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Hi everyone from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Cara Swisher and I'm Cara Swisher. Griffin Dunn is my guest today, actor, producer, director, and now author. You might remember him as the star of After Hours, the 1985 Martin Scorsese Cult Classic, which Dunn also produced, or his countless
roles in film, TV, and streaming shows like This Is Us, I Love Dick, and more recently The Girls on the Bus. In 2017, he also directed a great Netflix documentary about his aunt, Joan Didian, The Center Will Not Hold. Now Dunn's written a memoir about his famous family and growing up in Hollywood. His father was a film producer and later a celebrity journalist. Dunn grew up surrounded by actors and writers including his friend, the Lake Carey Fisher, and her Star Wars co-star, Harrison Ford, back when he was just Aunt Joan Didian's
Weed Smoking Carpenter. But Dunn's book is also about family tragedy. He writes about his father's alcoholism and struggles living as a closeted gay man, his mother's multiple sclerosis, and most unimaginable, the murder of his younger sister Dominique Dunn in 1982. I love this book and I was very surprised by what a deft and elegant writer Griffin Dunn is. It's a beautiful book where he goes there. And I say that in the most complimentary of ways. It's very hard to do that. And he does it.
Our question today comes from journalist editor and author Tina Brown who also wrote a diary, the Vanity Fair Diaries, who has a personal connection to his family. Welcome Griffin Dunn. Thanks for being here today. Thank you for having me. So I'm looking forward to talking about your memoir, which as I told you previously, I really love. It's called the Friday afternoon club. But I'd also like to go back in time to talk about the documentary.
You did the center will not hold and obviously your career as an actor. I just finished watching you and I didn't realize for the longest time it was you in girls on the bus where you're the perfect editor figure with and the scarf did a lot of talking in a lot of ways. Yes, that was borrowed from David Carr. Yeah, I was you reminded me of great deal. He was a friend of mine. You had a very David Carr like you really did depict him. He's a wonderful guy.
So let's start talking about the memoir again beautifully written. It's an elegantly written book your terrific writer. And you have a great bunch of characters, which happens to be your family.
You were quite a family of storytellers from your father, your uncle and aunt, you and your sister, your producer, directors, actors, writers. Do you think it's an inherent trait in your family or you know there's an idea of the Irish people tell stories well, but I think a lot of people tell stories well. Well, I think it's certainly a trait now is there's not one member I can think of in my family and I'm including my cousins who doesn't know how to spend a pretty good yarn.
You know, we were told stories about our family, my mother told me the story that's very early in the book of my great uncle who died on board a yacht with his mistress and then the Griffin wheel company vice president calls his widow soon to be. And she's in bed with her mistress and brings him to the funeral. Yes, she's a mistress of an admiral. Yes, that's right. It brings the admiral Bastito to the funeral and then we were shown the article was called widow for a day in the New York Times.
And it was it's framed on our wall. That was a story we were told very young that had us in hysterics. Yeah, this is idea of larger than life characters who misbehave all over the place. Misbehaving always misbehaving. And one of the themes of course in the book is the stories we tell about ourselves in which ones we pick early in the book you talk about your fascination with JFK for example and how it became a lie about a lie.
Talk about the difference between lies and stories because my family is in tally and it's full of stories I know are true. I mean, they're sort of true, right? My grandfather was arrested during prohibition when the still blew up I was like, did it happen? Was that true or was it the story that seemed funny and interesting at the time? Well, you know, there's a lot of wiggle room probably in the in the stories that we were told and you know, for example, in terms of the Kennedys.
My story about having met the Kennedys when I was a child was just a blatant lie. But the the presence of the Kennedy family, another Irish family and my father's generation and the Kennedys and the Dunns both had domineering fathers deeply religious wives and we were called the Kennedys of West Hartford and the Kennedys of Brookline.
They had no idea who the the Dunns of Hartford were, but we had this hanging over us from a story that began when my uncle was courting up his girlfriend who we would marry and continue to be married to 50 years telling my grandfather around the dinner table about Joe Kennedy screwing over her father in a liquor deal at the end of prohibition.
They ran liquor and then Joe Kennedy sold the liquor behind the back. It's not really been particularly verified. I even looked at it in the biography of of Joseph Kennedy. It's not quite there. It's sort of there. But nonetheless, the mythic proportion of that made the the Kennedy family for generations really powerful presences in our lives even though the Kennedys had no idea who we were.
