Celebrity Jobber with Jeff Zito - Andrew McCarthy

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Take a look at celebrities before fame, their first jobs,

the moment that changed everything for them and maybe just maybe

we'll go into a direction that you don't know.

Some of these celebrities were famous, you know, years ago and now

you haven't heard of them in a while, so what are they doing?

And that's pretty much what we're going to get into today with my guest, Andrew McCarthy.

You remember him as a member of the brat pack in the 1980s, a group of young actors

who were cast in all these movies that were catering to a younger audience,

and it became a phenomenon.

And actually, Andrew McCarthy did a documentary on Hulu about a year or so ago, it's called Brats.

And it was really interesting to hear how they hated that term, the brat pack,

and after all of these years later, instead of embracing the term, they still resent it.

You know, especially Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, and Judd Nelson,

and it all pretty much came from an article that was written in the mid-80s,

and perhaps they were too young and took the term too literal.

So anyway, we're going to talk about that.

We haven't seen Andrew McCarthy in film or TV in quite some time,

so what is he doing now?

I could tell you one thing that he's doing.

He's an author and has a new book out, and we'll talk to him about that.

Not to mention his big break, his first job, and what's interesting is we kind of grew up

in the same area of New Jersey.

And I always feel like people from New Jersey share this certain bond, if you will.

But I don't know, maybe not.

I remember mentioning to Laura Prepawn, Donna from that 70s show,

that it lived right down the road from the street she used to live on,

Old Sterling Road.

And she couldn't have cared less.

Actually, I think I kind of creeped her out.

So maybe I'll keep away from the Jersey thing with Andrew McCarthy,

but I just can't help myself.

Really excited about this episode,

featuring actor Andrew McCarthy, my guest this week on Celebrity Jobber.

The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito.

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What if these celebrities weren't famous?

What would they have become?

What was their first job?

We're about to find out.

Hey Andrew, how are you?

Good, how are you?

I'm doing great, you know.

I don't know if this is true anymore, but I guess we're neighbors kind of.

We were, I was from Watch Young, New Jersey.

I had no idea.

You were from New Jersey all these years.

I had no idea you were from New Jersey.

Yeah, grew up in Westfield, not far.

Not far at all.

There's actually a bunch of kids that went to my CCD that went to

Pingree, and you went to Pingree.

You don't have to say it with that kind of pointed snap.

You know, I understand.

So, you know, this is really cool to talk to you.

Actor, director, filmmaker, travel writer, author.

Those are all of your jobs.

Yeah, I can't hold the job, apparently.

Yeah.

What's your favorite out of all of those?

Oh, kind of all.

I just finished acting.

I just acted in a play that just finished yesterday,

and I hadn't done a play in 20 years.

So, that was kind of fun to do.

And, but I have to say, I do like sitting alone in a room,

and the older I get, and just sort of writing.

I find that, yeah.

Now, tell me, I want to talk about your current job,

which is, as an author, he have a new book,

but I wanted to talk about your very first job.

Can you rewind all the way back and tell,

and maybe it wasn't in Showbiz?

What was your very first paycheck?

Do you remember that day?

My first job, I was a dishwasher at the pizza pub

in seaside heights, New Jersey.

Oh, down the shore.

Down the shore, yeah.

And it was great.

I loved it.

I absolutely loved it.

It was the summer, after my high school graduation,

and I was fantastic.

I was rented a rat hole with an apartment

with two other buds, and we were all

worked in the kitchen at this one really bad CD restaurant.

It had a great time and a great summer.

So, that was the summer before you went to NYU,

and I just watched the documentary,

Bratz, not too long ago.

Just to familiarize myself again,

I thought it was great.

I saw it when it first came out.

You mentioned, and you kind of wear it like a badge of honor,

you got kicked out of NYU.

Can you tell us?

Can you tell us why?

What did you do?

I do, I'm very proud of it.

Although my daughter goes to NYU right now,

so I'm like, do as I say, not as I do.

Yeah, I was in the acting program.

So, that meant three days of week I was in acting classes,

two days of week I was in academic classes,

and I just sort of didn't show up for my academic classes.

