The Mark Twain House & Museum to Welcome Author, Actor and Director Griffin Dunne Discussing New Memoir with Colin McEnroe on November 7
Griffin Dunne
Mark Twain Museum • 351 Farmington Avenue, Hartford, Connecticut
November 7, 2024
Click here to purchase tickets
The Friday Afternoon Club
The Mark Twain House & Museum (MTH&M) is set to welcome a scion of a Hartford literary dynasty to the home of Samuel Clemens. Author, actor and director Griffin Dunne, son of Hartford native Dominick Dunne and nephew of the late John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, will be in conversation with Connecticut Public Broadcasting’s Colin McEnroe. The focus of the Thursday, November 7 talk at 7pm will be Griffin Dunne’s acclaimed new family memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club.
At eight, Sean Connery saved Griffin Dunne from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, Griffin attended his aunt Joan Didion and his uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early twenties, he shared an apartment in Manhattan’s Hotel Des Artistes with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars and he was a struggling actor working as a popcorn concessionaire at Radio City Music Hall. A few years later, he produced and starred in the now-iconic film After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese. And yet, for all its boldface cast of characters, hilarious confessions, and jaw-dropping scenes, Griffin Dunne’s book is no mere celebrity memoir.
The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir (Penguin Press) is, down to its bones, a family story that finds resonant truth, wicked humor, and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances. In 1982, Griffin’s twenty-two-year-old sister, Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the ‘80s. The outcome was a travesty of justice that marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne’s career as a crime reporter for Vanity Fair and a victims’ rights activist. In these pages, Dunne reckons with his own experience of that time—as well as with his relationships with his parents and his siblings—with unflinching honesty and sharp insight.
The Friday Afternoon Club embraces the heartbreak, poignant absurdities, and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny, and moving characters—its author most of all.
Griffin Dunne has been an actor, producer, and director since the late 1970s. Among his work, he produced and acted in After Hours; he directed Practical Magic and the documentary The Center Will Not Hold about his aunt, Joan Didion.
Tickets for this discussion between Dunne and McEnroe are $45 and include a signed copy of The Friday Afternoon Club. MTH&M Members can log in with their membership to access $40 tickets. To register and for more information, visit MarkTwainHouse.org/Events/. The Mark Twain House & Museum is located at 351 Farmington Avenue in Hartford, CT.
Author programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are sponsored by Connecticut Public Broadcasting and the Wish You Well Foundation. Activities at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut State Legislature, administered by the Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts; Ensworth Charitable Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee; The Hartford; The Mark Twain Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; Stanley Black & Decker, Travelers Foundation and the Greater Hartford Arts Council.
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