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The nephew of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, and son of Dominick Dunne, becoming anything other than a writer feels almost sacrilegious. Yet Griffin Dunne only recently became an author, publishing his family memoir “The Friday Afternoon Club” after spending decades in other fruitful and wide ranging creative pursuits. The actor and producer, known for movies like An American Werewolf in London and the Scorsese-directed After Hours, feels some sort of regret about his professional moves. But as you’ll hear, he had no shortage of personal trouble and loss influencing his decisions. We chat about him and his famed family — full of actors, activists, and journalists — and all the struggles they collectively moved through.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

David Duchovny, Griffin Dunne

David Duchovny  00:05

I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Griffin Dunne is a friend of mine. He’s an actor, he’s a producer, he’s a director, and now he’s an author. Man, after my own heart, he’s just written the Friday afternoon Club, which he calls a family memoir, and there sure is a lot of family to cover. Griffin’s aunt was Joan Didion, the masterful new journalist, author of The White Album, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. His father, Dominic Dunne, was a decorated and well connected TV producer who lived a closeted life, but eventually found his people as well as his passion, which was writing. And Griffin’s sister Dominique was a burgeoning actress and star. You might remember from the 1982 film Poltergeist. She was tragically killed, murdered by an ex boyfriend in a very high profile criminal case. Most people have not seen as much Hollywood glamor or grizzlyness as Griffin did in a few years, and his roles as both participant and observer have led to many stories, many losses, and, of course, many lessons. It was very on brand that there was a massive tech failure that I didn’t cause. I don’t think this big Microsoft outage, whatever the hell that means. When we were trying to start our interview, it took a while, but we got it all sorted in the end and had a wonderful conversation. Here it is.

 

David Duchovny  01:34

It’s the ongoing story of me and technology. It’s, it’s not a love story. Let’s just say that.

 

Griffin Dunne  01:47

I have a similar relationship. I’m an analog dude.

 

David Duchovny  01:51

Yeah, if there was something before analog, I would be that I’m a Bronze Age. Where are you?

 

Griffin Dunne  02:02

Manhattan studio on 26th street and nice walk from my house?

 

David Duchovny  02:11

Well, let’s get the important facts out first, you live in the building that I grew up in. We’re not going to say the name or the number. That’s true, is it not?

 

Griffin Dunne  02:22

Well everyone knows, because there’s a plaque out front.

 

David Duchovny  02:28

You know, obviously there’s a tradition of storytelling in your family and around your family. And I was wondering, when you set about to put things in order in this book, how much of it was just, oh, recollecting this story and that story, and how much of it was research, and how much of it was tracking down other relatives and saying, what are you? What? What’s the story with this story with you?

 

Griffin Dunne  02:50

Well, it was, it was a little bit of each my on my father’s side, the Irish Catholic side that I knew from my father growing up, he was very vocal about being a child of abuse, beaten by his father, who he he loathed, who was a very prominent doctor, and he spoke about his love for his grandfather, who was a guy named Dominic Burns, who had an Incredible story of at 11 crossing the Atlantic from Ireland during the Great Famine, and became sort of the patron saint of this Irish slum who would give loans to to other immigrants. And so that one I knew, but the research I had to do on my mother’s side of the family, I sort of heard so many outrageous stories about them, I didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t that the men were philanderers and adulterers and drank heavily and led a life of such scandal. Those are my roots, baby.

 

David Duchovny  04:01

Those are some twisted roots. There are so many similarities to me about the milieu, the writing milieu in which we grew up. I think we both grew up in a, if not a, if not a writing that a storytelling milieu. You know that we that, and there’s a saying that goes, God gives stories to those who can tell them, you know. And that’s what I kept thinking when I was when I was reading your book. But my dad identified himself as a writer as well, and in fact, left my mother when, when I was 11, to go live in the Chelsea Hotel, because he said, I’ve got to write, I’ve got to write my book, when, in fact, he was actually leaving for another woman, but that the cover story was I need to write.

