The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

Richard E. Dunne Jr. was his father’s favorite and a football tackle so fearsome his nickname was Tarzan. He was everything my father was not. But while Dad couldn’t catch a football if it were stapled to his forehead, Dick didn’t know Bette Davis’s last line in Now, Voyager or how to write a cogent fan letter to Tyrone Power.

In Dunne family tradition, I kept it pleasant and my secrets close.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

Being an usher at Radio City means you have been accepted into a brotherhood of arms, where posture, personal hygiene, and people skills function at the highest levels of gentlemanly conduct. I would put any one of my men against any of those poncy fruits in Buckingham Palace.”

this is my time to stay put and face where my life went wrong and figure out how to put it back on track. My plan is to write my way out of this mess and though I wouldn’t dare call myself a writer just yet, in time I will be, I just know it. That is who I’m supposed to be, and not the social gadfly who wasted so many years in a drunken fog giving parties for people who were never my friends.

The truth was that I knew the attention that came with stardom would stir a self-awareness I was ill-equipped to handle, so committing to the next level of success paralyzed me with fear. My personal character was still undercooked, and my ego wasn’t strong enough to handle the scrutiny of fame, yet I was just wise enough to know that if I rushed headlong toward it, I’d soon burst into flames and end up a has-been in rehab.

This morning I see that the silent kin I loved as a child have arrived all together in the night.

Something shifted within me, and I suddenly felt different as well. My perspective and personality took on a new formation not yet defined. But whoever I’d be in the days ahead would never be the person I was.

One of the upsides of living with grief was that unlike auditions prior to my sister’s death, the anxieties about whether I was liked or not now seemed ridiculous in comparison. I simply didn’t give a shit either way. I recommend this attitude to all beginning actors, whether someone in your family has been murdered or not.

I’m not sure exactly when, either after the funeral, waiting for the trial, or during the trial, but at some point everyone in my family had become, each in our own way, totally insane. Not so obvious that it would be noticed by friends, but if our inner lives had been on speakerphone, we would have been cause for serious concern.

Lugging around all that hate had become debilitating, and to my surprise, over time, it kind of burned out on its own. My body wanted to self-heal before I did and detected my hate as a cancer that would eventually kill me unless my own cells rebelled against it.

People far more enlightened than I am say that forgiveness is a choice that frees us from the bondage of hate, and that to forgive is the purest form of love. I choose not to forgive or forget, and as long as I’m no longer bound by hate, I’m happy with the quality of love I have for my family and friends, even if it falls short of its purest form.