Who you were. Right. Well, there was a lot of envy too, especially with your father. Oh, without a doubt. Yes. I think this is a book about your father. The entire book is I can see where you think that. Yeah. And your mother peripherally. But let's stick with the Kennedy story because it's also about the lure of celebrity and fame, which I think hangs around this book quite a lot because there's a lot of bold face names, although they're regular people, which you don't, of course, think about you grew around a lot of famous people who who would or become famous like Harrison Ford and things like that.
He was a carpenter when you met him and you spoke pot with him. The idea of being close to it gives you a level of worthiness. And it wasn't so much you is more your father. You write very candidly in the book when it comes to your father, Dominic Dunn, who later got best known for writing about crime, actually.
Talk about his relationship with fame and how it shaped your own. And in the near times review of your book, which was very positive, it said he's gingerly attitude towards fame, having witnessed its costs firsthand. That comes out loud and clear.
Yeah, very much so. You know, when my father was a young parent and very much in love with this wife, but though closeted, he never quite felt worthy. But if he surrounded himself and befriended famous people, which were so important to him from a child of the putting up pictures of Tyrone power and Betty Davis on his childhood bedroom walls, he valued celebrity so much.
It was so important to him and then it became kind of transform into sort of a social climbing and when he arrived in Hollywood, he was very good at social climbing because he gave extraordinary parties. But he hung his hat on who he knew on on this is his early years, the telegrams of acceptance to his parties and the thank you notes that he would iron into a scrap box and as a child, I was kind of embarrassed of him. You know, I couldn't quite articulate it. No, that's clear.
I didn't feel like he was a man, like I had an idea what a man was and it was guy who got in fist fights and bars and like the movie star fathers of my best friends who played gunslingers and lumberjacks. And so because he hung so much on that, when all that was taken away through his own self-destruction with drinking and probably not fooling anyone with his closeted life and he was not successful enough, he was in television.
I don't know how to this day, he befriended so many movie stars because in those days the two professions did not overlap. But he was a television executive and then everything fell away, everything was pulled away. He lost his career. He started doing very interesting movies, but he screwed that up, you know, by his own admission. And I saw what happened out he his decline in the movie business was exactly as I was entering it and I saw the cost it took on him.
You also said in the book, you realize later he was showing you what a real man was, which was a damaged person could be damaged because a man weren't supposed to be and he couldn't avoid showing you that weakness. You mean my conception of what a real man was? Yes, what your conception versus, you know, much or whatever.
Yeah, he, you know, again, back to storytelling and lies, my two best friends had these really tough guy fathers and when they challenged my father, they said that their fathers could beat my mind with one hand tied against back. I told them that my father could beat them up soon as he got out of prison. And they said, and there's a what and I said he robbed a bank and the lie went around like smallpox and the principal called my father.
And so my father when he came home from work, he pulled me aside. And he, I could see he could tell I was embarrassed of him and he said, is that is that what you want me to have done rob a bank with that and I could have died right there. I could die right on telling the story was so uncomfortable, but he did not.
You know, come up to my vision of a man. I was a little boy's idea of what a man was and he became a man in my eyes after having lost everything and really take a look at himself and lost all that fear. All that when you know, at the end of his life, he wasn't scared of anyone. And he was tough and he was funny. And as I say in the book, you know, I had this idea of what a man was, but as I got older, I realized I've been raised by one all along, which is really revelation.
I mean, having those ambivalence about your father is really important because you also have an ambivalence about fame. For example, the way you write about your deep friendship with Carrie Fisher, the late Carrie Fisher about how her fame changed things. Can you talk a little bit about her in that relation because it's clearly a critical relationship in your life.
Yeah. My brother met her first. My brother is two years younger than me. He was my father, the most intelligent person in the family. And I'm talking both generations. He just was born with a brain and a voracious reader, but also, you know, very sensitive and empathetic and love people very, very much.
And so when he loved someone, he loved hard. And so when he was 14 to 15, he met Carrie and he felt right in love with her. And she came over to the house. And Alex said, don't you trick her into liking you. And I tried to respect my brother's wishes, but she started to open her mouth. And she was so damn funny. She was just killing me. I couldn't stop laughing.
And we immediately connected. And it was a bit like East of Eden or something, you know. And, and we just knew, I think within three days, it was like, you're not going anywhere. And, and we, you know, we were brought together by humor. We could not stop singing fake musicals to each other in the most mundane conversations we were breaking into song.
And, you know, later when we became roommates, you know, she'd be in her room, I'd be in my room. We had a selector, I B.M. selector typewriter that had just come out. And I'd hear her typing. I went, ah, game on. And she go to her bedroom, I'd come out of mine. I had another line. And this would go on all night long. And I also ran interference because I wasn't the only one who loved her at first sight, even though I always knew my relationship was platonic. And we were very clear about that.
