But What is After Hours Actually About?
After Hours is a contemporary, urban "Wizard of Oz,”. This is the story of what happens when you don’t surrender to the art and chaos of Love in downtown NY.
Its about a man, Paul, who dares to venture from the daily routine security of work and into the chaotic world of love that leads to lust, art, confusion, fear and hurt.
Paul meets the beautiful Marcy who invites him to Soho. He starts a journey that is the fast and crazy ride we call falling in love. But there’s an emotional cost to this journey as $20 dollars slips from the taxi.
Kiki is the sexy, artistic, hard edged and cynical girl, this is her social guard. She has obvious emotional baggage displayed in a paper Mache shell, it is her “scream”, it is the shell she hides her pain behind, it is her art.
Paul helps Kiki with her scream, she relaxes and he starts telling her about his own scars, the burns unit when he was a kid, its his trauma. She doesn’t listen and falls asleep.
From KiKi emerges Marcy, he has made his way through her social gaurd, to find a confident, trusting and beautiful women underneath. Marcy invites him into her inner sanctum. Its not where she lives but is where her memories lay. A room where she was raped, a room of her past love, a room of her inner most secrets and fears, her heart.
They emotionally dual, he learns about Marcy’s past rapture and how he screamed out “Surrender Dorothy” when he came. She found this imperfection ugly and it destroyed the relationship.
Paul himself searches Marcy for imperfections, he finds the burn cream. Is Marcy scarred so much that she is ugly, has she got burn scars hidden? He studies and toys at her emotional scream on the way out, the relationship has a cost attached to it, its $20.
Marcy holds a torch for him, a big candle, she is in love, she has let him in and is exposed. He finds a book on burns, he’s convinced she’s hiding deep scarring. This scares him, he can’t surrender to her love, they break up and he runs.
Paul gets to the subway, to leave but cant escape, the emotional cost of the relationship is now higher. The Policeman won’t let him leave. He’s blocked.
He finds himself at the Terminal Bar and searching for answers.
Tom the barman is Paul with out a social guard. He can tap his inner feelings to understand the emotional cost that the relationship has had on him. Tom gives Paul the keys to his inner sanctum. The gays at the bar show how Paul is in touch with inner feminine self. This helps, as there’s an emotionally sane way out. He needs to surrender heart to Marcy.
Paul finds KiKi emotionally tied up. She introduces him to Horst, her masculine strength. Horst tells him he was rude to Marcy. He apologises, he’s let back into her inner sanctum. He explains to Marcy why he was so mean and why he has pain, he opens up but it’s too late, Marcy is emotionally dead.
The relationship is now passed, away.
He takes the last opportunity to see if Marcy was hiding burn scars, but underneath she is perfect, she is beautiful. He’s screwed up. There is too much pain, he breaks out and leaves.
Marcy has put on her emotional guard again, she is Kiki again, back in her paper Mache shell, she is tough, cynical and ready for the NY singles circuit, she has gone clubbing.
Single and on the rebound, he meets the bar lady, she invites him up, shes not smart but is pretty, and offers him the plaster of Paris bagel paper weight. The same thing Kiki offered but he never received. Paul doesn’t want her bagel though. He wants Marcy’s
Back to Marcy’s, he steals from her paper Mache scream, but the cab driver takes off with his money. This journey into love has truly cost him, there is no going back.
Paul’s hurt and falls into the third relationship; still on the rebound he is taken by another woman who just wants to mother him. This emasculates him, she works for Mr Softy, she demeans him with the phone number joke. She finds his emerging shell, his scream has started to appear on his body, the newspaper clipping stuck to his arm, he is forming a mental shell to hide behind.
His demons from his broken relationships are chasing him. There is no escape. “What do you want from what have I done!” He screams into the Soho darkness.
Emasculated, Paul’s desperate, he seeks male companionship to work out his demons. "this is my first time doing this with a man." The man wants companionship, Paul just wants a social prop, he off loads his problems and then runs.
Paul finally meets a fourth woman, June. She isn’t much, and likes the attention; he hides behind her from his emotional turmoil. She see’s his pain and helps to build his emotion shell.
Shell built and safely encased, Pauls has protection from his personal scream, he can now escape the traumas of his relationship, the pain of Marcy. His skin is thick, this is time to heal, as a broken leg would in a cast.
The cast breaks. He’s now out, no longer overwhelmed by the chaos and disorder bought about by the crazy ride that is love. The torments of love are healed and back to his personal refuge in mind.
He is in the sanctuary of order and process that is his office. He is safe within defined boundaries where there are no dreams, no chaos, no self expression, just process.
A symphony of functional order, daily routine, rules, paper files, and staplers and to where the computer says, “Good Morning Paul”