The Friday Afternoon Club, a review.

Griffin Dunne's The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir is often funny, sometimes sad, and always interesting. I enjoyed it. Dunne has been around Hollywood celebrities his whole life, and he's been involved in the movie business for over 40 years as an actor, producer and director. He played Jack in An American Werewolf in London (1981). He wasn't the werewolf. That was his character's friend David, played by David Naughton. Jack was the werewolf's first victim. I was in high school when the movie came out, and I liked it a lot. It was a cheeky, fun horror movie. And the special effects were impressive for that period. As a kid who came from a West Virginia family of modest means, I liked the idea of backpacking across Europe with a friend.

Poltergeist came out the next year. That was another big movie that appealed to the teen crowd when I was in high school. Dominique Dunne played the older daughter, Dana. Sadly, Dominique was murdered by her boyfriend a few months after the movie was released. She was 22.

Dominick Dunne was the father of Griffin and Dominique. Back in the late '80s and throughout the '90s, he often talked about high profile murder cases in L.A. on TV chat shows. He also wrote a few successful novels as well as books and articles about Hollywood murders. Before his writing career, he was a Hollywood producer. One of the films he produced was The Boys in the Band. Dominick Dunne always triggered my gaydar when I saw him on TV, and as it turned out, he was primarily attracted to men. Although, when he finally came out late in life, he described himself as bi.

Griffin reveals in his book that his father had a relationship with Frederick Combs, the actor who played Larry, while The Boys in the Band was being made. And he had a relationship that lasted years with one of Dominique's male friends. Dominick was terrified people would discover his connection to this man during the trial of his daughter's killer because he was sure the defense lawyer would have used the information to paint him as a pervert and suggest to the jury that Dominique was part of a sleazy Hollywood family without morals. This was the 1980s, so I don't think Dominick was just being paranoid.

Even though Griffin was strongly attracted to girls since the start of puberty, as a teenager in the 1970s, he wondered if he had inherited his father's attraction to men. So one day when his father was out of town, Griffin went to his father's house and experimented with his father's boyfriend, a man whom closeted Dominick referred to as his valet. Although Griffin was not repulsed by the experience and was able to perform, when it was over, the "valet" told him he was definitely not gay.

As a long-time Star Wars fan, I was surprised and delighted to learn that Griffin and Carrie Fisher were best friends. They were, in fact, roommates when Carrie landed the part of Princess Leia. They lived in an upscale New York apartment paid for by Carrie's mother Debbie Reynolds.

John Dunne, the highly regarded journalist and writer, was Dominick Dunne's brother and Griffin's uncle. John's wife was the hugely successful and extremely talented writer Joan Didion.

I'm sure Griffin would freely admit that his writing talent doesn't come anywhere close to that of his aunt's, but his book is well worth the time, nevertheless.