 

Griffin Dunne  04:46

And did he get caught?

 

David Duchovny  04:48

Well, no, he came back. He couldn’t, he couldn’t continue the lie forever. I guess you know that. So when he, when he came back for his last suitcase, that’s when he broke the new. Ruse to my mom that the Chelsea was kind of a ruse, but he did publish the novel when he was 75 and he died at 76 so, you know, for me, it was this amazing story of kind of delusional, but also perseverance, you know, that he did it, and resilience in a way.

 

Griffin Dunne  05:21

And what was it like reading it? I mean, do you, did you remember stories that he was retelling, or was it like a completely new personality, useful?

 

David Duchovny  05:29

He was writing fiction, like it was fiction so it was called Coney, and it was quite a good novel as well, well reviewed. And, you know, it’s, it’s very interesting that you asked that? Because, yes, I’m reading it as an adult, and I’m just looking for parallels. I’m looking for what sounds familiar. I’m looking for myself, but for me, I didn’t start writing till my mid 50s, trying to publish till my mid 50s, and I spent so long not writing because I still somewhere inside, identified as a writer. I don’t, I don’t know that I would have said that, but I don’t know if it was my dad’s death. I don’t know what it was that actually turned the switch on for me, and I said, You know what? I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to do it now, and I was wondering with you, what was it that said to you, Griffin, who’s been a writer all along but hasn’t written, what was that irritant? What was that inciting incident?

 

Griffin Dunne  06:32

Well, it’s very similar to what you were just describing about, what got you to finally write when I did the documentary about my aunt Joan Didion, and I traced her life and her history. I saw an outline for my own life. That was a possibility, but when my father died, it was the last of well, it was First John, my uncle, and then Joan and then my father, sorry, the other way around. Joan was last, and in time, I just let that well, you know, all the my perspective of their lives and their childhood, and I think with the distance I sort of had the freedom, not that I was going to write anything that they would have particularly disapproved of, because one thing I did learn from them as writers is, everything is material you know.

 

David Duchovny  07:30

That’s something that you say, you quote Joan in the book. She says a writer is always selling somebody who’s always selling somebody out. And I want to talk about that, because that’s that’s a very deep position to be in within a family, within a family of writers as well so.

 

Griffin Dunne  07:44

Yeah, we would, we would find out what was going on in you know, John and Joan had a alternate monthly column in the Saturday Evening Post. And we would know what was going on in their personal lives by reading this, we found out that they were thinking about getting a divorce by reading it in the column which Joan was thinking of leaving John, but John edited the piece that Joan wrote about leaving him. I had grown up reading books that John would write, where I would appear something that I told him, or that he heard that I did that was very embarrassing to me. He would write it and put it in the book.

 

David Duchovny  08:29

Sure that was the fact that you had put masturbation as a to do thing on your to do list.

 

Griffin Dunne  08:36

Yes, my early.

 

David Duchovny  08:38

I just want to continue embarrassing you with that story, which is a fantastic one.

 

Griffin Dunne  08:42

And you know, I was a list maker, and I got caught with a list when I was 11-12.

 

David Duchovny  08:51

And in your defense, it was number seven on a very extensive list so it wasn’t number one.

 

Griffin Dunne  08:58

Exactly, no, I had it was a full day in New York. So, yeah, it’s all material.

 

David Duchovny  09:04

What kind of a consciousness is that built? I’m not saying that that’s not the way to parent or the way to family, but it is certainly a way, a different way to family, to exist within a family, to grow up on some level knowing that you’re being watched, you’re being recorded. You’re you might be fodder for something, and also to grow up like, that’s a that’s a legitimate person to be, as somebody who looks around at things as fodder, as material.

