#i do know that baxter will be a big part of it. ive already written part of his backstory

[shellaxdude]

i wanna talk about my medieval iteration so badly but i dont think i know enough about it yet

[itsblosseybitch]

Griffin Dunne by Lynn Geller (INTERVIEW Magazine, May 1985)

At 29, Griffin Dunne has seen the movie business from many different perspectives. Born in New York City to Ellen Griffin Dunne and television producer-turned-writer Dominick Dunne, Griffin grew up in Los Angeles and is the nephew of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. Eleven years ago, he returned to Manhattan to pursue an acting career and, after roles in Off-Broadway plays, television, and “An American Werewolf in London,” teamed up with Amy Robinson and Mark Metcalf [misprinted with an e at the end] to produce the film “Chilly Scenes of Winter,” in which he had a small part. He and Amy went on to produce “Baby, It’s You” and, most recently, Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” starring producer Griffin Dunne in the male lead. As if this weren’t enough responsibility, the past year has also included acting roles in the films “Johnny Dangerously” and this spring’s “Almost You.” 

Looking remarkably fit for such a busy man, Griffin strode into the Lion’s Head in Manhattan only fifteen minutes late and carrying a briefcase full of future projects.

LYNN GELLER: You come from a literary family--your aunt, uncle and father are writers--were there any actors before your generation?

Griffin Dunne: Well, my mother was an actress until she had children, meaning me. I was the first. She was raised on a ranch in Nogales, Arizona, and my grandfather sent her to school in the East. My father was an actor then and he met her at a play. Actually, she hated being an actress.

LG: I didn’t know your father had been an actor.

GD: He wanted to be an actor before he became a producer. He was a stage manager and actor, studying with Stanford Meisner, who ran the Neighborhood Playhouse. Meisner told him he would never be a leading man because he was too short. When I say short, I mean my height, five-seven, five-eight. He left the profession because he wanted to be a leading man, not a character midget, or whatever he thought he would be. This was in the pre-Dustin Hoffman days. He became a stage manager for live TV, everything from Howdy Doody to Playhouse 90 in the ‘50s. When I was two, he got a job in L.A. and that’s where I was brought up. 

LG: Is that home?

GD: Well, yeah, home is where the mother is, but I’ve lived in New York for eleven years.

LG: Why did you move here--you went to school in the East?

GD: I went to boarding school in the East [more specifically, Fay School in Boston, Massachusetts, based on a New York Times article from the -late ‘90s and the Alumni page] , a pre-prep school that was very repressive. Coats and ties, whippings--if you ever saw the Lindsay Anderson movie If... you know what I’m talking about. You stay through eighth grade and then hopefully you graduate and go somewhere like Exeter and Andover. 

LG: Did you?

GD: My response was to get the hell away from the East Coast and go to a liberal arts school in Colorado called Fountain Valley.

LG: I know about that school. That was supposed to be a very wild place.

GD: Well, I was hoping it would be. It was wild in my wildest imagination. You could grow you hair as long as you wanted and you were allowed to smoke cigarettes. You could pretty much get away with anything, but I did manage to get myself kicked out.

LG: What did you do?

GD: I smoked dope and a teacher saw me through a window. The next night I was going to appear in Othello, and I never got to do the play. 

LG: So you were acting at an early age. Was that because of your parents?

GD: No. I was planning to be a writer. But a guy who taught acting talked me into auditioning for Zoo Story, the Edward Albee play. I got the part and that was the end of that.

LG: How old were you when you got kicked out?

GD: I was 17 and almost finished. They wouldn’t let me graduate, which was really depressing. It was more depressing that I didn’t get to play Iago. They felt that my performance would be tainted by the fact that I had been kicked out and I might be unduly rewarded by applause.

LG: What did you think you might do after that?

GD: Be an actor. I finally got some work. I was in a movie called The Other Side of the Mountain.

LG: Then you came to New York?

GD: No, then I got a job on a television series called Medical Story. I had about ten lines. I played a doctor, stuffing an IV in Linda Purl’s veins [misprinted as Linda Pearl] and answering Meredith Baxter Birney when she came in and said, “What’s the diagnosis, David?” I’d memorized the diagnosis, which was complicated medical jargon. 

LG: What did you use for inner motivation?

GD: My major motivation was to say the words correctly. I figured if I did it like a real scientist, I’d pull off a real character coup. Then right as we were about to roll, the medical adviser on the show came over and said that the diagnosis wasn’t accurate, we had to change the description. They changed the lines and every time we’d go for a take, I couldn’t remember the lines and I’d clam up. The director would go, “Cut. What’s your problem? What is your problem?” I said I needed five minutes, so he said, “Okay, five minutes, the kid’s got five minutes.” I went into a little room and I was so nervous about ruining my career that when I went to light a cigarette, I set my lip on fire. So when I went back to give the diagnosis I hadn’t memorized in the first place, I lisped. The director was furious. He said, “Cut. What’s the accent? Are you doing an accent on me?” Finally, the actress, Linda Purl, took out one of my pens in my top pocket and without me knowing it, she wrote out the diagnosis on her arm, where I was to insert the IV. So when they said, “Roll ‘em,” I had no idea at first what my line would be and then I looked down at her arm and there it was. It was very sweet of her.

[Based on the available information I have, the Medical Story episode that Griffin Dunne was on was titled “Up Against The World” or “Us Against The World” depending on what you check. The episode is said to have aired December 4th, 1975. All I could find on the show was a promo on YouTube.]

