The Friday Afternoon Club

Griffin Dunne’s first three decades of growing up among a family of larger-than-life characters and cultural forces in Hollywood and Manhattan were filled with extraordinary incident At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary L.A. party for the publication of Tom Wolfe’s And yet, for all its bold-face cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, <The Friday Afternoon Club< is no celebrity memoir. It is, down to its bones, a family story that brilliantly embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny, and moving characters--its author most of all--finding wicked, self-deprecating humor and glints of surprising light in even the most harrowing and painful of circumstances.

Auteur

Griffin Dunne has been an actor, producer, and director since the late 1970s. Among his work, he produced and acted in After Hours; he directed Practical Magic and the documentary The Center Will Not Hold about his aunt, Joan Didion. Griffin and his dog, Mary, live in the East Village of Manhattan.

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“What a remarkable and moving story filled with twists and turns, the most famous of faces, and a complex family revealed with loving candor. I was blown away by Griffin Dunne’s life and his ability to capture so much of it in these beautifully written pages.” —Anderson Cooper

"Joyful, tragic, and resilient with a masterful, roving tone...Griffin takes his rightful place in a family and tradition of real writers.” —David Duchovny

Griffin Dunne’s memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan finds wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances

At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good. In his early twenties, he shared an apartment in Manhattan’s Hotel Des Artistes with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars and he was a struggling actor working as a popcorn concessionaire at Radio City Music Hall. A few years later, he produced and starred in the now-iconic film After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese. In the midst of it all, Griffin’s twenty-two-year-old sister, Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the 1980s. The outcome was a travesty of justice that marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne’s career as a crime reporter for Vanity Fair and a victims' rights activist.

And yet, for all its boldface cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, The Friday Afternoon Club is no mere celebrity memoir. It is, down to its bones, a family story that embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny, and moving characters—its author most of all.

Résumé
“Warm and perceptive.” —*New York Times*

“Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story." —*Washington Post
*
"Dunne is a prospector for the incandescent detail.”&#160; —*Los Angeles Times*

“What a remarkable and moving story filled with twists and turns, the most famous of faces, and a complex family revealed with loving candor. I was blown away by Griffin Dunne’s life and his ability to capture so much of it in these beautifully written pages.” —Anderson Cooper

Griffin Dunne’s memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan finds wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances

At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good. In his early twenties, he shared an apartment in Manhattan’s Hotel Des Artistes with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars and he was a struggling actor working as a popcorn concessionaire at Radio City Music Hall. A few years later, he produced and starred in the now-iconic film After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese. In the midst of it all, Griffin’s twenty-two-year-old sister, Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the 1980s. The outcome was a travesty of justice that marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne’s career as a crime reporter for Vanity Fair and a victims' rights activist.

And yet, for all its boldface cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, The Friday Afternoon Club is no mere celebrity memoir. It is, down to its bones, a family story that embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny, and moving characters—its author most of all.

Échantillon de lecture
The morning I was born, Dad was a wreck. Having gotten Mom safely to Doctors Hospital, he was told that she required an emergency C-section, and to sit in the waiting room until he was called. Five hours later, he’d gone through a pack of Luckies, and after making a nuisance of himself to every nurse who passed, he went to buy more smokes at a deli across the street.

Walking back to the lobby, he saw the surgeon who was to perform the C-section about to step into a cab. He ran to him and practically grabbed the doctor by the lapels.
“What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?” “My wife! Is she all right?”
“Which one is your wife?” “Lenny Dunne, for God’s sake!”
“Oh, Mr. Dunne, my apologies, didn’t anyone tell you?” “Tell me what?”
“We did the C-section hours ago. She’s fine. Baby’s fine. Someone should have told you, but it’s been a crazy day. I’ve done three since.”

More relieved than pissed, Dad let the man get in his taxi. Before it pulled away from the curb, the doctor yelled out the window, “Oh, and don’t worry about the foot!”
On the long walk back to the maternity ward, Dad pictured me growing up in a wheelchair or with a prosthetic leg, but while&#160;my right foot did curl inward when I was a newborn, it turned itself out by the time I could walk.

From the moment I was born, my father told me I was always trying to get somewhere else. My first word was taxi. I had a toy suitcase that I’d carry around the living room and raise my hand to hail a cab, yelling, “Taxi, taxi,” as if late for an important meeting. Elizabeth Montgomery, who later played Samantha in Be- witched, was my first babysitter. She was a struggling actress with a small part in Late Love when she met my mother, and though Elizabeth was her employee, my mother and she became close friends. Elizabeth once told her, while changing my dia- pers, that I had a bigger dick than her husband. That marriage was, needless to say, short-lived.

There is a kinescope from an early episode of the Today show in which Arlene Francis, also from the cast of …