The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

At one of Dad’s parties, John met Richard Zanuck, president of 20th Century Fox. John earned the studio head’s trust to write the first behind-the-scenes account of what goes on in a dream factory. He hung out on the set of the disastrous Doctor Dolittle, sat in on story meetings for future disasters, and pinpointed, in brutal detail, a time when studio executives had no idea what their young audience wanted to see. The result was The Studio, a scathing and hilarious takedown of 20th Century Fox in 1968, their worst financial year. Zanuck not only didn’t take offense at the book but gave John his first screen-writing assignment. John would later write several more screenplays for Zanuck, who, by then, no longer took my father’s calls.