I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review

Podcast. Every family. Book Review and this is the Book Review podcast.

Every family has its stories and every family has its drama

and some have an excess of both.

The actor and director Griffin Dunn was born into one of those families.

His uncle was the writer John Gregory Dunn.

John was married to Joan Didion, who of course is Joan Didion.

And his father was Dominic Dunn, most famous in his later years for his work as a writer for Vanity Fair.

Dominic broke out as a reporter following his pieces that recounted the trial of the man who killed

his daughter, Griffin's sister, Dominique. Griffin Dunn writes about all of

this and more in his funny and sad book the Friday afternoon club a family memoir and he

joins us this week.

Griffin welcome to the Book Review Podcast.

Thanks for having me.

I assume you've been writing down a lot of these stories over the years.

When did you know it was time to press play on the book, which is a terrible metaphor?

When did you know it was time to put them all together and do this?

I have indeed, you're quite right, I have been logging a good story now and then told over dinner not just about myself and

Myself deprecating funny things that happen to me, but about my family and about my my my great grandparents ofparents and my mother's and my father's side and I let the

story sort of build for a while and I have an agent named David Kuhn who has

been hammering me to write a book.

He says, you've got a book inside you.

...