After Hours

“Tanzer blends criticism, memoir, and straight-from-the-heart insight with a funny, original, and intellectually soaring voice all his own. I loved this book!”—Jerry Stahl“

“A meditation on grief, the complexities of growing older than a long-lost parent, on film as an intergenerational conversation, on the 9-to-5 ‘straight life’ vs. what it (may or may not) take and mean to be an artist.”—Gina Frangello

“A man reckoning with his artistic inspirations and his experiences. May this book encourage other writers to do the same.”—Mike DeCapite

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.