LG: You must have fallen in love.

GD: I did, but we never got to say goodbye. So I got the lines out, but what I realized from that experience was...nothing. Absolutely nothing, but to have a cigarette in your mouth when you go to light one. Shortly after that I moved to New York and signed up at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

LG: Because your father had gone there?

GD: I didn’t know he’d gone there until I was already in there and he told me the Stanford Meisner/leading man story.

LG: While you were studying acting, did you work as a waiter?

GD: Yes. At Beefsteak Charlie’s for a limited engagement. At Joe Allen once for two weeks. I lied and said I was experienced and I clearly wasn’t. That was enough to get me the job at Beefsteak’s. I hung in the longest there--they liked my work.

LG: Then you would go on auditions? Is that what you do when you’re a waiter/actor?

GD: When you’re a waiter/actor with no agent, you read Backstage and go out for plays that you never see in ads for openings. They never appear as productions. I went to an audition for an original play once, written and directed by a woman with a long Russian name. She thought I was perfect for the part. It was the first time a director said, “You are going to be great, you’re it.” She told all the other actors to go and took me out for coffee. I couldn’t believe my luck--I’d just arrived in New York. She took me out, we talked intensely, and at some point I realized she was stark raving mad. She had this long scarf that dragged behind her picking up dirt and pizza crust. I looked closely at her and realized she was a bag lady. I realized that anyone can hold an open casting call, a trick I haven’t really employed yet as a way to meet new and exciting people. 

LG: How much does it cost to take an ad out? As much as a bag lady collects in a day?

GD: No, these people weren’t quite bag. They have apartments and enough money to be able to decide, is it Safeway tonight or an ad in Backstage? At some point, they just cross that line. 

LG: How did you get involved in producing?

GD: Well, Amy Robinson, Mark Metcalf and I were unemployed actors hanging out together. We were working on the play Cowboy Mouth, which we were going to do for ourselves and hopefully get a production. That never happened, but the three of us had a lot of energy together. Eventually that translated into our trying to get a movie off the ground. Amy loved the book Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie, and we agreed. That became our first project. We were all frustrated at being out-of-work actors. At the time I was working at Radio City Music Hall selling popcorn. I carried around a big set of keys as the manager of the popcorn concession. I wasn’t getting a lot of feedback on my work.  

LG: Had you ever thought of producing before?

GD: I never had dreams of producing, but I was with Amy and Mark and what we wanted to do was much closer to what I wanted to do than what I was doing. It felt as good as acting. 

LG: How did you end up doing Baby It’s You?

GD: I was in Poland acting in a TV movie called The Wall. Amy was talking about the idea for the film before I left. It was loosely based on her life, about a middle-class girl who gets involved with one of her classmates, a guy from the other side of the tracks. While I was away, she got John Sayles involved. We discussed it over the phone from Poland, the conversations closely monitored by the hotel staff. God knows what they made of it. But I didn’t have too much to do with development. 

LG: You mean in terms of the story?

GD: More in terms of getting the development deal at the studio. Amy and I have a very good relationship. We both rely on each other’s opinions and support. We were both line producers on the film. Our job was to keep things rolling and to make sure that John Sayles had everything he needed. 

LG: Are you good at that?

GD: Yes, to my surprise. I never considered myself much of an organizer, but it turns out I’m good with money and at getting along with people, making sure that everyone has what they need and keeping those needs within the budget. 

LG: Let’s talk about some of the films you’ve been acting in recently. Have you seen Almost You yet?

GD: Yes. I liked it. The characters were incredibly human and sympathetic. And screwed up. Not homicidal--but normal, confused human beings. My character in particular was a very confused fellow. 

LG: That was a movie where someone approached you with a script. What made you decide to take it on?

GD: Well, Adam Brooks, the director, had a script he’d been telling me about when he was a script supervisor on Baby It’s You. One day, when I was living in a beach house with Brooke Adams, he came up with the producer, Mark Lipson, and the script. We had a great day at the beach. Brooke cooked this great meal. After they left, we read the script and thought it was really charming, funny. Brooke and I wanted to work together and this seemed perfect. We said yes, thinking, this sweet little picture is never going to get made anyway, but, of course, we’ll do it if it does. Ha ha ha. All we did was say yes, and Mark and Adam took the ball and ran with it. The next thing I knew, we had a start date.

LG: What was the time lapse between those two events?

GD: Six months. It was shot in February. Very quick--I was pleasantly surprised. 

LG: But at this point you’re no longer living in that beach house? 

GD: Six months is also a very. very long time. A lot can happen in that time. Brooke and I aren’t living together anymore, nor were we when we did Almost You.

LG: Wasn’t that hard?

GD: It was interesting. We get along very well. We’re good friends, and we were very professional. I think we both dreaded the idea of letting the crew think there was something more to this than there was. 

LG: Do you think people see you as wearing two hats now, actor and producer?

GD: It’s hard to tell. I don’t really know. I have noticed that scripts that are submitted to Doubleplay Productions that have a character that is anywhere from 20 to 35, they say, “This would be a good part for you.” I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a lure. 

LG: Well, aren’t you looking for movies to produce that you can act in?

GD: Whatever movies Amy and I decide to do, it’s totally collaborative. I can see doing a movie that I would rather produce than act in, but it would have to be very special, like Chilly Scenes of Winter or Baby, It’s You. But doing After Hours revitalized my interest in acting, it really inspired me. So my dream is to be able to continue producing movies with Amy that I can act in.