunne<\/strong>), the protagonist of <strong>Martin Scorsese<\/strong>\u2018s <em><strong>After Hours <\/strong><\/em>(1985), hasn\u2019t done a thing \u2014 at least, not intentionally. After another grueling day indistinguishable from the last in the life of a gear in the corporate machine, Paul snatches the opportunity offered to him by a pretty girl in a diner. But in the hopes of conversation and a quick fuck, he is instead led down a grueling nighttime Odyssey in an inverted version of New York City.<\/p>\n<p>From the moment Paul decides to call Marcy (<strong>Rosanna Arquette<\/strong>), under the guise of inquiring about her roommate\u2019s plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweights, he steps into a Bizarro World version of our universe. Minor actions open up Pandora\u2019s boxes, women lash out in uncanny ways and speak in nonsequiturs, and, somehow, everything and everyone is connected in a <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a> of absurd coincidences. Each new situation throws poor Paul deeper into lunacy and farther away from his desired goal of getting home, the latter of which flew out the taxi cab window along with his only $20 bill.<\/p>\n<p><em>After Hours<\/em> is a film tr<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ed in purgatory as much as its own protagonist is. For Scorsese, it is bookended by a series of legendary leading Robert de Niro performances that came before it (<em>Taxi Driver<\/em>,<em> Raging Bull<\/em>,<em> The King of Comedy<\/em>), and a slew of eclectic classics that followed (<em>The Last Temptation of Christ<\/em>,<em> Goodfellas<\/em>,<em> Cape Fear<\/em>,<em> The Age of Innocence<\/em>,<em> Casino<\/em>). An oft-forgotten gem within the director\u2019s towering filmography, the breezy black comedy is a sly, darkly hilarious depiction of one man\u2019s personal hell.<\/p>\n<p>Paul\u2019s initially innocent attempt to get laid turns into a fruitless quest to free himself from a downtown perpetual prison, looping him right back to the very corporate office that he started from once he\u2019s finally free. Or is he? Because the inexplicable actions of the people around him and increasingly ludicrous situations, juxtaposed against Paul\u2019s own incredulity, might lead one to believe that the film is more than a simple night gone wrong. Is the insanity of this cursed evening, as well as these people he encounters, all in Paul\u2019s head \u2014 a product of insecure projections, perhaps \u2014 or is it really happening? Or, is it a little bit of both? Or, maybe, there is no Paul Hackett at all.<\/p>\n<p>You see, there <em>was\u00a0<\/em>a Paul Hackett at some point, but not anymore.\u00a0<em>After Hours\u00a0<\/em>is not simply a personal hell, but a very real one. A purgatorial pastiche of a life lived and sins yet to be reckoned with. I want to make the case for why Paul is actually deceased. The events of <em>After Hours<\/em> are us witnessing the infinitely looping version of Hell that he\u2019s been damned to for eternity. Whether or not the night\u2019s events really happened while he was alive, or whether they are simply an amalgamation of specific torment meant for Paul\u2019s punishment, I believe that the loop holds the key to his ultimate cause for damnation and even offers him a chance for redemption each time \u2014 which he will always fail to act on, as part of his retribution.<\/p>\n<p>While there is no canon interpretation in the Bible of Hell manifesting as an infinite loop, Hell is <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianity.com\/wiki\/heaven-and-hell\/what-is-hell-a-biblical-guide-of-its-existence.html\">regarded as<\/a> \u201ca place for the soul of extreme torment by being separated from the blessings of God.\u201d Though ideas of this torment can take on different incarnations from religious thinkers and the layperson alike, such ideas are all <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>ly linked by the basic concept of Hell being a place of extreme punishment. As a result, the idea that Hell could be a loop that one must circle through for eternity has been depicted before in recent pop culture, in such series as <em>Lucifer<\/em> and <em>American Horror Story<\/em>, where the retribution for sins in the afterlife is to endure one\u2019s worst fears over and over. The way in which the plot of <em>After Hours<\/em> is laid out, the idea of a looping Hell seems feasible.