I was interested in the acting stuff,

but I wasn't interested in the other.

So, they said, after two years,

you know what, we'll just struggle on without you here.

Okay, so there's no big story, there's no one.

No, no, it's just bad, it weren't going.

It didn't bother to show up.

Yeah, you're buying those two joints

from the Rastafari and Guy in the park every day.

Every day, yeah.

That was getting in the way of school.

Okay, I get it.

School was getting in the way of that,

which was my mentality at the time.

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The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito.

So, your dad was in the world of finance.

Your mom wrote for a newspaper.

Did you write for the star ledger?

What did your mom do?

She, my mom actually sold advertising

for a newspaper,

and then New Jersey Monthly Magazine.

And she also sold Arden and Art Galerie at one point, yeah.

And your love of writing?

Where did that come from?

I have no idea.

I didn't write anything until I was in my 30s.

I didn't read any of the books I was supposed to read in high school.

I didn't do any of that.

And one day I just picked up a pen.

I thought, you know, I was traveling the world

and it's a longer story.

But it's why I became a travel writer.

I was in Saigon and I just picked, I had an amazing day

and I just wrote about it and what to do

when I got back to my hotel.

I was so excited.

And so I just picked up a pen

and just wrote about what happened.

And I was like, whoa, there I am.

And it was the exact same feeling I had

when I was 15 years old and walked out on stage

in the high school play of the artful,

as the artful dodger, you know,

and it was that sense of like, oh my gosh, there I am.

You know what I mean?

So it was a very similar feeling

so that that sort of started my writing journey.

And then I became a travel writer for magazines

and then that led to books and whatnot.

So books, let's talk about your new book.

It's called Who Needs Friends.

And I find it kind of funny

because I think a lot of people,

regular average every day,

ham and eggers like me,

can relate to a guy like you in Hollywood

and, you know, getting into, you know,

the middle of your life,

not all these times.

You had all these experiences with these friends.

Like you thought these friends,

they would never die these experiences.

And then you find yourself in middle-aged,

losing contact with all of them.

Now, tell me a little bit about the book

Who Needs Friends and how this began.

Yeah, I was, I was sitting at the kitchen table.

It was a very clear moment.

And my son was telling me a story about one of his bum.

He's 21-year-old son and he's telling me a story

about one of his buds.

It's really funny.

We're laughing.

And then as we kind of settled down,

he looked up at me and said,

you don't really have any friends.

Do you dad?

And I just had to take a feel.

I took a hit and I said,

you know what, Sammy?

I do have friends.

I just don't see them.

But I know they're there and that's enough.

And he went, yeah, okay, whatever.

And he went off to see his girlfriend.

And I sat with that and I thought,

you know what, it's not enough.

I need to go see my friends.

You know, and I have like many guys

had this core group when I was young.

And you know, through life and careers

and families, they sort of scattered.

And I realized I hadn't seen these dear friends

in years and years, sometimes decades.

And so I thought I just need to go see these people.

And so I got in my car.

And since I hate driving on highways,

I started driving back roads across America.

I drove 10,000 miles to go zigzagging all over America

to see these people.

And along the way,

I, because it was on my mind,

this notion of friendship,

I started approaching random men

on this gas stations and restaurants were ever.

And I said, hey, we talked to me about your friends.

And they all looked at me like,

whoa, what are you talking about?

But I said, no, I'm going to see my own friends.

And I just thought, you know, what's you, you know,

and then very well he goes, oh, yeah, okay.

And not a single guy, the kind to talk to me.

Everybody would, once I sort of

warmed to the topic, love talking about it.

And so many of them kind of went,

you know, I've never talked about this before.

And so I just thought it was an interesting kind of topic.

It grew into this kind of thing.

And about, you know,

somewhere in the middle of Kentucky or somewhere,

I thought, you know, there's a book in this thing.

Because it's just, there's an overriding theme of men

being, having isolated as the older we get.

And we lose track of our friends.

And we just, we have them.

But somehow, how come we're like not like my wife?

How come we're not following them?

How come I'm not seeing these people?

My wife is constantly making efforts to see her friends.

