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Key Grip: A Memoir of Endless Consequences – Award-Winning Essays: A Journey Through Film, Fathers, and Self-Discovery
A key grip, Dustin Beall Smith explains in this award-winning debut memoir, is the person on a film set who supervises the rigging of lights, set wall construction, dolly shots, stunt preparation, and more. Smith worked in the film industry throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. For him, “fame by association”—with iconic stars including Sly Stallone, Susan Sarandon, and Robert De Niro—was just one of the seductive drugs fueling his high-octane days on the set.
The intertwined stories in Key Grip resurrect memories of how his father’s impossibly ordered life became a goad for Smith’s own reckless journey to manhood. Its trajectory includes a stint as a pioneering sport-parachuting instructor in the late 1950s—a young man’s dream job that taught Smith how to hide sheer animal fear behind male bravado. Much later, as a committed writer and unredeemed seeker in his fifties, Smith lights out cross-country for what turns out to be a brave, existentially failed—and very funny—attempt at a Lakota vision quest.
Beautifully told, reminiscent of both Robert Bly and Ian Frazier, Key Grip is a fascinating record of the fault lines of one man’s life.
DUSTIN BEALL SMITH’s Key Grip won the 2007 Bakeless Prize for nonfiction, awarded by the Middlebury College Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and judged by Terry Tempest Williams. Smith has lived in New York City for over forty years and teaches writing at Gettysburg College.
The intertwined stories in Key Grip resurrect memories of how his father’s impossibly ordered life became a goad for Smith’s own reckless journey to manhood. Its trajectory includes a stint as a pioneering sport-parachuting instructor in the late 1950s—a young man’s dream job that taught Smith how to hide sheer animal fear behind male bravado. Much later, as a committed writer and unredeemed seeker in his fifties, Smith lights out cross-country for what turns out to be a brave, existentially failed—and very funny—attempt at a Lakota vision quest.
Beautifully told, reminiscent of both Robert Bly and Ian Frazier, Key Grip is a fascinating record of the fault lines of one man’s life.
DUSTIN BEALL SMITH’s Key Grip won the 2007 Bakeless Prize for nonfiction, awarded by the Middlebury College Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and judged by Terry Tempest Williams. Smith has lived in New York City for over forty years and teaches writing at Gettysburg College.
157 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Dustin Beall Smith
3 books9 followersDustin Beall Smith is the author of Free Fall: Writings on Voice, Desire & Surrender (Not Two Press, 2025) and Key Grip: A Memoir of Endless Consequences (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), winner of the Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction.
His essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and The Gettysburg Review, and Gray Love: Stories About Dating and Relationships After 60 (Rutgers University Press, 2023).
A former creative writing professor at Gettysburg College and key grip in the film industry, Smith brings a lifetime of storytelling, adventure, and insight to the page.
His essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and The Gettysburg Review, and Gray Love: Stories About Dating and Relationships After 60 (Rutgers University Press, 2023).
A former creative writing professor at Gettysburg College and key grip in the film industry, Smith brings a lifetime of storytelling, adventure, and insight to the page.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 23, 2022
A fine piece of writing, but it's really a hodgepodge. Not a memoir, but an assortment of nonfiction essays from various periods of Smith's life. There are stories about skydiving, a vision quest at a Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation, a few anecdotes about movies and Hollywood celebrities, end-of-life care of the writer's parents, a violent episode with a snapping turtle, two failed marriages, struggles with alcohol and drugs, a woman's suicide jump from a window, and other random stuff. Again, the writing is consistently good: lean, muscular, intelligent, and with an engaging point of view.
Smith's misadventures caused him to drift away from his lifelong dream of being a writer. In the Acknowledgments, he reveals that he recently completed his MFA from Columbia University at age sixtysomething. In this slim book, he seems to be asking the same question his father asked right before he died: Did I do OK? Sure, it's an OK book, better than most.
Smith's misadventures caused him to drift away from his lifelong dream of being a writer. In the Acknowledgments, he reveals that he recently completed his MFA from Columbia University at age sixtysomething. In this slim book, he seems to be asking the same question his father asked right before he died: Did I do OK? Sure, it's an OK book, better than most.
August 29, 2008
A really fascinating memoir by a guy who's had a crazy life. Not all of the narrative strings get tied together neatly, but it's because it's not about the narrative strings so much as the thought processes and learning experiences this guy goes through when he's almost sixty.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews