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A charming, hilarious account of Griffin Dunne's coming of age among a family of larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan.
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 22-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, which ended in a travesty of justice that also somehow marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne's career as a bestselling author of true crime narratives.
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 humour and glints of surprising light in even the most harrowing and painful of circumstances.
Read and Recommended by Graeme:
"Griffin Dunne comes from a family that is perhaps not Hollywood royalty but certainly aristocracy - the son of Dominick Dunne, famous for his true-crime reporting on the Menendez brothers and O.J. Simpson trials for Vanity Fair magazine, and also the nephew of famed writer Joan Didion. Griffin had considerable success as an actor in the 1980s (After Hours, An American Werewolf in Paris) and in recent years has had supporting work on TV shows such as This is Us and Goliath. But with this book he displays a literary pedigree of which his father and aunt would be proud. What is particularly striking is how candid Griffin is about himself and the rest of his family. In particular when writing about his father who largely kept his sexuality private throughout his life. Griffin is much more revealing as he relates the breakdown of his parent’s marriage, although not in a salacious way - the sense that pervades is of his love and appreciation for his father. He recalls being taken on holiday to Hawaii at age nine with his father and his buddy Don and it was only years later that his mother pointed out that the two men were actually lovers, a fact lost on Griffin at the time. Dominick also produced the film The Boys in the Band - playwright Mart Crowley was a family friend - and became close with one of the cast, Frederick Combs. In 1974 when Griffin moved to New York, he became friends with Frederick, who revealed that Dominick nursed an unrequited passion for him. Frederick later died of AIDS and Griffin helped him out when he was at a low ebb. But apart from revelations about his father, there are plenty of other insider Hollywood stories. After all, Natalie Wood was his mother’s best friend, Carrie Fisher was Griffin’s, while his babysitter was Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched)! He also recounts an over-the-top Black and White Ball his father mounted to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his marriage to his wife, which imploded shortly afterwards. Truman Capote attended, then stole the theme for his own much more famous party. Truman did not invite the Dunnes!"