 

Griffin Dunne  09:34

Well, that’s how I kind of look at it. I mean, I was fascinated by their sense of observation. They were, you know, John and John in the in the late 60s and 70s, were the most glamorous couple I’d ever known. If I wasn’t related to them, I would have thought just the same. They were right at the center of every cultural moment in music. She was writing about the doors, and, you know, John was like, you know, he’d been to Vietnam, and, you know, writing about the war, and they gave these parties, which, you know, for Tom Wolfe and Janice Joplin would come to their parties. And it was a very heady experience in their in their writing, I would see how they would use things that I saw, and then they would write about what I the same incidents I saw, but from their point of view. And I’ve always, I was always so impressed by that, and when I came time to write my book, I tapped into that. I thought of myself as a journalist of my own life, of getting the facts right.

 

David Duchovny  10:33

Do you know what’s fascinating about that is, you know, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot, you know, as an artist with a family, you know, your job is the observation of the world and the observation of nature. Your job is somewhat removed from the world and maybe even from intimacy a little way, in a slight way. And sometimes I think I’ve achieved intimacy through my work at the expense of achieving intimacy in my life, and sometimes when I speak to someone like you, who grew up in a family like that, who has also lived a life like this, as an actor, you’re observing as a writer, you’re observing. You’re not always living and you’re not always extending the courtesy of not observing to the people that you love. You know what I mean? I’m just feeling them. I wonder if you have felt that push and pull throughout your life, obviously.

 

Griffin Dunne  11:27

I haven’t. I have indeed where i i will experience something and then remove myself from the experience, maybe while it is happening, and go. I got to remember this.

 

David Duchovny  11:41

What is the root of that in a person, not necessarily in you, but if you know, what is it in us that pulls back, into ourselves?

 

Griffin Dunne  11:54

Yeah, I think it’s, I think there’s a bit of narcissism maybe involved, because you kind of, I think, I think I felt, even as a kid and growing up, that I was seeing things that weren’t particularly normal, and that things that were happening to me weren’t, were rather unusual. And I grew up very fast, and it was really important to me to kind of shed my youth and so I put myself in all sorts of grown up situations as a young person, and I would take myself out and go, oh my god, I’m really doing this or that. I gotta remember this. And all of those experiences went somewhere to some sort of memory bank that when it came time for me to write, it was all there it they all just came flooding back. And sometimes I would be writing, I’d be in the moment, writing about a particular experience, you be it traumatic or hilarious or something. And I would stop and go, God, I can’t believe that really happened. And I’d dive back in and do it. You know, reading the book, for an audio book, I would be struck with that all the time. I take myself out just, I’d have to take a breath just go, God, that’s a lot.

 

David Duchovny  13:46

I can only imagine the surprise for you, as you started to write this book, you know, as as you started to change your thinking, from speaking these stories to writing these stories down, and how that thinking, how that feeling changes when you do that. But as I think you put it in the book, you know you realize early on where you were headed, and yeah, and why? The real why of why you had to sit down to write this book was her, aside from all the wonderful stories and people who you lost on the way and who you talk about, you know who you write about beautifully in the book, but in a way, that’s a beautiful perception that you have early on. You know, like the headlights, you know, you can see what’s up ahead and I wonder what that, what that moment was like, and the presence of it, the presence of her. And now, as you finish the book, you speak of another grief. And now you bring the book up, and there’s a different kind of talking about her in the book. And now even you may be coming to the end of talking about it, yeah, because the book’s been out a while, you’ve fucking talked till you’re blue in the face about this […]

 

Griffin Dunne  15:07

Country all over. I just got right and speaking auditoriums.

 

David Duchovny  15:12

Right, so that’s kept her with you. And now, as you see, the prospect, this is a long ass question. It’s not even a question. I don’t know what it is, but you see the prospect of no more talking about it, you know, like the the book is out, it’s been beautifully received. It’s done well, everything’s fantastic, but you’re not going to continue on around the world talking about it for too much longer. And I wonder how that feels?

