The Friday Afternoon Club: Actor, producer and director Griffin Dunne on his new family memoir

Here & Now co-host Robin Young sits down with Griffin Dunne to discuss “The Friday Afternoon Club,” his memoir of growing up in Hollywood and Manhattan set among larger-than-life characters, including his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne, his father Vanity Fair reporter Dominick Dunne and his best friend Carrie Fisher. Dunne has been an actor, producer, and director since the late 70s. Among his work, he produced and starred in “After Hours,” directed by Martin Scorsese, and he directed the documentary “The Center Will Not Hold” about Didion.

Copies of his book will be available for purchase from Brookline Booksmith. Dunne will sign following the conversation.

CitySpace Tickets
Premiere: $25.00 (includes reserved seating in the front of the theater)
General: $15.00
Student: $5.00 (must present a valid student ID upon arrival)

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About “The Friday Afternoon Club”
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.