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Re: Dominick Dunne dead at 83 -- RIP; Dominique's dad fought to see his daughter's killer jailed
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Taylor
Aug 26, 2009, 5:11:06 PM8/26/09
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On Aug 26, 5:08 pm, Taylor <lukebenw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dominick Dunne (1925-2009): A Lovely Man Who Took No Prisoners --
> Starting with Himself
>
> KJIH-TV Mediawww.tinyurl.com/kjihmedia
>
> http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/101017/thumbs/r-DOMINICK-DUNNE-S...
>
> Dominick Dunne, who died last night, was Vanity Fair's brightest star
> for more than two decades. If you don't know the real story, that is
> how you'll remember him. A success. A winner.
>
> The Vanity Fair pieces and the bestselling novels and the TV show all
> occur in Act II. But at the end of Act I, Nick Dunne was a total loser
> --- and when he was on top again, he didn't try to hide that fact at
> all. You can see how brutally honest he was in the first minute of a
> documentary called Dominick Dunne: After the Party. [To see a three-
> minute clip, click here.]
>
> He's on a stage, giving what others would call a lecture and he'd call
> telling stories. This one is about Frank Sinatra, in a time long past,
> when Dunne was married and living in Beverly Hills and working in the
> movie business.
>
> "Frank Sinatra picked on me," Dunne begins.
>
> The audience titters.
>
> Dunne goes on to recall a night at the Daisy, a club in Beverly Hills.
> He and his wife Lenny are there. Frank Sinatra and his crew show up.
> Nick and Frank go way back, but they're no longer friends -- Sinatra,
> says Dunne, likes to tell Lenny Dunne that she's married to a "loser".
> Now Sinatra sends the maitre d' over. "I'm so sorry about this, Mr.
> Dunne," the man says, "but Mr. Sinatra made me do it."
>
> And with that he punches Dunne in the face.
>
> The audience laughs.
>
> "I was the amusement for Sinatra," Dunne continues. "My humiliation
> was his fun."
>
> The audience, still not getting it, laughs again.
>
> I can understand that laughter -- these fans of his articles and
> novels don't know how to process the information they're being given.
> That's because they're clueless about the first half century of his
> life, which is about out-of-control ambition, deep insecurity and the
> constant threat of humiliation. And they have no idea how his worst
> fears came to pass, how he drank and drugged and lost everything.
>
> So they laugh.
>
> "I hated him from that moment on," Dunne says, and now the audience is
> with him, because they are very familiar with Dominick Dunne as a
> professional hater, a scourge of the rich and criminal, a judge with a
> pen. O. J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Phil
> Spector -- regardless of the legal verdict, Dunne convicted them all.
>
> The big surprise of this documentary: Dunne convicts himself.
>
> "The reason I can write assholes so well," he says, looking right into
> the camera, "is that I used to be an asshole."
>
> This is riveting viewing -- I dare you to look away --- but that is
> not to say After the Party is amusing. It's something else: a man
> coming clean, ripping off layer after layer of pretense, telling the
> truth about himself in a way you never expect from any member of the
> America celebrity class.
>
> The story is no puzzle -- if Dunne's account is remotely accurate, the
> recipe for early success and midlife failure was developed at home.
> Here's Dunne:
>
> My father was this famous heart surgeon, a wonderful man...but there
> was something about me that drove him crazy. He mimicked me, he called
> me sissy. It may seem like nothing now but it's awful to hurt a child.
> It's a terrible thing. My opinion of myself was nothing...I believed I
> was everything he said.
> Dunne was, by his own account, an unlikely hero in World War II --
> could that have anything to do with the memory of his father whipping
> him? And his obsession with being accepted at the highest level of
> Hollywood -- could there be any better way to show his father he was
> worthy? And the movies he produced -- who wouldn't be proud of making
> Al Pacino's first movie and the adaptation of the best-known novel of
> his sister-in-law, Joan Didion?
>
> When the crash came, it was total: no marriage, no career, no money.
> Dunne retreated to a one-room cabin, without telephone or television,
> in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, and, at 50, began to write. A few
> years later, his daughter, Dominique, was strangled to death by a
> former boyfriend. A chance meeting with Tina Brown led to an
> invitation to write about the trial for Vanity Fair. Here's Dunne:
>
> I had never attended a trial until my daughter's murder trial. What I
> witnessed in that courtroom enraged and redirected me. It wouldn't be
> necessary to hire a killer to kill the killer of my daughter, as I had
> contemplated. I could write about it.
> Tina Brown published that piece and offered Dunne a job. "I couldn't
> sign that contract with Vanity Fair quick enough," he says. "I was 59
> at the time."