 

Griffin Dunne  15:42

Well, you know, it’s so we talked about the headlights of it coming along. And, you know, for people who don’t know, you know, I’m writing the book chronologically, and I get to the part of my sister being born and coming back from the hospital and and my mother’s joy, you know, having lost two other little girls and stillborns, the joy of that. And then she gets older, and all the crazy animals that she would pick off the street and raise. And I see the headlights coming now. She’s an actress. I never talked about Dominique murder. I never talked about the trial the briefest way to my closest friends. Never in any sort of detail. Everyone who is close to me said I had no idea. I had no idea. You know, they knew from my father. My father wrote it changed his life is to change all ours but him. He found his voice at great cost to become a writer and a crime reporter and writing about victims these crimes from the point of view and empathy for the victims who were being dragged through the mud as as as my sister’s reputation was. And you’re quite right, that’s when I saw, okay, this is a different book. I thought this book would be, you know, funny adolescent, you know, crazy, stupid, beat off stories I don’t know. And it just, it just got deeper and deeper as I got closer and closer, and I thought, No, this is Dominic’s been in this book the whole, the whole time. And I just, you know, I just, I just went there, and I heard myself talk about it or write about it. And, you know, you were, you know, asking about, you know, the difference between telling a story and and writing it, there’s a big difference. It just, it just, you just go into a much deeper, deeper place, and you relive the the location and the smell of the courtroom in them, and then the lighting and the avarice that takes place in it in a judicial system and it’s not conversational. You’re just telling it as you see it. And that’s where the journalism kicked in for me, I wanted to get every fact down, every memory, down every observation and my parents dialog during that time, and my brother how they dealt with it. I wanted to get down this time from my point of view as a sibling. You know, it used to upset me so much when my father would talk about it on talk shows promoting a book that had nothing to do with the trial. But of course, every talk show host wanted to talk about the murder and it, but here I went, here, I’m going there. I’m going there, and.

 

David Duchovny  18:52

Can you explain that feeling to me, though, if it’s not too painful, to your father?

 

Griffin Dunne  19:01

I would talk to you mean, my feelings about my dad talking about.

 

David Duchovny  19:05

Yeah, we’re talking about it when it wasn’t part of the story, when it was something it was.

 

Griffin Dunne  19:10

I go, you know, do you have to, I mean, why? Why do we have to go through this every goddamn time you have a book coming out? And he goes, hey, kiddo, look, you know, I’m a journalist, and I’m talking to journalists, and they’re going to ask this, and it’s, it’s, you know, professional courtesy, and you know, that’s my job. And you know what I came to when I was writing this book.

 

David Duchovny  19:32

Was that good? Was that good enough in the moment for you?

 

Griffin Dunne  19:35

Not particularly, but, yeah, but I but about it. Let it go. I know, you know, I know that I knew his heart was in the right place, and I but when I started, when I was writing this section of the book, I understood him. I understood what he was doing. I understood why he felt compelled to to talk. And it wasn’t just to sell books. Yes, which, you know, in my angry son period, that’s what I, I took it to be. He really spoke to people who had been jostled through the judicial system and and he became a really strong spokesman. And as I’m, you know, on my, I don’t know, 30th interview on a, you know, on a, on a stage talking about these things. That’s what I clung to, I just channeled dad. I just, you know, getting his message out about victims rights and and domestic violence and the extraordinary transformation of my parents, you know, instead of coming to grief and self pity and loss, they took this injustice. The killer I’m talking about is served three and a half years for dating. Wouldn’t call it murder, they called it manslaughter. And they took that, and they each in their own way, tried to bake something positive come out of that. My mother started a group called justice for victims of homicide, and she changed laws that were in the protecting there’s a law called Marcy’s Law that lets families know when the killer has been released on bail or from or from prison or has a parole hearing. You’d think that would be common sense, but my mother made that that’s no law in 28 states, and my father did his bit. And I’m, I don’t know, I just that’s that’s keeping their memory alive, and I found it was tough and emotional. It still get quite emotional, but that was my, my job. That was, you know, how I got through it.