<\/p>\n<p>Paul\u2019s story commences at his office in uptown Manhattan and leads him to a diner where he meets the beguiling young Marcy. There, she shares an innocent affection with Paul for Henry Miller\u2019s 1934 novel <em>Tropic of Cancer <\/em>\u2014 which he\u2019s reading at that moment, and the story of which similarly follows a man stuck in a kind of purgatory. The two chat flirtatiously and Marcy imparts upon him the eccentric paperweights her sculptor roommate Kiki (<strong>Linda Fiorentino<\/strong>) has been crafting and selling. Paul takes an eager if not entirely disingenuous interest, and Marcy gives Kiki\u2019s home phone number to Paul so he can purchase one.<\/p>\n<p>Taking her phone number extension as a sign, Paul rings her up later that night under the guise of paperweight procuring. What starts as the simple desire for a one-night stand mutates into an unending night of beguiling events, interacting with one unhinged individual after the next. This includes Marcy, whose cryptic behavior shifts from coy to peculiar. Mysterious conversations with Kiki, a book on burn victims, unexplained gashes on her thigh, and the ever-increasing transparency in her demeanor that something is bothering her. With no prompting, at one point she tells Paul that she has an estranged husband who shouts \u201cSurrender Dorothy!\u201d when he climaxes.<\/p>\n<p>Fed up with Marcy and her confusing conduct, Paul bails on her unceremoniously with the intention of simply going home. But his main form of payment, a $20 bill that was snatched out his taxi cab window by the night winds en route to Marcy, is gone. And to his bewildered dismay, subway fares were increased that very night. The loose change in Paul\u2019s pocket isn\u2019t enough to get him back uptown and, suddenly, he\u2019s trapped, in desperate need of a lifeline that no stranger is willing to give him. It all culminates with Paul being chased by a neighborhood watch mob who\u2019ve mistaken him for their serial burglar and being physically turned into a Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 sculpture in order to cover himself from their hostile wrath.<\/p>\n<p>As almost every new exchange with another human being seems to give way to a new preposterous string of chaos and hellish circumstances, it\u2019s unsurprising that the film has already been linked to the Underworld and Dante\u2019s <em>Inferno. <\/em>\u201cEvery time Paul escapes from one circle of tortured souls, he seems only to fall into another,\u201d <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.arbuturian.com\/culture\/film\/after-hours\">writes Steve Thompson for <em>The Arbuturian<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on the similarities between the film and Dante\u2019s epic poem.\u00a0\u201cCompounding his agony are characters who resurface only at the worst times to hound him and push him further into the depths.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In her book <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomsburycollections.com\/book\/martin-scorseses-divine-comedy-movies-and-religion\/ch1-hell-on-earth?from=search\"><em>Martin Scorsese\u2019s Divine Comedy: Movies and Religion<\/em><\/a>, author Catherine O\u2019Brien finds numerous links between Hell and the world of <em>After Hours. <\/em>She likens the damp streets of nighttime Manhattan to the netherworld as characterized in the Book of Job and Paul\u2019s inability to pay for neither taxi nor subway fare to the legend of Charon. In the latter, \u201cone had to pay him [Charon] a coin or be condemned to wander the banks for a hundred years.\u201d Similarly, Paul is condemned to SoHo. There are references to fire (or Hellfire) and charred flesh, such as Marcy\u2019s book on burns and Paul relaying to Kiki his experience visiting a hospital burn ward as a child, where he witnessed some untold horror.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDifficult journeys are a common theme [in Dante\u2019s <em>Inferno<\/em>]\u201d O\u2019Brien writes, as Paul\u2019s navigation of SoHo becomes more like searching for an escape from a maze. \u201cPaul has a feeling of entrapment and futility in his computer job, with its programs and codes; and it might be appropriate for the grand gates that lead into his office building to bear the sign found at the entrance to Dante\u2019s Hell: \u2018All hope abandon, ye who enter in!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, the irony is that the true hell that lies ahead for Paul exists elsewhere, the gates which adorn the entrance to his corporate office leading him to the Hell awaits just <em>outside<\/em> of it. Furthermore, similarly to the <em>Divine Comedy<\/em>, in which \u201cVirgil and the Pilgrim are told (incorrectly) by one of the devils that one of the bridges has been broken as they cross the Malebolge in the eighth circle, lengthening their passage through the Inferno,\u201d Paul\u2019s plagued evening with Marcy begins with an uncannily similar misdirection. On the intercom resident list for Marcy and Kiki\u2019s apartment building, the name \u201cBridges\u201d is crossed out, despite the fact that Kiki Bridges does reside there.