After Hours

Siskel and Ebert meet Joan Didion in Auteur, a unique series that combines in-depth film criticism with personal autobiography. Each book in the series examines a single movie through a critical and historical lens, filtered through the author’s creative and emotional connection to the film. The result mixes literary memoir with a loving study of some of our most beloved and influential films.

After Hours: Scorsese, Grief and the Grammar of Cinema is a live wire examination of author Ben Tanzer’s relationship to Martin Scorsese’s famous 1985 film, and how it helped him to make sense of the death of his father. Tanzer also delves into the overall importance of Scorsese and his films to his family, using After Hours as a lens into his life decisions—most particularly in the form of late-night visits to downtown New York City in the 1980s when he first came of age and began to ask himself how one manages to live a life of meaning, excitement, exploration, and joy. 

Emmy-award winner Ben Tanzer’s acclaimed work includes the short story collection Upstate, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. Ben is a storySouth and Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival Nonfiction Prose Award and a Midwest Book Award. He also received an Honorable Mention at the Chicago Writers Association Book Awards for Traditional Non-Fiction and a Bronze Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. He’s written for Hemispheres, Punk Planet, Men’s Health, and The Arrow, AARP’s GenX newsletter. His latest novel, The Missing, was released in March 2024. Ben lives in Chicago with his family.