But it was very different when, you know, I was very serious about acting. And I was very seriously doing everything but, you know, I was really struggling. And, you know, Carrie gets this movie. And she tells me it's in London. And, you know, my first impulse is without knowing it's like, it's like, how come I'm not in it? And then she tells me a guy named Mark Hamill is going to be in it. And we're like, how old is he? He's my age. What are you talking about?
So I'm already one of those guys. And, and then Harrison, who I idolized when he was a carpenter and building my aunt and uncle's deck. And we'd smoke weed. And, you know, I just had a, you know, real idol worship. You could tell I didn't think I'm missing movies. I didn't even know he was an actor.
I just think it's the most charismatic guy I ever met. And so here she was off to London to do a movie she swore was stupid. And, you know, to be with someone really close with someone who becomes not just like successful or great reviews in the play. But to be with someone who explodes all three of their lives, those actors, their lives exploded. And it was, I was still a waiter. I was counting my tips.
I come home and count my quarters, you know, where there'd be rock stars. And I'd listened albums. I'd listened to all my, you know, all my teen lives sitting on my bed, you know, and people doing blow off my countertop while I've got my quarters. And I went, I don't belong here. This isn't my time. And I grew up like that. I didn't belong, you know, I didn't earn to be around all those kids, all those famous people. And I was a child. How did it impact your relationship?
Well, it was, it was, it was tense for a little while, you know, not up to her. She was, she was if anything like, come on, get your shit together. What do you pissed off about? Like, and I could only come across as like someone who was jealous of, of her. But I was actually having a personal calm, you know, I was, I recognized that I was going back to my childhood, the, the kid in the bathroom, wandering among the Sega night to the grownups, you know, who had long careers behind them.
And here I was, then I was just a little boy going to bed and here I was a guy going off to wait at tables at B State Charlies. We'll be back in a minute. Support for Pivot comes from Fundrise. You know the adage by low sell high. It's easy to say hard to do. For example, high interest rates are crushing the real estate market right now.
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So I want to switch gears a bit because one of the through lines from the very beginning of the book is about your sister to the end, actually. She opens and closes the book, who was tragically killed. Your younger sister, Dominek. She was 22 years old when she was killed by her ex-boyfriend, John Swini, who was a sous chef at Mamezal, I believe.
Talk to me a little bit about her influence in this memoir. Friday afternoon clubs, a party she used to have for her acting class. Talk a little bit about bringing her into this. I think this is about your dad, but your sister framed the entire book. Yeah, I consider it sort of the pulse of the book.
Before I started writing, well, I had some pages, but I made a proposal. And what I proposed to the various publishers was almost a series of anecdotes about my family, sort of like David Sederis as me talk pretty. But then my editor, John Burnham Schwartz suggested I write chronologically, which I found, wait a minute, I've got to go back to the Mexican Revolution. Oh, and if I'm going to do that, I have to go back to the great famine that brought them over.
As I was writing, and then I hit my parents' childhood living in the world of what their, their intense loneliness and humiliation on my father's side and loneliness of my mother's. I just got, you know, then I was born and my childhood and Alex. When Dominique arrived on the scene, I, and we saw her brought home from the hospital. I felt the book take on a different, it was just a different life. And I mean life.
There was just so full of life. And it was such a joy to like re-imagine her childhood and how bossy she was and how much we adored her. And, you know, as she got older and how quickly she became an actress. And, you know, I again, have gone on to nauseam about how I was struggling. No such thing with her. She told me she wanted to be an actress. I said, it's the worst profession in the world. She auditions for something called diary of a teenage hitchhiker. And she pays the hitchhiker.
Like she's on a soundstage in two weeks. And then it was your career. And which was really starting to take off in this acting class. And so, um, that all these young actors who we're going to hear from like George Clooney and Tim Hutton and Miguel Ferrer. And they're quite a few others who became heard of.
But there everybody was at the beginning of their, of, of, of, of a very exciting time. And, and she gave a party every Friday at my mother's house. And she called it the Friday afternoon club. And the afternoon all these young actors would go and they'd drink and laugh into the night. And they just loved the hopefulness of that. But all the time while I'm writing this. I know it's coming. I know it's coming. You know what I'm, you know, so, so I'm bracing for it, you know, and.
And then it, you know, you can see I'm still like an open nerve on them. But I'm like going into it. And, uh, and I realized, you know, I had to call it part two of a book. Because this was now going to be the book. This was going to be that part of the book. Okay. If you had your laughs.
