Most people know Andrew McCarthy from his movie roles in Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, Weekend at Bernie’s, and Less than Zero, and as a charter member of Hollywood’s Brat Pack. That iconic group of ingenues and heartthrobs included Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore, and has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture.
In his memoir Brat: An ’80s Story, McCarthy focuses his gaze on that singular moment in time. The result is a revealing look at coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction, and masculinity. New York City of the 1980s is brought to vivid life in these pages, from scoring loose joints in Washington Square Park to skipping school in favour of the dark revival houses of the Village where he fell in love with the movies that would change his life. Filled with personal revelations of innocence lost to heady days in Hollywood with John Hughes and an iconic cast of characters, Brat is a surprising and intimate story of an outsider caught up in a most unwitting success.
Imagine you’re at a dinner party and have been collared by the person everyone has been trying to avoid. As you stand there, listening, you realise that not only have they been talking about themselves for hours, but they are name-dropping like a nightmare, and you can’t figure out a way to escape. That is exactly what reading Brat: An 80s Story by Andrew McCarthy felt like. It was an inescapable monologue of self-indulgence, peppered with celebrity mentions that serve no real purpose other than to remind the reader that, yes, he was once famous.
I was born in the 1970s. I am Gen X and grew up with the movies he talks about including Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Less Than Zero. These films defined the era and still hold pride of place in my DVD collection.
Given all of that, I had high hopes for this memoir, expecting an insightful or at least entertaining look behind the curtain of Hollywood in the 1980s. But all the way through this book, I just got the feeling that McCarthy believed himself to be too good for the career he ended up with, as though acting in these iconic films was some unfortunate detour rather than a remarkable achievement. He describes his craft, his training, and his struggles, but instead of an inspiring or even remotely engaging journey, it reads like a long-winded sigh of regret.
The references to the Brat Pack feel full of bitterness, as though that monicker is at fault for his career fluctuations and the issues he experienced. But maybe this is my perception of his feelings because that’s how it reads. There’s a moment where I even doubt that he’s part of the Pack itself because the article that started it all is not about him, he’s not in the picture beneath the headline, and the comments about him are incredibly dismissive (but what do I know? I wasn’t there).
One of the more uncomfortable moments in the book comes when he recalls a time when he saw an actress he had admired on stage outside the theatre, spoke to her briefly and then followed her for a moment to ask her out for a drink. It’s as though he had zero awareness of how uncomfortable that kind of encounter can be for a woman. Then there’s the baffling anecdote where he wonders why Joel Schumacher called him selfish on the set of St. Elmo’s Fire, a question that, after enduring this shallow and self-absorbed memoir, I think I could have answered for him.
Now, being honest, I did not like Blane in Pretty in Pink. Even as a teenager watching it for the first time, I thought he was fake; a hypocrite who lacked sincerity and backbone. I recently surprised a friend when I told her that I preferred Stef, played by James Spader, simply because at least he was honest about being a terrible person! Blane, on the other hand, was insipid and weak and completely unappealing (even to me as a pre-teen). Instead of adding depth to his career choices, I came away from the book feeling as though he believed he was better than the roles he had been given. The way he so casually refers to the John Hughes role he turned down. The mention of Ferris Bueller which Hughes showed him and never mentioned again. I am not sure McCarthy could have played that role, there was something about Broderick’s take on our favourite truant that just worked.
His stories from behind the scenes, of how he kept distant from his romantic interest in the film (Molly Ringwald) because of her age, and his dislike of Jon Cryer because he found his laugh irritating, just made him less likeable in my eyes than he already had been!
And I don’t know why, but referring to Robert Downey Jnr as Bobby felt strangely off, in the moments when he was talking about his experience with the actor when they worked together on Less Than Zero.
I picked this up with the hope that it would be less cringe-worthy and self-serving than the documentary Brats, which was released last year. That documentary attempted to explore the so-called “Brat Pack” phenomenon, but instead of an objective examination, it felt like a self-pitying therapy session in which he tried (and to a small degree, managed) to get some of the gang back together, but it felt awkward and uncomfortable rather than engaging and informative. That nostalgic buzz just wasn’t there! Well, this book follows suit.
The one saving grace? The book is mercifully short. I finished it in an evening, though by the end, I was rolling my eyes so much I probably got a headache. For me, this was less a memoir and more a “woe is me” piece, though the purpose of it remains unclear. Was he looking for sympathy? Redemption? A re-evaluation of his legacy? Whatever it was, it missed the mark. He also feels to hold little fondness for the majority of his co-stars from back then. Kim Cattrall gets no mention though his project with her is the focus of many pages. Jonathan Silverman, his foil in Weekend at Bernie’s doesn’t warrant a single line and the disdain he held for Jon Cryer made me quite sad (haha, see what I did there?). This makes me realise why so many of his ex-co-stars from that period in time weren’t a part of his documentary, including Judd Nelson who simply proved elusive (he was a great guest star in Psych!).
I think that next time I’m after a hit of nostalgia, I’ll pick up one of the many 80s movies on my DVD shelves. This book was sadly rather lacking in the behind-the-curtain look at the Brat Pack era I was really hoping for.
With regards a rating, though I know that this is a memoir, and therefore it is someone’s life and personal experiences and I would not normally give such a book a rating! I don’t feel that this gives enough personal feeling or insight. Events are throwaway lines (like the mention of a ‘close friend’ who died from an illness that had to be named, or his feelings about his father) that give us very little about him as a person, his feelings or his experiences. This is a book of names, places and dates, hence the rating I have given it.
