Brat: An 80's Story is a memoir by actor/director Andrew McCarthy. Instantly recognizable as a young heartthrob actor of our generation, he was labelled early on as one of the Brat Pack, a tag that has stuck with them throughout their careers. I've read the memoirs of Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, so here is Andrew McCarthy with a very different viewpoint on success.
Brat follows his career only during the 1980's, when he was skipping school and floundering at acting classes (indifferent and nonchalant - told he was too young to do the work). Suddenly he was picked from a cold call to co-star with Rob Lowe in the sex-comedy Class. This lead to the classic hits St. Elmo's Fire, then Pretty In Pink, where he remains in the minds of millions. It was surprising to read how being in St. Elmo with the other top actors of the day - and an article calling them the Brat Pack - has left an indelible mark. Many of the actors in the group he has never met, some never seen since then, yet they were painted with the same brush; all of them have tried to shake the label, to various degrees of success. He will always be the high school crush of Molly Ringwald in Pretty In Pink from director John Hughes - a man he never even had a dinner with, and an actress he didn't collaborate with whom he has rarely seen since then. He went on to film other notable films like Less Than Zero and Weekend at Bernies, as well as financial flops that went nowhere - all while recalling a disassociation with the business and an increasing reliance on drugs and alcohol.
His writing is surprising in its honesty. He doesn't gloss over the emptiness the work and the drinking brought him, the many opportunities that were dropped because he was too insecure or ill-equipped to handle them, like when he filmed a John Frankenheimer film with Sharon Stone in Rome, and he was simply too drunk to perform. His story is not told with regret, simply the way it was without rose coloured glasses. As someone who saw all those movies at the time, and followed the careers of the actors, it was interesting to see the other side of the curtain - how a few months work 40 years ago can brand you with an indelible mark of pop culture, whether you like it or not.
Andrew McCarthy continues to act and went on to direct popular TV like Orange Is The New Black, The Blacklist, and Gossip Girl.
2021 / Hardcover / 221 pages
The Eighties, Eden, seem like a different life-time.
Neeru