What did you do to prepare yourself for writing about this? Did you have anything that helped you get through that? Because the heart of it is this terrible tragedy. And you write very clearly about what happened when you saw in the hospital, which I found devastating the description of the ability to describe what she looked like.
And you talk a lot about her being disparaged during the murder trial and devastating that was at some point you write that a mobster offered to have sweetie killed. It's quite honest about these terrible things at the same time. Talk about preparing yourself to write for this to get through it.
So my, my father wrote the very first thing he wrote that was ever published was about this very trial. And it was about family. It was about him, but it was about the family going through Tina Brown commissioned him. He had had no experience as a magazine writer. And so he at great cost found his voice, a voice that carried him to the rest of his life made him cover trials. So this, this had been covered. And quite honestly, when it first came out in vanity fair and it got all that attention.
I had a lot of mixed feelings about it. It felt so it was still so no and it felt that your father benefited from something that he was benefiting from tragedy. Yes, I had lots of lots of conflicted feelings. I then came to a point where anyone I thought might be in my life significantly. They had to read it in order to understand me. You know where I'm from. But what hadn't been in that article because it was he's a father is the brother and my brother.
And our point of view of what was happening. And I. That was that was a story I felt compelled to tell. Yeah. And as you mentioned, your father wrote a famous story of any fair justice, a father's account of the trial of his daughter's killer and was sparked by then soon to be editor in chief of any fair Tina Brown. Every week we get a question from an outside expert. So listen in.
I think if in its Tina loved the book, it was so great to be reminded of that wonderful epic evening when I urge your dad to write a diary at the trial of Dominique's killer and it became his very first piece of course for vanity fair. One of the things I really loved about his pieces was he not only penetrated the inner worlds of celebrity and high society, but he also really understood the struggles of the losers and the down and out as on the fringes of it all.
He has so much compassion for characters like Vicki Morgan, the discarded mistress of Alfred Bluendale. Do you think that Nick's own experiences of being rejected by the Hollywood a list as informed his reporting at all? And was that a wound that ever really healed with his success at vanity fair? Wonderful question. It's lovely to just tear your voice and talk about that night. You guys met, they changed his life and consequently our lives.
You dad was never a as much as he loved rich people as loved much as he loved you know the best car and was terribly materialistic. He was never snob. And never more so than when the shit got kicked out of him and and he was down and out but he was always you know he really he got along with every kind of class.
And what really dialed it up was when he got sober and he was in AA meetings with firemen and dispatchers and airline hostesses you know flight attendants who lost their jobs from drinking and people really just in the skids and they were all had all tasted the gutter and he he felt at home there he felt at home with it didn't matter who you were if you touch bottom.
I'm there for you and I think it had a tremendous I think AA just saved his life not just in a breathing way I think it just inspired him it is his perspective were so expanded and did he ever recover from it. Oh yeah oh yeah he totally recovered you know I kind of a lesser man would have had a different answer to the question I asked him I said how during the OJ troll he was so popular.
And all the people who you know kicked him when he was down all those people when he was a famous reporter writing about OJ had the inside sort he was invited to every dinner party in time and he wrote about that and he wrote about it. And I go how could you go to these people's houses the after what they did you.
Because I love it I love it and at this time I they need me I don't need them yeah so I think he really reveled it was a turn he loved the turn from worship and being looking in from the outside to being the inside. He was no longer scared. He knew where he was he knew where he fit nothing would shake him power was something to be written about and examined.
Yeah he hated power he seemed to hate power in many ways and and and justice I guess his version of justice know that theme was in everything. Yeah one of the most incredible moments your book that was when you discover a diary entry from the trial that your father did not publish it revealed a relationship with a close friend of Dominique's a man named Norman this just stopped me when I read about it.
Norman testified during the trial in the dire entry or father worry that John Swini's team knew about the affair and would uncover it during cross examination. Can I ask you to read a few lines. Oh sure. This is from his diary. This Lossom and cruel man will expose a relationship to discredit his testimony and my character. You have carried on a secret affair with the father of your close friend all these years.
What kind of friend does that make you what kind of father has an affair with the friend of one of his children the chances there is not at least one homophobic juror or slim and I can already imagine the discussed the baggage handler will feel toward me. If Addison uses my relationship with Norman to affect the verdict in Swini's favor. I will kill myself. I will not be able to live with the disappointment. Leni and the boys will rightly feel toward me.
How did you feel to discover that note that was a real gut punch to me. It was a gut punch and I like to think of was oh dad oh dad I wish I knew. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. It must have been horrifying.
