'Blue Nights' With Joan Didion, By Griffin Dunne

Joan Didion has been given a gift with words and a surfeit of tragedy to write about. The contiguous deaths of her husband, filmmaker John Dunne, and her daughter, Quintana Roo, who died of complications from an illness when she was 39 and freshly-married, has inspired two linked Didion memoirs -- "The Year of Magical Thinking" on Dunne's death, and now, six years later, "Blue Nights" on Quintana Roo's (Didion's friend Sara Davidson has written a companion memoir on the happenings as well, which you can preview here).

This time around, Didion asked her nephew, the director Griffin Dunne, to make a film to go with her book. We've got a clip below of what Dunne calls "an audiobook for the eyes," footage of Didion reading aloud cut with old photographs and evocative scenes set to Didion's narration. The Daily Beast hints the project may evolve into a full-length Didion documentary. This, please. It's long overdue.

WATCH:

Comments

[dahpunkster]

09:48 PM on 11/02/2011

I may buy a couple copies as christmas presents as well. This needs to be a full length film. I like reading books about strong women with guts. Sometimes I feel like they are endangered species.

[dahpunkster]

09:42 PM on 11/02/2011

I just finished reading this after work today. You wouldn't think a book about losing some ones daughter and wrestling with your own mortality would be so interesting. Its not whiney , or pithy. She just comes out and hits you square on with the truth. When I get paid, I am buying it ,and rereading it.

[frant52]

05:09 PM on 11/02/2011

I have to get this.