The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

I next called the production manager of a movie I was producing called White Palace. We were days from shooting in St. Louis, and we hired Frederick (on paper) for a nonexistent part that would work long enough for his SAG insurance to kick in. The next day he was moved into his home in the care of a hospice nurse, who took care of him until he died. I have not forgotten how a five-minute phone call and ten minutes’ worth of paperwork can change the remainder of a man’s life.

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.

He liked the way she listened to him, her eyes that never left his but didn’t moisten in sympathy, and her undivided attention that let him feel he was finally being heard.