You know just if things were bad enough to have this and you know for whatever reason we never talked about it but for whatever reason he felt like even in 1983 during the trial when nobody cared who was gay I mean all people cared about then was everybody was losing their friends from AIDS. But even then I think you know from his generation being you know closeted.
It's a dangerous young person in the 30s and 40s to get you killed and I think he I think he's thought oh my god my my sexuality is going to get. I'll get caught again I felt it even though I'm much younger than your dad the closet was a terrible place. It really was. It made you terrified and he was gay from a young age. He kept that part of his life private as you talked about talk about how you found out what it meant for your relationship.
And do you think things would be different between you if you had come out earlier and did you feel conflicted about publishing that note or those details. No because I think I will one anyone could assume I think I think they were in for public viewing in Zarkin the only time he actually came out was on the last. Three pages of his book is they came out posthumously and he wanted me to go and promote it. He's in just do a couple that I did fresh air and I did a GMA.
Good morning America and but but you know if he if he came out much earlier it wouldn't have affected me in the least. It would have affected him I think it would have been one less thing to have to lug around right it is heavy to come out and you know men. Men like Gorg Vidal you know who are completely out they knew he was gay and it infuriated them.
Gorg and my dad hated each other right to the end of their lives and I think somewhere is in the middle of it like oh you think you can get away with that. Who do you think you're fully kind of think but you know the iron interesting thing is. One of the reasons Gorg probably knew was you know right after the war of which my father fought in and was decorated warrior which I wasn't to find out for years later.
You know soldiers couldn't they couldn't go on vacation in Europe obviously been bombed so a lot of the a lot of the soldiers went to Central America in South America. And and dad went to Central America and he's walking down the street and he sees Gorg Vidal Gorg Vidal had just come out with his book that was very bold and dealt with homosexuality.
And it made him quite rich in comparison if you're Central America he had a huge villa and swimming pool and there are the young men there and I and I he's in. I don't know what the heck was going on there but I remember dad telling me. When I was the other teenagers that he had a little thing with an agent in the swimming pool. And then years later when he couldn't get a job he finally got a job that was really kind of degrading of just packaging laser discs.
He had this idea he wanted to do a documentary about Annie A. S. Nin who came over to his office. Now much grant a smaller dumpier office and I went to the he called me up and said get over here. You think I lied about that story Annie A. S. Nin is here right now and I rushed over and there was Annie A. S. Nin she must have been eight mid 80s with a cane and she looked at me and she walked toward me.
She put her hands on my face and just stroked and she goes oh you're just like your father in the swimming pool. Oh that's great so he was not lying he wasn't lying. Yeah we'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Atlassian. Atlassian software like Giro, Confluence and Loom help power global collaboration for all teams so they can accomplish everything that's impossible alone. Because individually we're great but together we're so much better.
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If you've ever seen this celebrity memoir and thought what could they possibly write about. The answer to a lot of chances is nothing so we have to make up the jokes to fill in the blanks. Yeah so if you want to know what's in there but you don't want to waste your eyeballs strength, we're going to tell you what's in it so hop along for the ride. Who are we? We are two best friends and G comedians who had enough time to read a full book a week.
We live in New York so we think we know everything about everything and we're going to tell you what's what. And if we're wrong that's part of the fun. So if you are interested in celebrities in literature in a good time with your pals tune into celebrity memoir book club. The podcast but we read the book so that you don't have to. You can listen to celebrity memoir book club wherever you get your podcasts. Let me can't wait to hang.
I want to finish up talking a little bit about the documentary I thought was wonderful about your aunt who was in this book too. Your aunt and your uncle are quite big characters. It's so interesting everyone all the big characters were not living. I know all of them all the key ones which probably freed you to write about them. If you look at the cover of the book. Do you only family member left is Alex and I? Yeah exactly and it's really quite something and I think that frees you.
You know I was talking to my mom and she said every ever you ever going to read and write about me much in the book and. And I said well you're not dead yet so when you are and she's like you bitch and I was like. Yeah and everybody kind of consumes oh we have to I have to you have to be dead so I can write behind your back. Right exactly. I needed them to be dead. I needed them but I mean the longer that we were apart the more perspective I got the more. That's correct.
The clearer I could see them and the you know if behind this laptop punch board just filled with pictures of all different from all different periods of my life. But in the pictures of my family while I was working they just look different it was like they were alive you know. And but I've been when you're alive I passed them back and forth I don't remember looking at it.
