Griffin Dunne takes on the family mantle

The star of AFTER HOURS--son of Dominick Dunne, nephew of Joan Didion--has written THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, an unputtdownable memoir about love, his sister's murder, celebrity, and growing up Dunne.

The family Dunne and friends, courtesy of the McGrath estate

If you, like me, are a Gen-X woman of a certain age, you may have harbored a not-so-secret crush, in your late teens, on Griffin Dunne, the actor who played Paul Hackett, the hapless protagonist in Martin Scorcese’s After Hours. A little refresher: near the start of this black comedy, Dunne’s/Hackett’s $20 bill flies out a taxi window as the car zooms through the streets of Manhattan, transporting Dunne to Rosanna Arquette, who will end up dead by her own hand a few hours later. And this is only the beginning of Hackett’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night. He is then forced, by circumstances increasingly beyond his control, to dive deeper and deeper into the punk-and-art-filled demimonde of pre-mallified Soho, from which he cannot, for the life of him, seem to escape.

Turns out? The plights of Paul Hackett and the man who played him are not all that dissimilar. Metaphorically, at least. Or so I recently learned in Dunne’s stunning new memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club, which is also, improbably, his first book, published at the end of his seventh decade.

Improbably, because Dunne can not only write just as well if not better than any Dunne—his father was Dominick Dunne; his aunt, Joan Didion; his uncle, John Gregory Dunne—but his blackly comedic and often devastatingly tragic tale should enter the canon as a critical new piece of feminist literature on the history of domestic violence and victims’ rights in the U.S., as well as a deeply-felt, gut-bustingly funny, and beautifully rendered coming-of-age saga. Bookended by the murder of his sister, the actress Dominique Dunne, at the strangling hands of her jilted ex-boyfriend, the memoir reads like a novel. Only instead of justice being served at the end, we are left, as Dunne was, to pick up the pieces of his life and move forward after John Sweeney, Dominique’s murderer, gets sentenced to a paltry 8 years for involuntary manslaughter, of which he only ended up serving 3 1/2.

At the same time, because Griffin is a Dunne, and his father’s black and white ball was the inspiration for Truman Capote’s, Dunne’s life story contains some of the wackiest celebrity cameos I’ve ever read, none of which I will ruin by offering spoilers except to publish the photo below of Dunne with his then best friend Carrie Fisher and her costar Mark Hamill during the launch of Star Wars into the stratosphere. Because of course Dunne, like Zelig, was somehow always in every room where it happened. And like Paul Hackett, his character in After Hours, he was not always able to find his way home.

Griffin, far left, brought Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to a party at Earl and Camilla MGrath’s the week Star Wars opened. Courtesy of the McGrath estate

Until now. With this book. Whose insane twists and turns come fast, furious, and with Dunne’s winning voice and humor propelling it forward at locomotive speed, like the Griffin wheels with which he shares a name. (His grandfather, Thomas Francis Griffin, was part owner and executive of Griffin Wheel Company of Chicago, Illinois. If you’ve ever been on a train, you’ve probably been transported atop Grandpa Griffin’s wheels.)

Moreover, Dunne’s professional pivots and his ability to turn these tragic twists and turns into something beautiful and meaningful, at age 69, will, I hope, be a beacon to all who’ve ever wondered, “Can I? Should I? Will I?” Because the answer is always yes. Yes, you can. And you should. And with enough elbow grease, determination, self-reflection, patience, and pathos, you might just enjoy doing it—whatever it is—as much as Griffin Dunne seemed to enjoy writing this book.

Griffin Dunne’s new memoir, THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB. Photo of the author ©Brigitte Lacomb

I asked Dunne to speak with me over Zoom a couple of weeks ago, and he gamely agreed. The video of our interview is below. For paid subscribers, you can read a condensed version of the transcript and see more family photos below the video.

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Deborah Copaken: Whenever I'm standing in the middle of Soho, the image that comes to mind is that $20 bill going out of the taxi in After Hours. I can't not think about it when I'm there. So, you've gone from actor, and you also were the producer of After Hours, and I know that you did the documentary film about your aunt, Joan Didion, and now a really significantly long and amazing book. So, my first question is an obvious one. How did you go from being an actor/director/producer to an author? It's not an easy transition.

Griffin Dunne: No. And I have transitioned in a sort of restless fashion. Starting with really wanting to be an actor and going through the usual struggles of an actor at the beginning of their career of doing everything but. Waiting on tables and all of that kind of stuff. But I became a producer in order to become an actor. I produced a movie with my partners, Amy Robinson and Mark Metcalf: an Anne Beatie novel called Chilly Scenes of Winter. And we had never produced a movie before. Our hearts were really intended to be actors. And we each gave ourselves a part in this movie that Joan Micklin Silver directed.

From that small part—which got a very big laugh—I was able to then get on the road to becoming an actor. And I was doing two things at once. Sometimes they would cancel each other out. It was very confusing, particularly for people who represented me as an actor, that I would then go behind the camera when it was a good time to be in front of the camera.

And then at some point, the acting—I’m getting to the book by the way—started to dry up in terms of having interesting parts. And producing, I would sort of be burned out on it.