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| Griffin Dunne on watching movies with his mom: “We would see A Place in the Sun. And I'd say, Mom, you look like Elizabeth Taylor …” Photo: Anne Katrin Titze |
In the second instalment with Griffin Dunne on his memoir The Friday Afternoon Club we talk about the Kennedy “switch on the switch” and the “lie based on a lie,” his elementary school friends with famous parents and attempts at reconnecting with the past, watching the Million Dollar Movie program with his mother, his uncle John Gregory Dunne’s influence, more on Suddenly, Last Summer, and Gavin de Becker (author of The Gift Of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence).
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| Griffin Dunne with Anne-Katrin Titze on his uncle John Gregory Dunne: “I always made him laugh from a very early age” |
Griffin Dunne and I met during this year’s Tribeca Festival at their launch party (for the second edition of Tribeca Festival Lisboa, hosted by co-founders Robert De Niro (featured in Matt Tyrnauer’s Tribeca highlight Nobu on chef Nobu Matsuhisa) and Jane Rosenthal. Griffin spoke with me about his intimate documentary on his aunt, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. He had been part of the inaugural Lisbon delegation in 2024.
From Upstate New York, Griffin Dunne joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on The Friday Afternoon Club.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Well, there's a beautiful line that I love in this very silly film called Paris, When It Sizzles with William Holden and Audrey Hepburn. I don't know if you know it?
Griffin Dunne: I don’t know about that one.
AKT: It's very silly, he's a screenwriter on a deadline and he doesn't have a word written. So he hires a secretary, played by Audrey Hepburn, who is supposed to type it up for him, and then they make up stories, and he is all pompous at first and it takes place during one weekend in Paris, and it's very hot. He has a line stating how the “magnificently ingenious switch on the switch” has to happen! I was thinking of that line sometimes, especially with the Kennedy story in your book. The “lie based on a lie” and how it all evolves. It's great. It's a wonderful switch on the switch!
GD: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I was always a bit of a fibber, you know, particularly when I was a kid, for my own self-importance, or kind of an embarrassment about having a dad who was not typically a manly take-your-son-hunting-and-throw-football-around kind of a dad. That I was compelled to make up a story to tell everyone that he'd been arrested for robbing a bank. Which is the stupidest thing you could possibly have done. But what I remember most vividly is my father's fear that I was an embarrassment to him, and that filled me with shame for that lie.
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| Audrey Hepburn and William Holden in Paris When It Sizzles plotting the “magnificently ingenious switch on the switch.” |
AKT: The whole story about the Kennedy church visit, and how that is resolved years later makes for an incredible tale. Your best friends from elementary school - did you ever run into them again? Gunnar Keel?
GD: No, I've googled everyone. Cody Palance, Jack's son, had died quite a long time ago and I can't find Gunnar. He's not even on Facebook. I've been really curious about that.
AKT: Nobody from the distant past contacted you after reading the book?
GD: The girl, I had to change her name, but the woman, or the teenager, who deflowered me, I couldn't find her, so I changed her name, and then out of the blue after the book had been out for about a month or so, she contacted me. And she said she really liked the book, and she knew exactly who I was writing about, and she said, I don't remember being that much older than you, but it was a funny sort of thing.
AKT: Again a return of something. One of the films that looms very large in the memoir is Suddenly, Last Summer in a lot of different contexts!
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| Griffin Dunne at the Tribeca Festival Lisboa launch party Photo: Anne Katrin Titze |
GD: Yeah, this keeps coming up and I didn't realize that when I was in the process of doing it. It would be like, god, there's that movie again! My mother was such a cinephile, and she knew lines and dialogue, and we had this in Los Angeles, there was something called the Million Dollar Movie. And it was on Channel 9. And they would play one movie, the same movie, for a week. So you could actually watch it like hundreds of times if you wanted to. It would just be on a loop playing all the time. We would sit on my mother's bed or around TV trays and watch these movies.
And my mother would smoke and have a glass of wine, and then also tell us stories about any production, things that she happened to know. And if she met someone that was in the cast. That's how I would know who Jennifer Jones was, because when I looked at her I thought exactly as my mom said when we were watching one of her movies, “You know, I'm always being compared to her.” And I remember saying, yeah, Mom, you look just like her! And then we would see A Place in the Sun. And I'd say, Mom, you look like Elizabeth Taylor, too. She went “Yeah, yeah, that for a while I guess I did.”
AKT: It's nice how organic these film references feel. Talking to you, it's the same thing. It's not artificial or other, but cinema in different forms has always been an integral part of your life.
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| Griffin Dunne’s future endeavors may include a documentary on The Dakota, where he worked early on upon arriving in New York Photo: Anne Katrin Titze |
GD: Very much so very, very much so, and stories and growing up on stories. Well, before my father was a writer he was a great, hilarious storyteller, and I remember those. All I had to do was be told once, and I'd remember it for the rest of my life. And we talked about movies, it was like a second language to us. And you know, growing up in Hollywood you not only talk about the art of movies. You also talk about the business of movies and what movie was opening on a Friday, and how well it did by Sunday was like something that was part of our conversation.
AKT: The storytelling legacy is obvious. While writing the memoir, did you have an audience of your family members in mind? Did you sometimes while writing think: How would Aunt Joan [Didion] react? What would she think about this phrasing?
GD: Yeah, I did, but never, never in an intimidated, intimidating way. I always kind of thought they would just appreciate it, both my aunt and uncle. My uncle [John Gregory Dunne] was a brilliant writer who's been sort of overlooked by her fame. He was an incredible journalist and hilarious, and I always made him laugh from a very early age. He has a book coming out, by the way, that's being reissued.
AKT: Oh! Which one?
GD: It's called Vegas, by John Gregory Dunne, and McNally Jackson just released it about a week or so ago, and to honor him, I did the audio book. And while I'm doing the audiobook I'm rereading this book I hadn't read since it came out. I realised what an influence he had on my book. Far more than my father, and far more than Joan!
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| Suddenly, Last Summer with Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, and Elizabeth Taylor is featured in The Friday Afternoon Club |
AKT: That's interesting! How so?
GD: The funny, sad kind of stuff, the self-deprecation, the talk about sex, somewhat graphically. And it's throughout that book. The subtitle is: A Memoir of a Dark Season. And so that was also inspiring. How when I read it again, I realized it really was a memoir. I thought it was much more of a novel, but as I got to know them both toward the end of their lives, I could see exactly where they were in their lives.
AKT: Your mix of tone is also really quite astounding. The whole Bluebeard chapter is incredibly funny, where you visit “Henry VIII” with your boarding school classmate!
GD: It's so nice to hear!
AKT: I thought it was hilarious. And then, on the other hand, of course, the very, very serious issues. The Gift of Fear you mention, whose author, Gavin de Becker, is another old friend of yours!
GD: One of my oldest friends, one of my oldest, oldest friends. He’s himself and I've been wanting to do a talk about him for years, but he won’t. He knows too many secrets and won't do it. He's just a fascinating guy.
AKT: There's another overlap. I just called it the Bluebeard chapter, and Bluebeard is all about trusting your instincts. Opening the door when you're told not to and being rewarded for it!
Read more on what Griffin Dunne had to say on his family memoir The Friday Afternoon Club, his directorial debut Duke of Groove, and his upcoming projects.
