Brat : an '80s story

Title:

Author:

McCarthy, Andrew, 1962- author.

Summary:

"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 -- scoring loose joints in Washington Square Park and 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."-- Provided by publisher.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xi, 223 pages : illustrations, photographs ; 22 cm

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Biographies.

Personal Subject:

McCarthy, Andrew, 1962-

Subject Term:

Actors -- Biography.

Motion pictures -- History -- 20th century.

Nineteen eighties.

Publisher:

Grand Central Publishing,

Publication Date:

2021

ISBN:

9781538754276

Publication Information:

New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2021.

Call Number:

927 MCCARTHY

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003504621	Adult Nonfiction	927 MCCARTHY	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

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.

Author Notes

Since starring in the movies he recounts throughout Brat , Andrew McCarthy has become a director, an award-winning travel writer, and a bestselling author. He has directed more than eighty hours of television, including Orange in the New Black, The Blacklist, Gossip Girl, and many others. For a dozen years he served as editor at large at National Geographic Traveler, and his award-winning travel writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, TIME , and elsewhere. He is the author a travel memoir, The Longest Way Home , and a young-adult novel, Just Fly Away --both New York Times bestsellers.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The star of seminal 1980s coming-of-age movies St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty in Pink looks back on a decade that was more angsty for him than for his characters in this heartfelt memoir. Actor McCarthy (The Longest Way Home) revisits many raucous showbiz indignities--"my first day on the set of a feature film was spent in bra and panties"--and delves into the gnawing anxieties behind his heart-throb exterior: a sullen aloofness that masked his fear at auditions; spiraling alcoholism; loneliness in an L.A., where he "felt exposed and vulnerable on the deserted streets"; alienation on the coked-up set of Less Than Zero, where "the mood on the shoot turned from dark to nefarious" with a script "full of hate and self-degradation." McCarthy writes evocatively of his insecurities and dysfunctions--"I felt as if I existed behind a layer of opaque plexiglass... which would only clear when I took a drink"--but also of the high points when he felt "the simple joy at being there, at being alive and young" in front of the camera. McCarthy is clear-eyed and unsparing about Hollywood but takes the emotional intensity of the actor's craft and life seriously. The result is a riveting portrait of the artist as a young man. Photos. (May)

Library Journal Review

Famous for breaking the Watergate story with Bob Woodward, Bernstein backtracks to his early-1960s experiences as a teenage reporter at the Washington Star in Chasing History.