How Andrew McCarthy Finally Embraced the Brat Pack

Andrew McCarthy has lived many lives: He's been an actor, a television director, a travel writer—and perhaps, most famously, a member of the Brat Pack, a media-concocted nickname for the group of young 80’s actors that included Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore, among others, who appeared in movies like Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club.

While those years were the height of McCarthy’s fame, he has never been too keen to talk about that period of his life until now. "I had avoided the Brat Pack for so many years, and I had stock answers if you asked me about things, but I'd never really looked at it," says McCarthy, 58, over the phone from upstate New York. So, what changed? "I thought, I'm probably doing myself a disservice by not examining what was the most defining few years of my life by willfully ignoring that," he adds.

And that's exactly what his third book, Brat: An ‘80s Story, does. In it, McCarthy digs into his rise to stardom, life in the Brat Pack and his wildest Hollywood moments. While he recalls making films like Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo's Fire, and includes some unforgettable stories involving everyone from Rob Lowe to Jacqueline Bisset, the book also examines McCarthy’s formative years at NYU, his loss of innocence and his battle with addiction.

Ahead of the book's release on May 11th, GQ spoke with McCarthy about his decision to write this memoir, how the ending of Pretty in Pink changed and the best Hollywood advice he ever received.

GQ: It's funny, when I was reading Brat, I realized we were from the same hometown, Westfield, New Jersey. I thought I knew all of the famous people/things that happened in my hometown.

Andrew McCarthy: Who else lived in Westfield?

The one that stands out to me most is Charles Addams from The Addams Family. Have you been back there in recent years?

I was there about three or four years ago for a book event, and I hadn't been 25 years before that. It was so much more prosperous than when I was growing up. I was like, "Wow, Westfield really came up."

What was the process for writing Brat, and why did you decide to put this out now?

People have asked me over the years if I'd be interested in writing a Brat Pack book, and my answer always before they could finish their sentence was "No." Jonathan Karp approached me a couple of years ago, and I thought about that for about six months and then one day I just started writing, and I realized I didn't want to sell a Brat Pack book because then people would have an expectation of what it would be. I started writing my own, and then sold it after I had finished it, so there were no surprises. If you thought it was going be much more gossipy, sorry. I didn't want to have that obligation while I was writing it. I wrote a book years ago, a travel memoir, and it really illuminated for me some internal things about myself. It's like that Joan Didion line, "I find out what I'm thinking by writing." I wanted to see what was under that rock. I suppose it took me all this time to be courageous enough to look as truthfully as I could under the rock.

The title of the book refers to the Brat Pack obviously, but is there a deeper meaning to it?

That name defined my career for many, many years, and I still carry it around, and I was just wanting to come to terms with it. It's ironic, hopefully — it's about the Brat Pack taking ownership of it. That article that it was coined in was such a scathing indictment of a bunch of young actors that people tried to flee from it for so long. I wanted to ultimately just examine that and come to terms with what that means. [To] the general public, it wasn't scathing as it was to the movie industry. Then again, nobody likes being labeled because once you're labeled, that's it.

Now, the term Brat Pack has grown to be such an affectionate thing. It's grown to be, in the general public, [an] affectionate look back on their youth. I'm just sort of an avatar for when people were 20 or 21 and their life is a blank canvas to be painted on. As we get older, life happens—successes and failures and disappointments happen.

Do you think your career would have been different had you not been given that label or put under that umbrella?

You can never tell. Things happen, that's your life. But one of the things I discovered in writing was the blessing of it, as opposed to just being something that's flung at you. I just tried to ignore it really, which probably was the most effective move anyway. One of the things I discovered was, if I was just the guy who made the exact same movies and the Brat Pack would have never existed, I probably wouldn't have written that book, and we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. I didn't think I'd ever get to the place [to realize that it’s] a great gift to be labeled into the Brat Pack, and that's taken a long time to come to that acceptance.

You had a fraught relationship with your father, rooted in his financial needs from you when you got successful. But you reconciled with him at the end of his life. What was it like for you to write about him?

Well, if you're going to talk about the '80s, which is what the book is about, they were all affecting each other. That was my success in movies, my drinking and my relationship with my father. The first pass of the book there was less about my father and I realized I was withholding. It's not flattering particularly of my father, so I felt protective of him to a certain degree, and then, I felt, If you're going to ask people for their time, you have to come clean with them and tell them the truth. Frankly, if I had not had a satisfying conclusion with my father, I wouldn't have written about it, if I was still harboring some kind of resentment. But we came to peace with each other, so it felt fine.

