Brat
Brat
Brat
Ratings5
Average rating3
Fans of Patti Smith's Just Kids and Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends will love this beautifully written, entertaining, and emotionally honest memoir by an actor, director, and author who found his start as an 80s Brat pack member. 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 favor 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.
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3.5 stars. McCarthy is a gifted writer and has a clear and concise way of telling a story. It's surprising that such an anxious, introverted person not only wanted to be an actor, but was successful at it. The memoir makes it pretty clear that his insecurities caused his behavior to make him seem acerbic and stand-offish. So, while the story was interesting and well-told, there's a missing warmth that keeps you from embracing it wholeheartedly.
As a teenager I was somewhat aware of the group of young actors just a bit older than me that were labeled the “Brat Pack.” Out of all of them, I liked Andrew McCarthy the best. That was a long time ago, and not a huge part of my life, but it was enough to make me pick up this memoir, which I liked quite a bit.
McCarthy tells about his early family history, discovering his vocation to be an actor in high school, his experience of moving to New York to study theater at NYU, and finding his way into the acting business, all as a lead up to focusing on the 1980s when fame found him. It's not a gossipy story, though. He mentions people he worked with, but his focus is more on his own experience–his approach to becoming a professional, his struggle with anxiety, and his developing drinking problem. He alludes a bit to his later career, but this book is mostly about the 1980s.
Written in a conversational, self-deprecating style, with accompanying black and white pictures.
This was not compelling at any point for any reason. I finished it an hour ago and I already can't remember anything about it.
