Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman (Rosanna Arquette). So begins the wildest night of his life, as bizarre occurrences—involving underground-art punks, a distressed waitress, a crazed Mister Softee truck driver, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweight—pile up with anxiety-inducing relentlessness and thwart his attempts to get home. With this Kafkaesque cult classic, Martin Scorsese—abetted by Michael Ballhaus’s kinetic cinematography and scene-stealing supporting turns by Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, and John Heard—directed a darkly comic tale of mistaken identity, turning the desolate night world of 1980s SoHo into a bohemian wonderland of surreal menace.
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Supplements
- New program featuring director Martin Scorsese interviewed by writer Fran Lebowitz
- Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Scorsese, Schoonmaker, director of photography Michael Ballhaus, actor and producer Griffin Dunne, and producer Amy Robinson, with additional comments recorded in 2023
- Documentary about the making of the film featuring Dunne, Robinson, Schoonmaker, and Scorsese
- New program on the look of the film featuring costume designer Rita Ryack and production designer Jeffrey Townsend
- Deleted scenes
- Trailer
- An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley