After a long and boring day at work, Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), a computer word processor, meets Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette) in a local cafe in New York City. Paul wants more in his life than just going to work and going home every boring day of his life. Paul is a well-dressed man in a suit and a tie. Paul leaves the office building when it closes at the end of the day and goes to his Upper East Side apartment on East 91st Street where he wastes the evening away watching TV and reading Arthur Miller books. Paul went to the coffee shop as he had nothing else to do at his apartment. Marcy was having her own dinner across the table from Paul. Paul and Marcy discuss their common interest in Henry Miller. Gradually, Marcy comes over to Paul's table as they strike a conversation. Marcy leaves Paul her number and informs him that she lives in SoHo with a sculptor named Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino), who makes and sells plaster of Paris paperweights resembling cream cheese bagels. Later in the night, Paul calls the number from his apartment under the pretense of buying a paperweight. She invites him to come down to SoHo where she is staying with Kiki. The time is 11:32 p.m. Paul visits Marcy, taking a cab to her apartment. On his way to visit Marcy, Paul keeps a $20 bill into the payment slot of the cab. But the driver was driving very fast and recklessly and the $20 bill is blown out the window of the cab, leaving Paul with only some spare pocket change. The cab driver is furious that he cannot pay. This is the first in a long series of misadventures for Paul that turn hostile through no fault of his own. At the apartment Paul meets the sculptor Kiki, who's wearing nothing but a black bra and leather miniskirt. He comes across a collection of photographs and medications which imply that Marcy is severely disfigured from burns on her legs and torso. Kiki is working on a sculpture of a screaming man which he compares to Edvard Munch's The Scream. Marcy had gone to the drug store. Kiki invites Paul to work on her sculpture and he spills plaster of Paris on his shirt. Kiki takes the shirt away for laundry and asks Paul to give her a shoulder massage. Kiki falls asleep just as Marcy returns from the drug store. They go out to a nearby diner where they talk about their favorite movie, which is The Wizard of Oz, among other things. When offered to pay the bill, the strange diner waiter (Dick Miller) tells Paul that it's on the house. At 1:40 a.m., Marcy and Paul return to the loft, where she ushers Paul to her bedroom. In conversation Marcy reveals that she was sexually assaulted by her boyfriend. And that she is married to a guy named Franklin, who owns the place where she lives, but Franklin doesn't stay there anymore. Franklin was obsessed with the movie "the Wizard of Oz" and would scream "Dorothy", after he came during sex. After smoking a joint of Marcy's which she claims it's from Columbia, Paul, for some reason, begins acting like a jerk and leaves. Paul then attempts to go home by subway, but the fare has increased at the stroke of midnight, and he finds that his pocket change is no longer sufficient to purchase a token. Paul had 97 cents in his pocket. The attendant tells Paul that the subway fare for a token has just gone up to $1.50 that very midnight, and the time is now 2:15 am. He goes to a bar where Julie (Teri Garr), a waitress, becomes enamored with him. After Paul uses the men's room, he returns to his table and finds a note slipped by the waitress in which she asks for Paul's help as she hates her job. At the bar, Paul learns that there has been a string of burglaries in the neighborhood. The bar's owner, Tom Schorr (John Heard), offers to give Paul money to cover the subway fare, but cannot open the cash register. As a sign of trust, Paul leaves his apartment keys with Tom and rushes off with Tom's apartment keys to earn his $1.50. Paul lets himself into Tom's apartment, checks the alarm which is on (Tom had asked Paul to check the alarm due to robberies in the neighborhood). On the way back from Tom's apartment, Paul is questioned by suspicious neighbors. Afterwards, Paul spots two actual burglars, Neil (Cheech Marin) and Pepe (Tommy Chong), with one of Kiki's sculptures. After he attempts to confront them, they flee, dropping the sculpture in the process. Paul brings the statue back to Kiki's loft nearby and finds her gagged and tied to a pillar. He unties Kiki thinking that they robbed her, but she tells them that the men are Pepe and Neil, friends of hers who just bought the stature and that she's tied up because she and her boyfriend Horst (Will Patton) are playing a sex game. Kiki and Horst tell Paul that he should apologize to Marcy who has been in her bedroom crying since Paul left. Paul finds Marcy has committed suicide by overdosing on Seconal. Paul reports Marcy's death before noticing a roving neighborhood watch on the street below. On the way out, he grabs a note from Kiki inviting him and Marcy to Club Berlin. Kiki and a stout man named Horst had already left to go to Club Berlin, a nightclub. Paul looks and finds no burn marks on Marcy. Paul sees a $20 bill left behind by them and instinctively takes it. Paul calls the police to report the body. Paul attempts to return to Tom's bar, but it is locked up, with a sign indicating that Tom will be back in