 

David Duchovny  21:53

And you do it so beautifully in the book, I guess, you know, I I blurbed the book full disclosure.

 

Griffin Dunne  22:05

You sure did, and I sure did. You were one of the earliest readers.

 

David Duchovny  22:09

And I said that she was shoe the Hollywood ending, which is closure in that, you know, it’s never going to be okay.

 

Griffin Dunne  22:22

Yeah.

 

David Duchovny  22:22

But, but no such thing ridiculous word.

 

Griffin Dunne  22:26

It is, isn’t it?

 

David Duchovny  22:27

And it’s almost people think it’s a right now, you have a right to closure. Well, I you know, if you give if you can find it, you know, God bless you. I’ve never been able to find it myself. But I guess I come back to the other question about, how are you feeling now at the end of this road, you know, like you’ve brought her close to you, you’ve told her story the way that you have wanted to, you’ve taken control of that narrative and the way that people speak now and now that the now that this part is ending, how do you feel about that presence that you’ve conjured up and that you’ve held close to you for for years now?

 

Griffin Dunne  23:10

Yeah, I feel very proud of the book. I feel very proud I was able to accomplish describing what it was like to be me in a family that I love, that I could talk about all of their weaknesses and their their their flaws, and because I always knew how they were going to come out, I always knew the ending of their arc, of their characters. And but I think I’m, you know, gonna just sort of, sort of move on, but feel very I don’t know, I just felt so much love, which I’m not gonna let go. But I felt so much, that’s what my brother, who’s, you know, the only remaining member of my immediate family was, I needed his permission. You know, my brother, you know, had mental struggles, and he was bipolar, and he’s fine now he’s doing great, but I had to talk about that period. And he gave me the greatest note before I even started writing. And he said, you know, write whatever you want about me, whatever you want, just have it come from a place of love, and that has stayed with me all the way through and every time I’m, you know, talking about this for the 400th time, that’s, that’s kind of what drives me and I, I guess, I guess I don’t want to lose that either.

 

David Duchovny  24:48

You know you’re writing about things that happened, even if it was fiction. It wasn’t until I started writing fiction novels that I. I thought if my kids ever really want to know me, really want to know me after I’m gone, you know, they can somehow pulp this book, squeeze the juice out of it, make a smoothie, and they would know my DNA somehow, through this writing. But I’m wondering if you felt that as well, when you finish this and you realized I’m a writer. I come from a family of writers. I’ve I’ve earned my entrance into this family in many ways, and for those that come after me for my kid, they could. They’re gonna know me, they can know me now I’m fully known. If you confront this honestly and with love, as you say.

 

Griffin Dunne  25:53

You know it’s a very kind of complicated thing. My daughter, she’s very talented actress, she’s in her early 30s. She lives in New York. She’s, you know, still finding herself and you know, she’s a very, very curious person, and incredibly emotional and feeling, and she’s had such reticence, starting the book, reading this book, and I understood it, you know, it’s like, you know, I’m still a work in progress, dad. I don’t want to read, you know, I don’t want to know everything about where I’m from right now. I want to find out where I’m from and, you know, maybe tell my own story, you know. And she didn’t say that, but I know that that’s a subtext in there. It’s where the resistance is. And it took her forever. And quite honestly, I’m not, I, you know, I think she has some sort of mixed feelings about it, and.

 

David Duchovny  27:05

It’s an exposure.

 

Griffin Dunne  27:07

Yeah, it’s like, I didn’t write it to define her. But it’s very hard to read, to be the daughter of a writer and read this book and not have it. How can you not see yourself or reflect or see it confining of who you are, and you come from this family of writers, and so it’s sort of, it’s not, I know she’s proud of me, and she’s been to, you know, one of the events that I’ve had, and she’s seen me, you know, on, you know, on stage and, you know, hitting these sometimes I get kind of emotional talking, and I see her in the back row, and I see her tearing up with me. But it’s a complicated thing, I think, to read, you know, especially if the writer, who’s your father is very much alive, to read about his life and everything that led up to your own being born.

 

David Duchovny  28:38

The people that were moving this story along as obviously your sister, but also just as strongly your father. And I found the way you discuss your father to be really rich and fascinating, because you really question the notions of masculinity, especially around his time and around that time, and it’s such a rich relationship that you have with him, especially because you know he didn’t share his ultimate, well anyway, sexual identity with you. But here’s a man who who loves the fame. He’s interested in famous actors, he loves the gossip aspects of things. And there’s you who goes out and becomes famous, and then in some ways, as you say, self destructively, pushes it away. And I found that to be such a moving story as somebody who has been famous myself and thought that was going to solve problems inside and outside with my parents, on some level, make them love me in some weird way, but with your dad, it was almost explicit. Oh, he loves famous people. Here I am, I’m Griffin, I’m famous, and then fuck that.

 

Griffin Dunne  30:02

Well, very much so. And, you know, I mean, I just want to say I’ve from the moment I’ve read the first book of yours I read, I just, I’ve always said, if you were never an actor, you’d just be a writer, hands down. You’re just so incredibly gifted as a writer. I just have to get that off my chest.

 

David Duchovny  30:23

I’m pretty sure that’ll stay in the podcast.

 

Griffin Dunne  30:25

Okay, you know, and the theme of your podcast is Failing Better. And you know, I could tell you stories of mine of failing better, but since we’re discussing dad, and his masculinity and growth, it’s all […]

 

David Duchovny  30:46

That’s the trick of this podcast. Griffin is everything is tinged with failure. And again, we can talk, yeah, that’s […]

 

Griffin Dunne  30:53

And what you can do from that. And you know, he was a man who was was not a border of sort of effeminate sort of behavior. And you know, as a child, just idolized, you know, movie stars. And you know, had pictures of Betty Davis, and you know Ava Gardner on this, on his on his walls. And you know, loved all these, you know, everything having to do with movies and fame and then. And then he ended up in entertainment business, doing what he most wanted, but he was closeted, and he had a drinking problem, and he worshiped fame. And around the table, our dinner table, which was always in restaurants, he would just talk about famous people, and it was it crunch, it gave me cringes and how important that was, and he was on a very shallow path of real self destruction and really imploded with alcoholism, bankruptcy and he lost all of his possessions. He had to sell all his possessions at a yard sale. He cared so much about, you know, where these plates were from, and could name the kind of rugs, and sold them all, put price tags on them, got rid of his fancy Mercedes and and and left town in shame, in shame, and broke down in a little town in Oregon just and ended up living there. And he dug deep, he dug deep. No one should ever have to find themselves at such a cost. And he got sober and and his, he became a man. It was right in front of my eyes. Well, not so much, because he was away from us and he didn’t have a phone, but I could tell his manhood, his identity, his pride was coming through in these single space, 12-15, page letters that he would write my brother, sister and I separately about his journey and he about his facing his humiliations, documenting all the horrible mistakes he made in his life, some thrashing himself and just, you know, with such regret. But it was a process. And we watched him, you know, find himself his true self. And that’s, you know, when his daughter was murdered, he already had the inner strength to get through it. He was already fully formed, the writing, his voice, everything that came later. But I never saw someone fall so hard and, you know, as he was falling, and all the people in the movie business who had been to his parties and everything. They all dumped him, never returned his calls. Those would be the same people that I as a young actor would go and read for and try to get jobs from. And they were the same people that, you know, kicked my dad when he was down. So I had a the business sort of scared me a little bit, you know. And as I had my first blush with fame, I found it kind of scary. I didn’t feel fully formed myself. I felt, I thought, If this goes on like this, I’m not going to handle this, I’m going to be one of those rehab kids.

 

David Duchovny  34:44

And did your father react in any way to your first brush?