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, it seemed as though Scorsese had crafted the perfect recreation of Hell on earth, intending to put Paul through the utmost mortal torture for his and our amusement. However, the odd, almost inhuman manners of every new stranger he meets, paired with the inescapable nature of his torment, feels a bit too otherworldly to be consistent with the \u201con earth\u201d part. In fact, the people in <em>After Hours<\/em> behave more like taunting minions of Lucifer than anything else.<\/p>\n<p>First the bewildering, mysterious Marcy, with her scratches and estranged, <em>Wizard of Oz<\/em>-obsessed husband, who keeps sex with Paul just out of reach. Then Julie (<strong>Terr Garr<\/strong>), a waitress who im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>tely becomes hung up on Paul when he enters the bar she works at until he relents and goes home with her, where she starts drawing his portrait and becomes near-inconsolable at sarcasm. There there\u2019s the inscrutable ice cream truck-driver Gail (<strong>Catherine O\u2019Hara<\/strong>), who is insistent on impeding Paul\u2019s attempts to make a phone call, fixates on assisting with his injured arm, and is ultimately the one to lead the charge on the neighborhood watch mob trying to kill him. Consequently, nearly every character in <em>After Hours<\/em> is an agent of chaos.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, almost every situation Paul gets himself into is somehow connected to the last, as if the night only exists as its own self-contained universe. We eventually learn that the amiable character of Tom the bartender (<strong>John Heard<\/strong>) is Marcy\u2019s boyfriend; Paul\u2019s missing $20 has somehow become a part of Kiki\u2019s Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 sculpture; Julie has her own plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight like the ones Kiki sells, and all of these characters are eventually caught up in the vigilante swarm.<\/p>\n<p>And aside from some of the vigilantes, the amiable Tom \u2014 the only person who comes close to helping Paul get home \u2014 and a gay male sex worker (<strong>Robert Plunket<\/strong>) who is peculiar but reluctantly allows Paul to vent to him about his night, the people who antagonize Paul the most are women. \u201cI wanted to meet a nice girl, and now I\u2019ve got to die for it,\u201d he wearily expresses at one point, made somewhat paradoxical both due to the fact he is, of course, already dead, and that one of these girls, Marcy, really <em>does\u00a0<\/em>die. She commits suicide by sleeping pill overdose, which Paul discovers upon returning to her apartment to deliver what he believed to be Kiki\u2019s stolen sculpture. After Kiki and her sex partner Horst (<strong>Will Patton<\/strong>) have already left, Paul callously tends to Marcy\u2019s corpse by calling 9-1-1 and leaving up a sign in the apartment that reads \u201cDead Person\u201d with an arrow pointing to her room.<\/p>\n<p>But <em>how<\/em> did Paul die? And what, exactly, did he go to Hell for? Since the film concludes with his extremely narrow escape from the vigilante mob landing him right back at his office in uptown Manhattan \u2014 he never does make it back to his apartment as he yearns for \u2014 I believe that the mob did ultimately end up killing him, with Marcy\u2019s suicide being blood on his hands that turns him away from the pearly white gates.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also the possibility that Paul really is the serial burglar that this mob seems so intent on \u201cmistaking\u201d him for. What if it\u2019s no mistake at all? Paul spends the entirety of the film acting as if he is a passive victim being thrown to the wolves, but it\u2019s his passivity that is his own undoing and, ultimately, the undoing of Marcy. His inability to be upfront with Marcy allows him to ditch her wordlessly, the series of nagging, unreadable women he encounters emblematic of his fear of the opposite sex and, perhaps, also intimacy. They could also be viewed as servants of Satan \u201cguiding\u201d Paul on his way towards further punishment for his hand in the death of a woman.