For many years, Dominick Dunne has been one of the characteristic voices of Vanity Fair, a patrician gossip-columnist-cum-crime reporter. In the documentary Dominick Dunne: After the Party, the writer is given an opportunity to speak beyond the glossy pages of his magazine. After the Party will be out on DVD, June 16.
Dunne has his critics, especially overpaid defense attorneys and loyal relatives of well-heeled killers, and they are given their chance to speak. But the camera is trained mostly on Dunne, who has used his coverage of the celebrity trails of Claus von Bulow, O.J. Simpson and others to investigate the unsocial habits of American high society and inveigh against the injustice of rich malefactors buying their verdicts. Dunne is especially tart on the subject of expert witnesses, those “whores of the court,” he calls them.
Coming across as engaging, charming and sharp as a switchblade, Dunne’s reminiscences and observations are set against his reporting from the murder trial of lunatic, once-great producer Phil Spector. Directors Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley draw out the salient, formative experiences of their subject, especially his decorated service during World War II and the murder of his daughter, which turned him toward a life of crime reporting.
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