You know one of the most famous quotes from your aunt was we tell ourselves stories in order to live right and I think that's what you're doing in this book. Let's talk about that documentary which I thought was also very touching and sad and poignant at the same time especially the photos of you know she's very skinny or eating.
It was really and you had that camera real close to her which was yeah it was a real choice I have to say it was called the center will not hold which is of course based on the Yates poem that she used in her books. Louching towards Bethlehem. Why did you decide to make it was just too good and people have such a reverence towards her. How did you decide to do that?
Well I mean I have been long aware that she had been approached probably at a monthly basis from someone trying to wanting to make a documentary about her. Her book Blue Nights had come out which would be her last last book and which was about she dealt with magical thinking about the loss of her husband and Blue Nights was about the loss of Quintana.
And she wrote this you know devastatingly sad book and also painful to read because she was so tough on herself and what kind of mother and and one day after she turned in the manuscript and I'd read the book as we all I always did for everything long before it was published.
I got a call from Sonny Mehta who was her publisher and you know legendary man himself and he said Joe asked me to call you know these books we do these videos and you know Joe wanted to know if you be interested in doing a video for Blue Nights. And I looked at a video I think even in like real time and they were all like kind of cheesy and I said you know I've actually and I've seen I realized I've seen these kind of videos.
I really want to do one really well and I probably he still look you look like they're going very tight budget I'd like to use a little more money and he said done.
So Joan and I and a camera crew while we're making this movie short about the book which is devastatingly sad subject we had so much fun making it and you know and Joan look piling in the van with all these young kids who couldn't believe there with Joan dead in and we'd race up to St. John's and then we go over to the botanical gardens and we you know cut it together and it look great and everybody's very pleased and I just
decided I knew there was a feature there. It wasn't like oh this is a good career move I. It was like you know nobody's going to be able to do this but me correct there was nobody but you could do it. No this was this is like my this is what I'm supposed to be doing yeah and it reminded me of the santae and doc which I thought was also great.
Yeah I love that which is a great thing. So I want to play you a clip from the doc where you ask your about one of her most visceral scenes and her book of essays which sort of made her career and everyone everyone is a writer has read it 16 times
searching towards Bethlehem for those who know no it's a very immersive look at hippie culture particularly in San Francisco hate Ashbury did he and wrote her essay about meeting a five year old girl who'd been given acid by her mother let's listen to the clip of you talking to her. What was it like to be a journalist in the room when you saw the little kid on acid? Well it was.
Let me tell you it was gold I mean that's long in the short of it is you you live for the from moments like that if you're if you're doing a piece. Good or bad. Wow that was amazing question and that was an amazing answer well you know it's fascinating to hear it to because I've only seen it but to hear it and you see the time code. I didn't I didn't realize how long that pause was you know if you don't see it you're just because you're not thinking about time because you're just looking at her.
Just coming up with do I say this do I not do I don't know if I get to tell the truth here what the fuck I'm going to tell the truth. And then she went it was gold I mean that's that sound had been in my in the back of my mind for years and it started when I heard her say that on camera my next thought was that was gold.
Yes because she tells the truth and it was totally difficult and I knew I had to put it in and yet I felt bad about it but she didn't even but she's like look this was great for me and such a journalist moment when she talks about. Yeah and I'm a mother and I've got a kid this same age that I left behind in Los Angeles while I live here for four months in the hey with these filthy hippies.
Yeah right no absolutely it was it was a very it was about her because she of course also wrote journalists are always selling someone out right she was just living that she was she decided to say that's exactly what I said I'm going to stick with it is awful it was to make the documentary you had to dig for this kind as you said
Journalistic golden personal interviews who is your subject but also your aunt was it ever uncomfortable to the documentary give you an opportunity to ask questions you couldn't have asked otherwise I know you talked about the trial and there was a break between your father and his brother John her husband because of their behave or mostly his behavior during the trial or their behavior was there any part that was uncomfortable.
Well I felt it a tremendous disadvantage to be related and and and in love with my subject when I really had to talk about Quintana her daughter and her role as a mother and it just it was it was so difficult like a while she was talking it was like being you know as a dentist just get this over with just get this over with okay do I have it do I have it do I have it do I have it okay I can move on.
I know you know a regular journalist would not be going through that but you know you mentioned the trial which was not. There was an amputation you that I went down on camera that it was a conversation I never had with her off camera or really with John which was. Where did you go why did you go during the trial and that was as painful as anything I didn't ask it I think I said something like you know during the trial our families didn't get along.
And afterwards it really caused a wound you do remember what that was about and then I can see other face oh my God I can't believe you're going there and I can't believe this camera is rolling and then you know she's had a little chain with the ring on it and she's pulling on it nervously and she says well I think it had to do with us not being at the trial.