half an hour. Paul meets Julie, the waitress, in the street, who invites him up to her apartment to wait for Tom to reopen the bar. Julie's apartment looks like a shrine to the mid-1960s replete with the music of the Monkees playing in the background. Julie asks Paul to let her draw a picture of him which he agrees. Julie is enamored with Paul, but Paul goes back to Tom's bar. Tom tells Paul that he just left to check his apartment because it took so long for Paul to come back. Paul apologizes and gives Tom back his apartment keys. Just as Tom is about to hand over the $1.50, the phone rings and someone on the other line informs Tom that his girlfriend has just committed suicide. To his horror, Paul immediately learns that Marcy was Tom's girlfriend. Paul returns to Julie's apartment where she begins to sketch his portrait while they talk. Ultimately, Paul rejects Julie's advances and leaves. But when Paul returns to the bar to get his apartment keys back from Tom, he finds the place closed again. Paul goes over to Tom's apartment, but he is not there either. Then the gay couple and another of Tom's neighbors see him and chase him away again. By this time, however, Tom's neighbors have become convinced that Paul is responsible for the rash of burglaries in SoHo and form together a vigilante group to hunt him down. Paul goes to find Kiki and inform her of Marcy's suicide. The bouncer at Club Berlin refuses him entry because his hairstyle does not fit the Mohawk dress code, and Paul narrowly escapes several punks who attempt to forcibly give him a haircut. Paul sees Kiki and Horst at a table and calls out to them, but they don't see or hear him through the loud music and crowd. Paul runs out of the club barely able to compose himself with only a line or two of his hair shaved off. On the street, Paul is mistaken for a burglar and is relentlessly pursued by a mob of local residents. Back on the street, Paul suddenly meets the same cab driver whom he was forced to stiff earlier for the ride. Paul gives the driver the $20 bill he took from Kiki's loft, but the driver just grabs the bill and drives off as payback for stiffing him. Paul by then has just run into another strange woman, coming out of the cab, named Gail (Catherine O'Hara) a Mister Softee ice cream truck driver, whom she feels sorry for and takes him back to her apartment. Gail then blurts out that she drives a Mister Softee ice-cream truck nearby and will be glad to give him a ride home. But when they arrive at the truck parked in an alley, Gail spots a wanted poster of Paul. Gail mistakes him for the burglar based on Julie's posters. Back on the street, Paul runs into a shy homosexual man, named Alex, (Robert Plunket) and allows himself to be "picked-up" to let himself into the man's apartment. Paul asks to use Alex's phone to call the police and then tries to tell the desk sergeant about wanting to report the vigilante mob that's been endangering his life. Unbelievably, the police officer on the other end of the line thinks that it's a prank call and hangs up on him. Then Paul sees Julie on the street putting up wanted posters of him on a lamp post. Paul runs back out onto the street and calls out to her, but she just scornfully glances at him and rides off on a bicycle. At 4:10 a.m., Paul goes back to the diner where he sees Tom sitting at a table. Tom tells Paul that he just got back from the local morgue where he was forced to identify Marcy's body. Paul demands that Tom give him back his apartment keys, but Tom says that he left them back at the bar. Frantic, Paul asks Tom to hide him for there is a vigilante mob looking for him. Tom goes outside to check if the coast is clear, but Paul sees Tom running right to up Gail and the vigilante mob passing by and he tells them where Paul is. Angered at Tom's betrayal, Paul runs out of the diner just in time. As a last resort, Paul dashes back to Club Berlin hoping to find Kiki and Horst there to ask them for help, but now finds the place deserted for it is closing since the time now is almost 5 a.m. Sleep-deprived, bedraggled, and ranting, Paul uses his last quarter to play "Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee on the club's jukebox and asks an older woman named June (Verna Bloom) to dance. After he explains his situation, June offers to hide him in her apartment underneath the club, where she uses Papier-Mache to disguise him as a sculpture while the mob raids the club. After the mob leaves, June is worried they will come back, and doesn't take off the plaster, which hardens, trapping Paul in a position that resembles Kiki's sculpture. Neil and Pepe break into June apartment and steal Paul, thinking him to be the sculpture they had dropped in the street earlier. They load Paul in the back of their van now spilling over with dozens of stolen appliances from the SoHo apartments including June's. The van speeds uptown and takes a sharp turn which swings open the van's back door. Paul falls to the pavement, with the force of the impact breaking the plaster open, directly outside the front gate of his office building. With no way to go home, he simply brushes himself off and goes to his desk. Paul goes to the floor where he works, sits at his desk, and goes to work at his computer while the rest of the office workers arrive. It's the beginning of just another boring weekday for him.
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