 

Griffin Dunne  34:50

He was beside himself, would he ride.

 

David Duchovny  34:53

And did that feel good? Or did you feel suspicious?

 

Griffin Dunne  34:55

No, that felt good. I mean, I was, yeah, I was happy to see. Be him happy. And you know, anytime any parent who’s proud of their son, you’ll take it. And you know, he loved being famous, and because he’d been in he made it look fun, you know, because he’d been in the toilet and he’d fought his way out so he could enjoy his success. I was too young to enjoy it. I was like and I also had a dual occupation of being a movie producer. I got my first significant job in a movie by casting myself in a movie I produced in Chile scenes of winter. And so I would retreat to producing, to going behind the camera, and just when I was supposed to be getting hot, cashing in on fame as an actor, then I’d go behind the camera, and I would drive people crazy. You know, who wanted me to be famous, like agents and things like that. And, you know I kicked myself a lot. I I really thought of myself as a tremendous failure for as is this business designed to make you feel and you know where you actually think you walk into a restaurant and you’re not doing feeling good about yourself, and you think everybody’s looking at you thinking the same awful things you’re thinking about yourself, which, of course, they’re not. But I, you know, went through a lot of self flagellation about how I screwed up my trajectory of my acting career and all that stuff. But, you know, when I wrote this book, and I actually had to go through all the stages I went through, I kind of finished the book and I went, huh, that’s kind of an interesting career. I did a lot there.

 

David Duchovny  36:46

And, well, you know, the thing is, if, if you don’t fail, you’re going to continue doing the same thing. I mean, if you succeed, they’re going to ask you to do the same thing, and you’re going to do the same thing, and you’re going to do that for as long as it happens. If you fail, you’ve got to bust out some other doors. You’ve got to walk down some other roads. You’ve got to become a producer, you’ve got to become a writer, you’ve got to become other things. And sometimes those things are more suited to your soul in that moment than the acting might be.

 

Griffin Dunne  37:17

Yeah, I mean, I’m really, really grateful that I’ve had, I I’ve been able to have more experiences and relationships with far more people in all aspects of filmmaking than I would have had I just stuck to being an actor, my producing partner for many years. Amy Robinson, you know, she and I have been through a great deal, you know, in our partnership, and we’ve broken up, and we’ve gotten back together. We’ve made really great movies that weren’t appreciated at the time, and now criterion is now releasing them. That seems to be the thing I’m noticing that at this age is like all the things that you know, even after hours and werewolf, nobody really thought much about them 20 years later. Everybody loves it.

 

David Duchovny  38:09

Well, that’s not everything. Let’s, I mean, that could be the things that you’re, that you’ve been involved with because you were doing good work all along, it’s not, it’s not just pro forma everything from 20 years ago gets free appreciated. I think that that you had an instinct that you know, if we could talk briefly about what you thought you wanted to do as an actor, you know, when you decided to be an actor, what was calling to you? What did you want to express? What did you want to put out into the world as an actor?

 

Griffin Dunne  38:39

I wanted to be Justin Hoffman.

 

David Duchovny  38:43

I wanted that’s very specific.

 

Griffin Dunne  38:47

You know, Justin, I grew up in LA, not just a mile from me, and he chose to be an actor in New York, and left Los Angeles, just as I did when I was 19. I think he was probably around the same age, you know, when I saw him in the graduate and I saw that face and that humor and that little sounds he was making, I went, that’s me. I can do that. I look like that guy and and that’s when I got that New York actor in my head. It was a very specific kind of actor I wanted to be. I didn’t want to get my bones in television in Los Angeles, where I grew up. I wanted to be a theater New York actor. And I wanted to, you know, it’s every actor usually mentions the same people. I just listened to your Sean interview. He said the same guys, De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman, those were my guys. So I didn’t become that actor, but, uh. I became something else.

 

David Duchovny  40:01

Well, you became yourself.

 

Griffin Dunne  40:03

I became myself.

