The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne

The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir - 5*
Griffin Dunne

Dunne grew up surrounded by Hollywood stars. At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read his memoir if it was just going to be name-dropping. But, very quickly, I was laughing out loud and loving it. One example:

[He told the story of his father giving him the “birds and the bees” talk when he was nine. Dunne stopped him and said:]
“I’ve known for years. I’ve just been pretending I didn’t.”
“And what is it you know?” he asked suddenly as nervous as a suspect to a crime ascertaining just how much the police have on him.
“That there is no such thing as Santa.”
He didn’t see that coming and groaned with disappointment that he was going to have to have “the talk” after all.
“Well, yes, that is true, Griffin,” he began. “But what I wanted to talk about is how you were born. How we all were. You see, your mom has a vagina that is between her legs, where you and I have our penises. Before you came out of Mom’s vagina, I put my penis inside her—”
I slapped my hands over my ears to cut him off, but words like “penis” and “vagina” managed to bleed through. I pictured a bouncing dick landing on every disturbing word like they were lyrics to a sing-along, and silently begged someone to turn off the music. My father droned on, oblivious to my horror, about planting “seeds” deep inside my mother.
“What,” I interrupted, “does this have to do with Santa!”
That was as far as he got. (page 90)

There were many hilarious stories. My husband and I were sitting next to each other as I read, and he said he noticed I kept laughing.

But it wasn’t all funny. Poignant, sad, and tragic things happened, too. The most important one was that Dunne’s sister was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend. Dunne’s sister, Dominique Dunne, was in several movies and TV shows, becoming well-known. The trial was high-profile, in the news for days. At that time, in the early ‘80’s, the victim’s family did not typically attend the trial, and the Dunnes were advised not to go. They did, though, and, hard as it was, they felt it was the right thing to do. The trial was a travesty. For some reason, the judge seemed to hate the Dunne family. He excused the jury several times when key witnesses testified because it was “prejudicial.”

Dunne is the nephew of Joan Didion. Didion was married to Dunne’s father’s brother, John Dunne. Besides enjoying the many stories and scenes with Hollywood stars such as Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Janis Joplin, it was interesting to read the interactions with Joan and John.

Dunne is 70. I am turning 70 this year. The famous people in his life were in the background of my growing up. It was fun to hear about their actual lives rather than the puff pieces in the news. And Dunne is an excellent storyteller and writer. I recommend it!