<\/p>\n<p>Towards the end of his night, Paul is inexplicably beckoned back to the punk bar he was turned away from earlier, Club Berlin, to attend a late-night art exhibition. When he arrives, the club is mysteriously empty save for the bartender and a solitary, middle-aged woman. The bartender explains to Paul that the woman, June (<strong>Verna Bloom<\/strong>), is always there and that no one ever notices her presence.<\/p>\n<p>Paul uses the last of his money to play \u201cIs That All There Is?\u201d by Peggy Lee on the jukebox, and he dances with June. It\u2019s a uniquely eerie, tranquil scene, as Paul \u201cbears his soul\u201d to her in the hopes for someone finally normal to talk with. As they dance, June questions his intentions, why he\u2019s flirting and being so nice to her. Paul replies simply, that he wants to live: \u201cI just want to live. <em>Live,<\/em>\u201d he pleads with her as if June is the last being on his journey to the Underworld who can save his soul from damnation.<\/p>\n<p>But as the vigilantes burst into Club Berlin, June becomes nothing more than another means for Paul to escape his night \u2014 as was Marcy, Julie, Gail \u2014 and he suddenly becomes volatile and shakes her violently to tell him how to escape the mob. Thus, the one woman all evening who shows Paul any true understanding and compassion then imprisons him in a Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 sculpture, as the vigilantes descend into Club Berlin and search June\u2019s home for Paul.<\/p>\n<p>Paul is \u201csaved\u201d from the mob by June\u2019s quick thinking and reluctance to let him go, then by being stolen by thieves Neil (<strong>Cheech Marin<\/strong>) and Pepe (<strong>Tommy Chong<\/strong>). Paul had mistakenly believed the pair to be stealing Kiki\u2019s sculpture earlier in the night, but they actually do turn out to be the neighborhood\u2019s serial burglars (as far as it seems to Paul, anyway). Neil and Pepe hoist Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 Paul out of June\u2019s apartment thinking he\u2019s a real work of art, and Paul is finally delivered back uptown where he belongs \u2014 falling out of the burglars\u2019 van, crashing out of his sculpted encasing and right in front of the gates to his office.<\/p>\n<p>But, ultimately, Paul was never saved \u2014 certainly not his soul. He never gets home, the cycle never ends, he begins the loop anew staring lifelessly in front of his computer screen, the corporate cog that he is. Maybe the meeting with June was Paul\u2019s last stand, his final confrontation and last chance at salvation, and one that he continues to fail over and over. Perhaps, it\u2019s all part of the design of Paul\u2019s afterlife.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there\u2019s also the idea I offered previously that none of the events of this night <em>really<\/em> happened as they did. Perhaps, the narrative of\u00a0<em>After Hours<\/em> is simply Paul\u2019s greatest fear being lived out over and over as his punishment in death (his fear of women, intimacy, etc). Maybe it\u2019s purgatory in between Heaven and Hell and his soul has yet to be dealt with.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the case may be, and whether or not it was Scorsese\u2019s intent for the Hell that Paul Hackett experiences to be true perdition, <em>After Hours\u00a0<\/em>was nevertheless viewed as something of a religious experience: one of its producers claimed it was \u201ca creative way for Marty to exorcise his demons,\u201d the director himself having once claimed that shooting the film \u201crenewed [his] faith.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs that all there is?\u201d Peggy Lee asks in the eponymous song. For Paul Hackett, at least, this is it.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/after-hours\/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=after-hours\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#The Case for Paul Hackett&#8217;s Hell&#8221; In our monthly column\u00a0Laughed to Death, we look at the way comedy and existentialism go hand-in-hand in seemingly unlikely ways. For this installment,\u00a0Brianna Zigler makes the case for how Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1985 black comedy After Hours discreetly portrays a dead man damned to his own endless eternity. \u201cWhat do&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/After-Hours-Martin-Scorsese.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[90195,89805,2004],"class_list":["post-233340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-after-hours","tag-laughed-to-death","tag-martin-scorsese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}