Not only that, but the nightclub bouncer scene was brazenly stolen from Franz Kafka.

I’ve heard that Joe Frank performed a monologue at some point (I’ve never actually heard it) about discovering Joseph Minion’s theft of his material— said monologue apparently includes Frank’s account of phone conversations with Minon pleading with him not to sue, that it would ruin his career etc. Maybe you could track that down.

Having been a big fan of Joe Frank’s “Work in Progress” I’m amazed his radio monologues haven’t been mined already for a tv series or a couple of movies by Hollywood. They were deliciously surreal and funny.

There were four short films done from his stories that aired on the Playboy Channel, of all places, in the late ’80s, and at a time he was in negotiations with HBO for a series based on his stories, but sadly that never worked out.

There does seem to be something in production now, though, if you check Joe’s IMDB listing.

Wow. Thanks for that. After Hours is a fascinating film and an absolute favorite of mine. I feel nostalgic for Paul Hackett’s New York, even though I arrived there 10 or 15 years after it had disappeared.

I’m thinking how the film would have played if the husband’s quirk of saying “Surrender Dorothy” at the point of orgasm had remained his “ca-cas” in bed.

Glad there was no mention of Cheech and Chong in the original monolog.

To clarify some details…

Joe Frank discusses this plagiarism without mentioning the movie’s title in the original version of a show titled “No Show” which ran 2 hours long. The concept of “No Show” was that it was a monologue explaining in detail the week’s events which lead him to come on the radio that night without having a show prepared. He goes into detail in several segments about dealing with the plagiarism of his work.

Larry Block, who plays the cab driver, is a regular on Joe’s shows. In “No Show” Joe says someone called him telling him the first 30 minutes of this movie they just saw was lifted from his work. It might not have been Larry since he would have known much sooner than seeing the film for the first time (like actually having the script in hand) that the work was stolen. Perhaps Larry was working with Joe at the time but didn’t hear his past work. “Lies” was an early Joe Frank work.

Later broadcasts of “No Show” were cut down to one hour removing all references to the lawsuit. I have a copy of the original version.

On a personal note, Even though I was a regular Joe Frank listener I actually saw “After Hours” before I heard “Lies” on a KCRW rebroadcast and wondered who was stealing from who or if Joe actually worked on the film. When I later acquired the full version of “No Show” from a fellow collector it all was clear.

Marc

When I first saw After Hours, I was told by a friend that every scene in the film was somehow connected to the Wizard of Oz. I could never see this, (except the whole surrender Dorothy thing) but it always left me with the impression that the film referred to something - I just didn’t know what.

Perhaps the marks of plagiarism are somehow telegraphed? Maybe not… but it’s a damn interesting story!

Wow! That’s incredible! I’ll have to check Joe Frank out. I’ve been a fan of “After Hours” for years and the first thing I thought of when reading this was that scene in the cab and the look on the driver’s face when Griffin’s character tells him he has no money. Thanks for posting the picture, because that look is hysterical! It’s a shame though that I had to discover one of my favorite movies stole its premise from another creator though.

In response to the Wizard of Oz analysis: http://www.notcoming.com/reviews/afterhours/

The film is a metaphor for death and rebirth. Paul literally retreats back into the womb, the dark, subterranean basement in which he is entombed in plaster (after a Pieta pose with June as Mary Magdalene). He is saved, carried home, and dropped off in front of his work, where he is hatched (reborn). He has learned that he is destined for a dull, middle-class life and now he must deal with his situation rather than trying to escape it into a world of fantasy and horror.

Brilliant film.

Nice. I like how you included the audio and the picture of Larry Block. I just saw this movie again recently; it’s a bit dated, I think, but Joe Frank’s work doesn’t feel outdated at all.

Also, for those who don’t know, the original title of Minion’s “After Hours” script was: “Lies.” I think it might be mentioned in the supplemental material on the DVD.

I was a Joe Frank listener from his early days having purchased a cassette copy of “Lies” when I heard it late one night in Los Angeles in the mid-80s. After Joe moved to KCRW I made sure I was home every week to hear his two-hour shows on Saturday evenings. I never failed to roll tape and have the original 2-hour “No Show.” I had seen the trailer for “After Hours” and was excited to go see it since I’d recognized the elements from “Lies” and thought that Joe had been involved, but viewing it after hearing the original “No Show” left me a bit jaundiced.

Loved the monologue by Joe Frank, I had never heard of him before. But by hearing the monologue you posted there is no doubt that After Hours stole for Joe Frank. I´l look for more of his stuff… and maybe steal from him too =) Great Post!

Having read about this issue previously on the ‘After Hours’ Wikipedia entry, and not knowing of Joe Frank before, I have to say it’s great to finally hear ‘Lies’ at last.

My immediate impression, as someone who has loved the film for years and considers it to be one of the funniest and tightly written scripts this side of Preston Sturges, is there’s certainly no doubt that Minion used the basic set up and situations of the entire monologue with which to kick start his script. To my mind, however, the dialogue, details and situations which follow it (the film really only gets better after the initial premise) are a far superior piece of writing than Joe Frank’s monologue.

Surely it isn’t so surprising that a writer would take inspiration from the work of another he happens to admire? I suppose what might be mildly shocking to some is how one could do it so brazenly with a contemporary (according to Griffin Dunne, the original script was also called ‘Lies’!) But as T.S. Eliot said “talent imitates, genius steals”.

More recently, a similar controversy arose around lyrics by Bob Dylan (certainly no stranger to a bit of pillaging, or “love and theft” as he called it) when a journalist noticed the uncanny similarities between lines on Dylan’s ‘Modern Times’ CD and the work of Henry Timrod, a forgotten Civil War poet. The notion that all art (especially writing) is somehow completely original and untouched by other works is a rather persistent romantic fallacy. By that notion, Shakespeare would have to be considered a deeply unoriginal writer indeed.

Also, the comment regarding the scene with the nightclub doorman being “brazenly stolen” from Kafka made me smile. Surely, almost everyone would recognize that scene as being inspired by the parable from ‘The Trial’ (the key passage in one of the 20th century’s most influential books) and would rather consider it a “homage”, as well as an apt and very funny summation of modern alienation?

Thanks for posting, Shane. I think we can agree that the Kafka stuff is an allusion/spoof, not theft. Minion’s use of Joe Frank’s monologue clearly crosses the line that separates mere inspiration from plagiarism.

It really sounds as if Minion got himself caught up in his own real life nightmare screwball comedy plot, finding an existing story for his college assignment the, whoops, dumb luck, getting the damn thing optioned. You can imagine watching the movie of it, willing the main character to just tell the truth. It’s a shame he didn’t. He could have approached Frank with the idea of ‘adapting’ the story he’d already used for his script, then produced the adaptation and the deal in record time - a fairytale ending for both of them and perfectly legitimate, because in the end, for all the talk of ‘plagiarism’, that’s all this is, a film adaptation of a short story - and, I agree with Shane, one that does rather improve on its provenance.

Is that clip the whole segment of the radio program? Because, even when I agree it is the first part of the movie, I don’t think it makes for the rest of the script. Big deal!