You never know who you’re going to run into doing jury duty in New York City. For me this week, it was Griffin Dunne, the actor who is currently co-starring with Kathryn Hahn and Kevin Bacon in the Amazon TV series I Love Dick. I hadn’t seen him on screen in many years, and though I have mixed feelings about the series I was impressed to see him bravely leaping into the task of playing Sylvere Lotringer, the editor of the brainy art journal Semiotext(e) and husband of the novelist Chris Kraus. (The show has a lot of rowdy full-on sex scenes.) And then there he was at jury duty, unshaven and wearing thick-framed glasses and a few years older. I’d met him a couple of times, once to interview him for the book I did with photographer Susan Shacter, Caught in the Act: New York Actors Face to Face, and once to interview him and his partner in film producing, Amy Robinson, for Elle magazine.
I just posted on my website my interview from Caught in the Act, which took place in 1985. What stands out for me now is the story he tells about needing “a wad of quarters” to field phone calls with agents and executives on a movie he was producing — so hard to imagine the days of feeding quarters into pay phones, eh? But it wasn’t so long ago.
The piece is short but you can read it online here. Here’s the glamorous portrait of him by Susan Shacter.
another eye opens 
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