About this Event
Author Scott Spencer will talk with actor, producer, and director Griffin Dunne about his memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan.
At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good. 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. In the midst of it all, 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 1980s. 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.
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. His film and TV acting credits also include An American Werewolf in London, My Girl, This is Us, Billions, Dallas Buyers Club and many more.
Scott Spencer is the author of thirteen novels, including An Ocean Without a Shore, River Under the Road, Endless Love, Waking the Dead, A Ship Made of Paper, and Willing. He has taught at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Williams College, the University of Virginia, and at Eastern Correctional Facility as part of the Bard Pr*son Initiative. He lives in upstate New York.
PARKING: Attendees are advised to come early to find a parking spot. There is street parking in front of the library, across the street, or just around the corner. Down the hill opposite the library, there is a parking lot for Rhinecliff station that also often has available spots.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Morton Memorial Library, 82 Kelly Street, Rhinebeck, United States
USD 32.50