And I went well this is an entirely different avenue this is an entirely different movie and I don't think I pressed it much further one because I hated the discomfort but to that's not what that was not the movie was about but they went to pairs it was in this book quite a bit I did it in the book they were afraid of the repercussions for Quintana who had troubles which is a perfectly understandable explanation that you know the thing is that you know when you're.
In this this this firestorm of a trial and the media covering it you're on the nightly news and the local news day after day and you know all these people come out of the woodwork and people protest outside courtroom and. You kind of go crazy you don't know your crazy but you're actually kind of crazy and your anger is is is so all over the place and sometimes incredibly misplaced and that wasn't where my anger went but my father was really driven.
I believe she said that her book the year of magical thinking was the book she needed to read. Did you find anything you needed in her writing to doing this and help you process grief because there's these are your losses to your sure well you know I I've written I've been asked and for vintage the publisher they're putting together a collection of your magical thinking blue nights.
East and West and I wrote the introduction to it I was asked to do that so I I went I'd already made the doc but I went I went back and reread these books for the first time and and I was I was kind of surprised how sort of my grief. And our families grief really was flying side by side hers and you know the things that she described work just so so correct so right.
But I thought of her while he was writing the book of her personal essays I thought of her I thought of goodbye to all that you know here I'm writing us to young kid in New York in the excitement of that and she's writing about leaving that city that. That that that I still continue to live in and I was writing about my my years as being a dyslexic student and being held back being kicked out of school and feeling stupid and there.
I remember to say Joan wrote about the shame of not getting into Stanford so I took that honesty and my uncle and father all three of them had this quality of being very honest about themselves and and I like the way that they wrote about themselves. I don't think you left anything not on the on the field it feels like everything's here is there something more you you left out or wanted to say in this thing.
Well every now and then something will occur to me going oh I wish I put that in I wish I'm going to live the rest of my life like that but to my surprise. While I was said I was writing chronologically I was never sure where I was going to end it and you know at one point I was like at 300 pages and I was still only 15 years old. I thought you know better bring this thing in and you know when I got to to my daughter being born. And I felt just felt just a second ago.
I went I'm ending on life you know I opened with jazz and I'm ending on life. It was a perfect place so now you have a part two what you've done so I was in court but it was like get me out of here. Yeah I was good. It was the perfect way to do it because it was about your sister and about life it was about life in the mid so much tragedy and funniness as you said.
So before you wrap up I just want to very briefly ask you about the industry now you've been immersed in Hollywood culture your entire life. You do live in New York your dad was in the business you produce movies and television you've been a working actor since the 70s. As I said you were just on girls on the bus playing David car which was a lovely thing.
You're working with streaming companies your documentary came out on Netflix you were in the Amazon Prime show I love Dick which was great with Catherine Han. Talk about where Hollywood is now the Hollywood of your dad's age is gone. Yeah. And how do these major tech companies from Netflix to Apple to Amazon changed the industries a lot of people would argue they've done serious damage. What is Hollywood now from your perspective you know when these companies came out.
I was sort of a little bit in limbo you know in developing things to direct and that's major studios and having you know projects almost start not quite and then when streaming came along it was an immediate green light. I was paid better than I was ever paid. I love that whatever we did so I got the dock going and I love Dick with Joey Soloway who had done transparent.
Catherine Han Kevin Bacon the one of the best parts I ever had in my life and directing this this documentary I was passionate about both Amazon Netflix paid very handsomely I lacked for nothing. It really saved me and I was so excited. Now as a viewer I've got six billion things in the living room and smashed up on the wall and I keep putting oh save that save that save that I'm going to get to that I get to nothing and I I feel overwhelmed.
I don't know what I'm paying for I don't leave my living room to rush to the see the 12 o'clock show on a Friday of a movie I'm dying to see. I really miss that you know I never missed a Kubrick showing at 12 o'clock on a Friday when his movies open and I you know it makes me feel kind of old I'm like going oh no it's but I really don't know I'm not an economist but I don't see how the figure is quite are going to really work.
Right you know a lot of people have different concerns about the future of movie making a eyes one too much focus on franchise too much content lack of originality. Yeah this is great to worry about so here's you writing about a story a memoir of storytellers so I love you the last question what is the future of storytelling and creative work and we're speaking of optimism where do you find optimism if you were a young Griffin done right now.
I if I was a young Griffin right now I would hope that I would be the kid I was then who heard everything listen to everything when I was a fan I wasn't just a fan I worshiped music an artist a movie a director I those stories would stay with me they burn in my head I would overhear I'd ease drop I would have experience.
