Fail Again: Griffin Dunne — An Actor Builds Character

Fail Better with David Duchovny

Grace Cohen-Chen

Society & Culture

4.6 • 534 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode originally aired July 30, 2024 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. Follow me on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Stay up to date with Lemonada on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium. And if you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, join the My Lemonada community at https://lemonadamedia.com/mylemonada/ For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's morning in New York.
0:02.8	Oh, God.
0:06.2	Hey, everybody.
0:07.3	I'm Mandy Patinkin.
0:08.7	And I'm Catherine Grady.
0:09.8	And we have a new podcast.
0:11.7	It's called Don't Listen to Us.
0:14.1	Many of you've asked for our advice.
0:16.1	Tell me, what is wrong with you people?
0:19.2	Don't listen to us.
0:20.3	Our Take It or Leave a Device show every Wednesday out now.
0:24.7	A Lemonada Media Original.
0:35.6	I'm David DeKovny and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are.
0:42.6	Griffin Dunn is a friend of mine. He's an actor. He's a producer. He's a director. And now he's an author,
0:47.6	a man after my own heart. He's just written the Friday afternoon club, which he calls a family
0:53.1	memoir. And there sure is a lot of family to cover.
0:57.0	Griffin's aunt was Joan Didion, the masterful new journalist, author of the White Album, slouching towards Bethlehem.
1:05.0	His father, Dominic Dunn, was a decorated and well-connected TV producer who lived a closeted life, but eventually
1:11.4	found his people, as well as his passion, which was writing. And Griffin's sister, Dominique,
1:17.3	was a burgeoning actress and star. You might remember her from the 1982 film Poltergeist. She
1:23.8	was tragically killed, murdered by an ex-boyfriend in a very high-profile criminal case.
1:32.3	Most people have not seen as much Hollywood glamour or grisliness as Griffin did in a few years.
	...

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