Especially in the “After Hours” video, I went full-on film geek: There’s the “Chinatown” reference with the broken nose, the “Jacobs Ladder” reference with the subway, “King of Comedy” for Jimmy Kimmel, “Trouble Every Day,” “Possession,” “Dressed to Kill” with the elevator — and of course “After Hours,” Martin Scorsese’s [1985] film, is the obvious inspiration, with all this madness taking place in one night. That was the only on the nose reference — pun intended!

In 2019, Tesfaye went back to his early days, playing the Trilogy-era version of himself in the Safdie brothers’ film Uncut Gems. “I’ve been following the Safdies for years,” he says, a committed cinephile whose current obsessions include Claire Denis’ carnal thriller Trouble Every Day (2001), Brian De Palma’s neo-noir slasher Dressed to Kill (1980), Eckhart Schmidt’s West German, ’80s horror flick Der Fan, and Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986).