The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

I never did tell John about that photograph and what it meant to me, but I wish I had. Two years later, I would be in an off-Broadway comedy playing a demented youth who kills a celebrity to become famous. One night after a performance, I biked to a deli on the way home and heard on the radio that John Lennon had just been shot in front of the Dakota. Not believing it could be true, I got back on my bike and madly pedaled, as if under a spell, all the way uptown, until I reached the building. I arrived no more than an hour after the shooting, and a crowd holding candles, drawn by the same calling as me, had gathered outside. It was then that I heard he’d been murdered by a fan who, like the character I’d played earlier that evening, wanted to be famous. The next day I begged the producers to let me out of the play, but they refused. The show went on, but I couldn’t reprise the humor I’d once found in the funny little murderer I’d played, and never got a laugh onstage again.