Experiences and I would tell stories about you're never going to believe which has happened to me you're not going to believe this one and and the storytelling not cavemen passing along storytelling but people are always going to be inspired to tell the stories and to pass them on and you know I think anyone not just you don't have to have written a book but if anyone didn't really sit down and think about their own family and their parents parents and their parents they find a way to get the story.
They find a line they find these these traits good and bad that they carry this DNA you know why why does tragedy befall a certain family so many times over and over in generation after generation those are stories we're telling those are questions worth asking yourself and so I've no doubt about
the stories will continue to be told and be born inventive and become fantastic inventing new ways of linear and structure and I think all that's very exciting what the medium itself will be the best thing that I don't know that I don't know I I love books I love holding books heck I even like a candle but I do think I have great faith in the written word as well I think that that that will survive every possible kind of climate change culturally you can imagine they'll always be books
well you're written a lot of great words here I have to say wonderful memoir and and I recommend everyone to read it just again it's a pleasure to read anyway this has been wonderful I really appreciate it I wish you the very best and I'm looking forward to another memory
thank you car thanks so much on with carousel is produced by Christian cast a result cateriochum jolly mires and megan bernie special thanks to Kate Gallagher Andrea Lopez Crisato and Kate Furby our engineers are Rick Juan and Fernando Aruda and our theme music is by track academics if you're already following the show you get a party with gorg Vidal and Anna East Ninh if not go by a book which will survive the apocalypse go wherever you listen to
the podcast search for on with carousel and hit follow thanks for listening to on with carousel from New York magazine the box media podcast network and us will be back Thursday with more music if you've been enjoying this here's just one more thing before you go from New York magazine I'm Corey Seika recently our writer Rebecca Tracer noticed something Republican and right wing women have been flourishing and prospering in the last year from Marjorie Taylor green to Christy know their tough
chaotic and they tend to have a really great teeth they're also swirling in the orbit of Donald Trump as he seeks to seize the country with an iron fist this fall Rebecca wonder is this empowerment or they just Trump's handmaidens a broader end to explain to all of us what's going on here hello Corey I'm going to start
asking really boring questions here's one which of the many exciting recent dust ups inside of you to want to talk to you and right about right wing women politicians the first time I floated a version of this was after Katie Brits post state of the union
but I can't say that at that point I thought like I want to do a whole scope of Republican women I was just really into Katie Brit because it was very old school in certain ways like the kitchen that like it was very white suburban middle class mommy presentation but it was also like gothic horror you know there's blood of the patriots right here in my kitchen with an apple but it wasn't enough I wasn't going to write a whole piece about Katie Brit it might have been the
infomercial that South Dakota governor Christie know cut for the dental work she had done where I was like what is happening with the public women right like so Christie know did sort of a physical self-redivation to make herself either more palatable or more powerful I'm not sure when she began she had a very no nonsense boxy polo CS killer
sometimes haircut that like sort of choppy haircut and then in recent years since she's become a little bit of a right wing star one of the things she's done is really change her look now Donald Trump is very open about how he feels about women how he evaluates women
and known has clearly remade herself into into somebody who looks like somebody Donald Trump has expressed physical appreciation for so part of my question this piece is what is political power mean if you conform to those kinds of aesthetic standards but then in some way that
winds up diminishing the respect that the people who set those standards have for you your point is a great one that Trump hangs over a lot of this both they're both soliciting him for a big job at the same time as they know he has standards but also the same time Trump's big innovation was like performances power and they're enacting their own narratives they've all become Trump in their own weird way yeah
and I have to tell you that is very frustrating for me because I write about politics and I hate the thing where everything is about Trump I always want to make it not about Trump but writing about these women really challenged that conviction in me because it is clear that at least for some of them so many of the new behaviors they're enacting
are in response to Trump are about the single demand in the Republican Party right now which is showing him loyalty feel to you to this guy like all these people Valentina Gomez Laura Lumer they're enjoying the fruits of choice in career and motherhood like does this mean feminism won?
well this is what's so dystopian and scary about their project is that they're all doing these things which are really fascinating right Marjorie Taylor Greene's lifting weights in a video and not behaving classically Jamure and all of this sense of empowerment is absolutely what feminism gave to women okay so great here is its success but also the party and the ideology that these women are using these feminist gains to promote is openly dedicated to the rolling back of those feminist
games that's Rebecca Tracer you can read her work on Republican women and more in your home in our glorious print magazine and it NY mag dot com slash lineup