And guys, you know, somewhere along the line,

the idea of being an American male,

and the man is to be stoic and go to loan

and pull your hat down and carry your own water.

You know, and it's like, and that's really

still a lot of isolation.

And it was interesting.

I'd ask a lot, everyone, I asked everyone I met

if they were lonely.

And the young people, young guys were,

go, yeah, yeah, I'm lonely.

And old guys, older guys like me,

would, I'll say, no, not on good lonely.

And we're so interested because loneliness

is kind of, that can be construed as weakness.

And the one thing a man can't be is weak.

Sure.

So they just, which just further isolates us.

You know what I mean?

So there seemed to be this common thread evolving

as the more people I talk.

So I just found that kind of fascinating.

And then the more I reconnected with my friends

and connected with this people,

the more I felt driving in my car all alone

across the country, the more I felt like

there were all these people in the car with me then.

Right.

I just started to feel happier and more relaxed

and more like who I know myself to be on a good day.

And you'll be connected.

The Celebrity Jobber Podcast with Jeff Cito.

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The Celebrity Jobber Podcast with Jeff Cito.

These friends were they like people from high school

or Pingri where they people from the bridge.

One of them was from high school.

And the rest were just folks I met before.

There was a successful actor.

There were people that I just know.

Okay.

Most of them.

And but there were none of the,

none of my Brad Pack brethren or that.

Although I did just this morning get a text from Emilio Estevez

saying that he'd read an excerpt from my book.

And so that was really nice to get.

Right.

And if I could be with that,

I did this documentary about the Brad Pack a couple years ago

and I reconnected with all those people.

Oh, thanks.

And like since then, I've stayed in touch with them again.

Where I hadn't been in touch with them in decades.

And so it's so nice to sort of bring your life up

into the present and realize what value all of it has.

You know, and I, that's really important.

And I could tell that it's been like 30 years

since you talked to some of those guys.

And I just wanted to say this from an outside perspective

because I found it very interesting in that documentary,

which again, very well done because it was the centerpiece,

you know, it was the center of my life.

I was a few years younger,

but those movies were everything to me and still are.

And I found it amazing that almost all of you

had this negative, now I will granted,

I didn't read the article, the skating article,

but you all had this negative thing

from the term Brad Pack.

And when I'm telling you, me and my friends in 1986,

we were the Brad Pack.

We wanted to be you guys.

I thought it was a cool term.

I thought Brad Pack, those guys are cool.

Brad Pack, you're younger.

So, you know, kind of a play on words,

but I was just amazed to see how hurt you guys,

most of you were by that term.

And I just wanted to tell you,

from an outsider's perspective,

I wouldn't have taken it that way at all.

Yeah, I know it's one of those crazy things.

And over time, I've come to realize

it's one of the greatest blessings of my life

and my professional life, certainly,

that, you know, because people come up to me,

people like you, or whoever,

of a certain generation come up,

and they go, oh my God, those movies, man,

and they start talking.

And pretty soon, their eyes kind of glaze over

and I realize, oh, they're not talking to me anymore.

They're talking to their own youth.

And, you know, I represent that,

and me and other members of the Brad Pack

represent that to people.

And it's such a great gift to be able to just receive them,

because that moment in time,

when you're young and blossoming,

like my son was, when he was said that to me about,

you don't have any friends,

it's, you know, your life's a blank slate to be written on

and it's a wondrous time in life.

And we represent that to that generation

and to, that's a real gift.

And it took me a long time to realize that.

That's cool though.

Do you, do you consider a moment in your life?

I don't know if it was class or just a moment in time

where there was something on stage,

a big break, something that happened to you

that led to the Brad Pack that basically changed your life

forever, a particular phone call,

meeting with a director.

Is there that, that one moment,

or was it kind of a gradual path to success for you?

Well, I mean, I think when we're living our life forward,

nothing seems like one big moment,

but looking back and kind of pin things.

I went in an audition for the movie Pretty and Pink

and Molly was in the audition room, Molly Ringwald.

And I read the scene and I went into audition

and she was there reading and I,

and when I left the room, Molly turned around to John Hughes

and said, that's the guy.

And John Hughes looked up at her and said,

that went?

