Scorsese's Soho And A Beige Suit Gone Bad
A closer look at the wardrobe behind Martin Scorsese's 1985 film, 'After Hours.'
By David Kobe
Published
Soft Focus is a monthly column about how clothes make a movie. For each installment, David explores how wardrobe contributes to a film’s impact, mis-en-scene, and culture at large.
The night’s just started, and Paul Hackett’s only $20 bill has flown out the window as an erratic cab driver screeches 50 blocks south to Howard Street in Soho. This is the first of many unlucky events that are inflicted on Paul. For the night, he’s a blank canvas, a paper mache sculpture both literally and figuratively, and his beige suit becomes thrashed, muddied, tattered, torn, drenched, soaked, and scuffed as a byproduct of the chaos of the night and the iconoclastic cast of downtown characters inflicting misfortune upon him.
Hours prior, After Hours opens with the protagonist Paul, played by Griffin Dunne, a simple office "word processor" (essentially, a clerical worker) training one of the new employees on a painfully dull computer process. The trainee rattles on about how he doesn’t intend to do this forever. He’s a wanna-be critic hoping to start a magazine. He sounds painfully naive, and Hackett’s attention fades. He’s bored, uninterested, and disenchanted.