Dominick Dunne: what a story

The late Dominick Dunne, novelist and chronicler of celebrity trials, was by parts Taki, Jennifer’s Diary, The Sunday Times Insight team, Edith Wharton, Thackeray, and J J Hunsecker (of The Sweet Smell of Success).

Dunne had much more than his share of misery but in the end the best luck of all.  He’d made his life into a great story, and was very lucky in his biographers, the makers of the little biopic, After the Party, available on DVD and shown recently on BBC 4.

We learned of Dunne’s being star-struck, marrying a beautiful heiress, becoming a Hollywood insider, losing it all, gaining the skills of a novelist, losing his actress daughter to murder, meeting Tina Brown and becoming what he remained for many years, the celebrity chronicler of trials involving celebrities in Vanity Fair.

Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley, the film’s directors, gavet him just the right amount of breathing space to tell his story, which would clearly be worth the attention of a novelist or film-maker.