>
> For most of the film, the camera stays tight on Dunne, as the Irish
> Catholic raconteur builds the case against himself. There are a few
> witnesses for spice -- his son Griffin, Liz Smith, Tina Brown,
> producer Bob Evans, Joan Didion -- but they don't exonerate him so
> much as they confirm the accuracy of his memories.
>
> "I had to admit, I cried a lot," Dunne said after his first viewing of
> the film. "It really shows my life completely, the fakery of the early
> me --- and I'm not embarrassed a bit."
>
> I met Dominick Dunne in 1975, just before he took a high dive into the
> failure pool. We re-connected after his daughter's murder, were
> colleagues at Vanity Fair, friends since. I mention our relationship
> not as a name-drop, but because it means I knew pretty much everything
> in this documentary.
>
> Knowing and seeing are very different, however, and the movie hit me
> hard. But if I cried -- and I did, and you will too -- I also laughed
> and cheered. Because as much as we like the Rocky myth of a nobody
> getting somewhere, we also thrill to the story of a guy who got
> somewhere, lost it and fought his way back -- and then, until almost
> his dying day, made his living and his life by trying, as best he
> could, to tell the truth.
> Dominick Dunne (1925-2009): A Lovely Man Who Took No Prisoners --
> Starting with Himself
>
> KJIH-TV Mediawww.tinyurl.com/kjihmedia
>
> http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/101017/thumbs/r-DOMINICK-DUNNE-S...
>
> Dominick Dunne, who died last night, was Vanity Fair's brightest star
> for more than two decades. If you don't know the real story, that is
> how you'll remember him. A success. A winner.
>
> The Vanity Fair pieces and the bestselling novels and the TV show all
> occur in Act II. But at the end of Act I, Nick Dunne was a total loser
> --- and when he was on top again, he didn't try to hide that fact at
> all. You can see how brutally honest he was in the first minute of a
> documentary called Dominick Dunne: After the Party. [To see a three-
> minute clip, click here.]
>
> He's on a stage, giving what others would call a lecture and he'd call
> telling stories. This one is about Frank Sinatra, in a time long past,
> when Dunne was married and living in Beverly Hills and working in the
> movie business.
>
> "Frank Sinatra picked on me," Dunne begins.
>
> The audience titters.
>
> Dunne goes on to recall a night at the Daisy, a club in Beverly Hills.
> He and his wife Lenny are there. Frank Sinatra and his crew show up.
> Nick and Frank go way back, but they're no longer friends -- Sinatra,
> says Dunne, likes to tell Lenny Dunne that she's married to a "loser".
> Now Sinatra sends the maitre d' over. "I'm so sorry about this, Mr.
> Dunne," the man says, "but Mr. Sinatra made me do it."
>
> And with that he punches Dunne in the face.
>
> The audience laughs.
>
> "I was the amusement for Sinatra," Dunne continues. "My humiliation
> was his fun."
>
> The audience, still not getting it, laughs again.
>
> I can understand that laughter -- these fans of his articles and
> novels don't know how to process the information they're being given.
> That's because they're clueless about the first half century of his
> life, which is about out-of-control ambition, deep insecurity and the
> constant threat of humiliation. And they have no idea how his worst
> fears came to pass, how he drank and drugged and lost everything.
>
> So they laugh.
>
> "I hated him from that moment on," Dunne says, and now the audience is
> with him, because they are very familiar with Dominick Dunne as a
> professional hater, a scourge of the rich and criminal, a judge with a
> pen. O. J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Phil
> Spector -- regardless of the legal verdict, Dunne convicted them all.
>
> The big surprise of this documentary: Dunne convicts himself.
>
> "The reason I can write assholes so well," he says, looking right into
> the camera, "is that I used to be an asshole."
>
> This is riveting viewing -- I dare you to look away --- but that is
> not to say After the Party is amusing. It's something else: a man
> coming clean, ripping off layer after layer of pretense, telling the
> truth about himself in a way you never expect from any member of the
> America celebrity class.
>
> The story is no puzzle -- if Dunne's account is remotely accurate, the
> recipe for early success and midlife failure was developed at home.
> Here's Dunne:
>
> My father was this famous heart surgeon, a wonderful man...but there
> was something about me that drove him crazy. He mimicked me, he called
> me sissy. It may seem like nothing now but it's awful to hurt a child.
> It's a terrible thing. My opinion of myself was nothing...I believed I
> was everything he said.
> Dunne was, by his own account, an unlikely hero in World War II --
> could that have anything to do with the memory of his father whipping
> him? And his obsession with being accepted at the highest level of
> Hollywood -- could there be any better way to show his father he was
> worthy? And the movies he produced -- who wouldn't be proud of making
> Al Pacino's first movie and the adaptation of the best-known novel of
> his sister-in-law, Joan Didion?
