2023-10-11 21:30:22
LUIS MARTINEZ
Saint Sebastian
Updated Wednesday, October 11, 2023 – 21:30
It’s not yet a birthday and it hasn’t changed the history of cinema, but ‘Ho, what a night!’, Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece, is still more alive and current than ever.
Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette in ‘Ho, what a night!’WORLD
There are many reasons to love Martin Scorsese. For his fiery mysticism, for his cinematographic wisdom, for his transcendental conception of violence, for his soulless and crude sense of humor, for his unredeemed optimism, for his low voice, for his chifle voice at the rhythm of a machine gun, for his secondary appearance kind of ‘The Godfather’, for his forest eyebrows, because yes or, simply, because ‘‘Wow, what a night!’.
Very far from the canon that has made ‘Taxi Driver’ or ‘Raging Bull’ cornerstones of contemporary cinema, the comedy released in 1985 has grown over time until it has become something similar to a myth as carnal and close as it is essentially eternal. Approaching this film right now (you can do it whenever you want thanks to Filmin, for example) produces a strange feeling of alienated or simply strange familiarity. The world that is seen on the screen without mobile phones and full of those mythological beasts of the 80s called ‘yuppies’ scattered throughout a Soho in New York that no longer exists of ‘lofts’ occupied by artists; That world, we said, seems almost extraterrestrial. And yet, the anxiety that the explosive device transmits from the first second designed by Scorsese, it couldn’t be more modern, more ours. Suddenly, the time after 9/11, the pandemic and the polarization of social media has made it ‘Ho, what a night!’ the best portrait of contemporary anguish.
Do you agree? Yes, there must be something to all of this because for some time now everyone has been asking me about the film. By the way, how do you say it’s titled in Spanish? ‘Ho…’. It is funny.The one who answers is Griffin Dunne (Nueva York, 1955), protagonist – as well as producer – of the film with an impossible guttural pronunciation for someone not trained in snorting jacks. He ‘After hours’ of the original title seems, now that he knows about the spark of the Spanish translators, almost impertinent. It is assumed that the reason for the interview is ‘Ex-husbands’, the production signed by Noah Pritzker about male melancholy and where he reunites with Rossana Arquette (an essential and traumatic piece of ‘Jo, what a night!’) who recently competed at the San Sebastian Festival.
But Dunne seems already trained in changing the conversation. “In some ways,” he reasons at the first mention of Scorsese’s work, “the film was ahead of its time. It has some premonition. The film captured an energy that cinema had not dealt with until then. The idea that anxiety could be a source of humor was something completely unprecedented. And perhaps for this reason, it was not fully appreciated at the time. The audience felt a little uncomfortable because they didn’t understand that the anguish of losing the only $20 bill you have or not being allowed on the subway because they just raised the price could be fun. How can you laugh at someone who suffers? However, the fun was there. The funny thing wasn’t seeing someone having a bad time. The really fun thing is that you could be that someone because everything that happened to my character could happen to you.” It’s clear.
To situate ourselves, Martin Scorsese came to ‘Ho, what a night!’ in the worst of ways. He had stopped the great character project of him more than just personal’The last temptation of Christ and he still had not recovered from the failure that was ‘The King of Comedy’. Amy Robinson, producer then actress, then proposed to the director to take charge of a project without an owner and he accepted it like the shipwrecked who accepts one last plank to hold on to. In recent statements, Robinson confessed that Scorsese ended up admitting that thanks to the film he regained his love for cinema. Exaggeration or not, the truth is irrefutable. And the latter is a film launched breathlessly through a dark night of the soul populated by mythological and extravagant creatures such as Linda Fiorentino, the sinister ice cream seller Catherine O’Hara, Verna Bloom, the aforementioned Rossana Arquette and a disturbing Teri Garr. Without forgetting Cheech y Chong.
Paul Hackett, that’s the character’s name, is a computer scientist who needs affection (or just sex) whose only goal is to return home. But everything conspires against his most basic desire. And included in everything is the steel blue magnetic photograph of Michael Ballhaus (who met Scorsese in this film) and, of course, the electrical montage of a Thelma Schoonmaker in a state of grace. More than ever. The original two-hour montage was condensed into an hour and a half, one would say perfect.
“I think what Marty liked about the project is that, in some way, it was like returning to the urgency of ‘Mean Streets’ with a small budget and a team dedicated body and soul,” Dunne recalls while not hesitates to recount some of the most celebrated anecdotes for the fan audience. “Yes, it’s true that Marty asked me to abstain completely for the entire duration of filming. He wanted my eyes to reflect true hunger,” he says and adds for the very clueless: “I’m talking about sex.” Regarding the ending (careful for those who have not seen it yet), the now 68-year-old actor (then 30) recognizes what is already a legend: “Another one appeared in the script and, in fact, another one was filmed. But After the first screenings, we changed our mind so that the end was the beginning and we returned to the office all covered in plaster.”
“It’s clear that things have changed,” concludes the actor, son of the great chronicler of an explosive and suicidal Hollywood that was Dominick Dunne and nephew of the writer Joan Didion. “Now we live constantly stimulated, watching Instagram and with a thousand platform channels that offer series and movies as if cotton candy was stuffed into your mouth. You can’t get lost on the street. An Uber is always within reach to take you anywhere at any time you want. However, Fear and paranoia are more present than ever. And that’s why the film is so current. On the other hand, falling down the rabbit hole like Alice is universally fun… Hooo. It sounds better in Spanish than in English.” Wow, what a fucking marvel.
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