The way you describe your father's profession is very vague. Did you ever figure out what he was doing?

Not entirely. I know he raised money for tax shelters and various things. Was all of it legal? I don't know. I never really knew.

When did you realize that alcohol had become a crutch for you?

Being successful in movies did not cause me to drink too much. I drank too much because I'm an alcoholic. It was a primary thing, it wasn't a reaction to anything. Nothing caused it except itself. So, that was an important thing to realize, because it's very easy to go, "Well that's a natural reaction," and it's like, "No, that's not the case." It certainly pacified me at times, but then of course like all drinking does, it exacerbates the very things it pacifies. When did I realize it had become my master, in a sense? It was somewhere around 1987. Did I become aware of it? Not until several years later. I still kept drinking once I admitted that to myself but it's a process.

Over the years there was this illusion with the Brat Pack that you guys were close, but that's been demystified over the years. Is there anyone from the Brat Pack you've rekindled a relationship with?

I just never knew a lot of the people. There wasn't any kind of thing where you wouldn't want to be friends with them or had a falling out or anything. I've never met some of the Brat Pack. Others are people I worked with who I liked perfectly well, and I'm a pretty solitary person in many ways, so I didn't partake in a lot of stuff with other people for my own reasons. But I'm always happy to run into people. I occasionally see Molly Ringwald and I was in touch with Jon Cryer just the other day. I'm always happy to see them because we shared something that very few people did. I suppose it's like when you were 21 and you had a summer job for six weeks, doing something you do to stay in touch with those people 30 years later? But that's not what the Brat Pack meant and what people want it to be a certain way.

In the book, you were very honest about the way that you and Jon Cryer didn't get along during the filming of Pretty in Pink, but then reconnected later on.

Well, that was just being defensive on my part. Jon was young and scared, and I was young and scared and I justified that it worked well for the parts. I'm sure if I wanted to get along, Jon would have been happy to get along. The fault of that lies with me. Jon's a very lovely guy and he's grown up to be a real gracious, generous person. I'm sure he was back then, I just didn't know. It's all water over the dam, really.

How has your relationship with fame changed over the years?

Fame changes people on a cellular level. It'll always be an outgrowth of what happened to me when I was 21 or 22 years old. I have no idea what course my life would have taken had that not happened to me. It's just been part of my experience to be a recognizable person to some degree. Largely, it's been a blessing.

In the book, there's a comment from the producer Marty Ransohoff that Rob Lowe and you didn't like each other.

That speaks so much for the Brat Pack. People just assume stuff. I have no idea [if it was a joke]. My manager just relayed what Marty said. I hadn't spoken to Marty in a couple of years, so I don't know he would have known or assumed that or something. But that could have just been showbiz provocation to get somebody to react. He's a producer—he could have been doing any number of head games.

Did you ever discuss it with Rob?

No. I've always really enjoyed seeing Rob. He was very playful and fun, and it didn't warrant a discussion, really.

What's your favorite memory of someone famous in Hollywood taking you under their wing? There were quite a few stories in there.

James Coburn spent an hour with me. We had a great relationship, but I remember that warm feeling. It was the end of that old-school Hollywood generation.

What's the best piece of advice someone in Hollywood gave you over the years?

I suppose when James Coburn said Hollywood's about relationships, which is not something I was great at cultivating.

It was interesting to hear about how you weren't thrilled with the Pretty in Pink ending, and then it got reshot. Did your input have anything to do with that?

No, I had absolutely nothing to do with that. I don't even think I told anyone that I didn't like the way it originally ended. The audience spoke loud and clear on that. The audience loved the movie up to that point, and then they hated that, so they changed it. I was happy they changed it, but it had nothing to do with me.

What do you want readers to get out of your book?

In many ways, it's none of my business. You asked earlier, why be so honest and revealing? In these kinds of books [you have to be], otherwise, people don't get anything out of it. You just want to create a relationship so that people have a satisfying experience. And if they nod their head in identification, you're doing good.

Do you have an idea for your next book yet?

Twenty-five years ago, I walked across Spain on the Camino de Santiago and so I'm going to go do that again, and I'm going to do it with my eldest son. We're going to walk the Camino together, and I'm gonna write about that.