>
> When the crash came, it was total: no marriage, no career, no money.
> Dunne retreated to a one-room cabin, without telephone or television,
> in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, and, at 50, began to write. A few
> years later, his daughter, Dominique, was strangled to death by a
> former boyfriend. A chance meeting with Tina Brown led to an
> invitation to write about the trial for Vanity Fair. Here's Dunne:
>
> I had never attended a trial until my daughter's murder trial. What I
> witnessed in that courtroom enraged and redirected me. It wouldn't be
> necessary to hire a killer to kill the killer of my daughter, as I had
> contemplated. I could write about it.
> Tina Brown published that piece and offered Dunne a job. "I couldn't
> sign that contract with Vanity Fair quick enough," he says. "I was 59
> at the time."
>
> For most of the film, the camera stays tight on Dunne, as the Irish
> Catholic raconteur builds the case against himself. There are a few
> witnesses for spice -- his son Griffin, Liz Smith, Tina Brown,
> producer Bob Evans, Joan Didion -- but they don't exonerate him so
> much as they confirm the accuracy of his memories.
>
> "I had to admit, I cried a lot," Dunne said after his first viewing of
> the film. "It really shows my life completely, the fakery of the early
> me --- and I'm not embarrassed a bit."
>
> I met Dominick Dunne in 1975, just before he took a high dive into the
> failure pool. We re-connected after his daughter's murder, were
> colleagues at Vanity Fair, friends since. I mention our relationship
> not as a name-drop, but because it means I knew pretty much everything
> in this documentary.
>
> Knowing and seeing are very different, however, and the movie hit me
> hard. But if I cried -- and I did, and you will too -- I also laughed
> and cheered. Because as much as we like the Rocky myth of a nobody
> getting somewhere, we also thrill to the story of a guy who got
> somewhere, lost it and fought his way back -- and then, until almost
> his dying day, made his living and his life by trying, as best he
> could, to tell the truth.
I wonder if he'll be buried in Westwood w/ his daughter, along w/
Dominique and her 'Poltergeist' co-star Heather O'Rourke (and Marilyn
Monroe and Bob Crane and The Odd Couple).
Laninna
Aug 26, 2009, 5:45:04 PM8/26/09
to
>
> - Show quoted text -
Thanks for the good reads, Mr. Dunne, and your vigilance.
RIP forever
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/08/graydon-carters-dominick-dunne-tribute.html
polar
Aug 26, 2009, 9:47:08 PM8/26/09
to
Laninna wrote:
> On Aug 26, 2:11 pm, Taylor <lukebenw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 26, 5:08 pm, Taylor <lukebenw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dominick Dunne (1925-2009): A Lovely Man Who Took No Prisoners --
>>> Starting with Himself
>>> KJIH-TV Mediawww.tinyurl.com/kjihmedia
>>> http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/101017/thumbs/r-DOMINICK-DUNNE-S...
>>> Dominick Dunne, who died last night, was Vanity Fair's brightest star
>>> for more than two decades. If you don't know the real story, that is
>>> how you'll remember him. A success. A winner.
>>> The Vanity Fair pieces and the bestselling novels and the TV show all
>>> occur in Act II. But at the end of Act I, Nick Dunne was a total loser
>>> --- and when he was on top again, he didn't try to hide that fact at
>>> all. You can see how brutally honest he was in the first minute of a
>>> documentary called Dominick Dunne: After the Party. [To see a three-
>>> minute clip, click here.]
>>> (snip)> On Aug 26, 2:11 pm, Taylor <lukebenw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 26, 5:08 pm, Taylor <lukebenw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dominick Dunne (1925-2009): A Lovely Man Who Took No Prisoners --
>>> Starting with Himself
>>> KJIH-TV Mediawww.tinyurl.com/kjihmedia
>>> http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/101017/thumbs/r-DOMINICK-DUNNE-S...
>>> Dominick Dunne, who died last night, was Vanity Fair's brightest star
>>> for more than two decades. If you don't know the real story, that is
>>> how you'll remember him. A success. A winner.
>>> The Vanity Fair pieces and the bestselling novels and the TV show all
>>> occur in Act II. But at the end of Act I, Nick Dunne was a total loser
>>> --- and when he was on top again, he didn't try to hide that fact at
>>> all. You can see how brutally honest he was in the first minute of a
>>> documentary called Dominick Dunne: After the Party. [To see a three-
>>> minute clip, click here.]
>
> Thanks for the good reads, Mr. Dunne, and your vigilance.
>
> RIP forever
>
> http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/08/graydon-carters-dominick-dunne-tribute.html
A great writer, whether fiction or non-fiction.
His Vanity Fair article about the trial for his
daughter Dominique's murderer is painfully sad.
Prayers and sympathy for his two remaining sons.
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