 

David Duchovny  40:05

I think if you become Dustin Hoffman, it’d be pretty confusing to all of us, especially to Dustin, but I think, and what I wanted to say, before we get off the discussion of your father, what I really got from your discussion of him, you know, and I got the pain, and I got the confusion and I got the love, but you come awful close to equating masculinity with resilience, and I find that to be beautiful, not that only men have access to resilience. But, is that fair to say, like at this point in your life? Do you say resilience is a kind of a masculinity, a kind of a curtain?

 

Griffin Dunne  40:46

I would, and I would say the masculinity I’m talking about is another word for it would be character, earned character, you know, you, you have to, you have to grow into it. You have to, you know, you have to fill the space of the life you’re supposed to be of the man you’re supposed to be of the person you’re supposed to be. And then you have an inner strength that you you’ve earned because of the resilience, because you’ve fought your way through just walls of shame and humiliation. And you know, in failure. And you know he never got over his wife, my mother, leaving him. He, you know, but by the time he came into his character, by the time he embraced what it is to be a man who’s fully formed, my mother looked at him, you know, she left him for all the reasons we were talking about earlier, about his character, and she was in a she had MS, she was in bed, she was always in a wheelchair for a good deal of her life. And she looked at him. And she goes, do you? Do you know how much you have changed? You know that’s, that’s character, that’s he grew into, that he earned it, he fought for it.

 

David Duchovny  42:32

Yeah, I’m happy, I’m I’m happy to count you as a friend.

 

Griffin Dunne  42:39

Me too.

 

David Duchovny  42:40

You man your character.

 

Griffin Dunne  42:42

Thank you.

 

David Duchovny  42:54

All right, just some thoughts barely awake here. It’s a Sunday, it’s a nice Sunday. I really enjoyed that conversation. I really like Griffin. I really liked his book as we’re talking about parents, as I was talking about parents, and the idea of making your parents happy, if we, if we grow up with, for lack of a better word, sad parents. In Griffin’s case, you know a father who is not living an authentic existence, closeted in that case, brings with it certain amounts of shame and sadness. In my mother’s case, very sad after the divorce, heartbroken, sad and fragile, and I took it upon myself to heal her in a way, even at a young age, at 11-12 to make her happy. Probably happy again would have been my thought, although I don’t know that she was ever happy. She had a tough upbringing, but I remember I had this occasion. My mother was Scottish, and I had an occasion where I could get her to Great Britain for a premiere of a movie returned to me that I did in like 2000 and Prince Charles was throwing the premiere. So my mother, who was born, you know, in poverty in 1930 I was going to fly back on the Concord, fly her to Edinburgh, which is close to where she was brought up, and she was going to meet her prince, now King, and I, I was very proud to do it, but I didn’t realize it was like I was trying to make her whole, you know, not that my mother was this royalist, or really, you know, she was very realistic person, and didn’t care about that royal shit or whatever, but it was, it’s something, it’s something to be able to take your mom to meet the prince, and that the prince is, you know, throwing a party for something you did. And I realized at some point, probably in talking to my therapist back then, was that this was my my greatest try to make her happy, my greatest attempt to prove that what I was doing acting also was legitimate, and that it was somewhat pathetic in that way, but also, you know, moving I think, and that it was a gift in a way, because then I could see that that didn’t make her happy either, nor should it have you know, that’s the illusion, because fame is seen as as a cure all by many that don’t have it, and those that get it, they can see the failure of fame as a liberation. Doesn’t always happen that way, but you can’t step back and go, wow, that didn’t work. I’m still pretty miserable, or I’m still there’s still a hole, there’s still a lack, there’s still sadness. Anyway, that one rambled.

 

CREDITS  46:54

There’s more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now and Apple podcasts. Fail Better as a production of Lemonada media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias  . Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neil. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Kate D. Lewis, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova, Kramer and me, David Duchovny, the music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […]. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.