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

She said, no, he's romantic and, you know, poetic.

He's the guy.

And I'd say that was the day that changed my life.

Really?

I thought you were a star before Pretty and Pink.

Well, that was before St. Almost Fire had come out too.

And so it was that, but that was the moment

where things just really changed in that way.

Wow, and I didn't know that was a wig at the end

of the film either, just so you know, I had a bad wig.

If you watch that movie again, you'll see,

I look just really saddened for Lauren,

but it's just bad wig acting.

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

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Celebrity Jobber.

Now I'm gonna make a suggestion

and I don't know if anybody's gonna listen to me,

but here I am, I'm 50 years old, I'm almost 51.

And I know Molly, Judd, and Emilio

are not gonna do this.

But man, what about, you know, we're getting older

and the Brat Pack is like, you know, a reunion, a film?

I mean, I think a lot of people would love

to see something like that.

Again, I know there seems like there's a few of them

that are still kind of, you know, not where you are yet,

but I think Rob Lowe's in.

I think you're in.

I think Ali Sheddy's in to me's in.

I mean, what do you, what do you think, man?

What you do, I'm with you, Jeff, let's shoot.

I don't know anything about what you do,

but I'm just saying, have you ever talked,

have you guys talked about it?

Or no?

Yeah, yeah, we kicked the idea around.

I think it'd be a great idea.

I think it'd be fun.

You know what I mean?

And it's also, it led me reconnecting

with all those guys and everything about all that,

maybe have so much more affection for my youth too,

which was a really nice thing.

That's cool.

It's been, I mean, let me tell you, man,

I was really excited to talk to you about all this stuff

and relive some of this, some of this.

So thanks so much.

I want to just plug the book once again.

Who needs friends?

Andrew McCarthy, of course, you know,

actor, director, filmmaker, you gotta see Bratz,

if you haven't, still on Hulu,

I just watched it last night.

Travel writer, author,

lot of different jobs.

His first job was at a pizza place

and seaside heights right before he got kicked out of NYU.

Been a real pleasure.

And again, the book, who needs friends everywhere?

It's out right now, Andrew.

It is, yeah.

There you go.

Andrew McCarthy, again, a real pleasure.

Thanks so much.

Thanks, Jeff.

I'm going to tell you that I've been in this business

for over 30 years and I've talked to pretty much

every rock star celebrity on the planet.

And I'm going to be honest with you

when I found out Andrew McCarthy

was going to be able to talk to him face to face on Zoom.

I was a little nervous

and as he was like a really big star, you know, in my youth,

you know, in the mid 80s, he was like a really big star.

And I was, you know, thinking about what I was going to say

to him for weeks.

I was really, and he couldn't have been any nicer

and really cool guy.

But this is the one thing that I wanted to say

about the Brat Pack that again,

I didn't read the initial interview

that came out in the mid 80s,

which I think was about Emilio's at some party.

And it was this journalist who kind of coined the phrase

the Brat Pack that took on a life of its own.

But the Brat Pack members, if you will,

Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson,

Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Allie Sheety,

maybe Anthony Michael Hall was in there.

They really resented the term.

And maybe looking at it from their perspective,

they may have resented the term

because it pigeonholed them to doing these teeny-bopper

John Hughes Flicks, and maybe some of them

wanted to become serious actors and win an Oscar.

And maybe they felt like that term prevented that

from happening.

And maybe they felt like being pigeonholed as a Brat Pack

would have some kind of ill effects on their career.

Now, one could say, we haven't seen Andrew McCarthy

in a movie in quite some time.

So was labeling him a member of the Brat Pack,

the reason for that.

You know, I don't think so personally,

but I do think that a number of them feel that way.

And again, I'll point out Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson,

and Emilio Estevez.

They are not fond of that term, the Brat Pack.

And I urge you to check out the documentary Brats,

which is on Hulu.

Andrew grew up in Westfield, New Jersey.

His father was in finance.

His mother worked at a newspaper,

got interested in acting during high school,

kicked out of NYU Film School,

and went on to have a phenomenal career in film

in the movie's class, St. Almost Fire, pretty in pink,

less than zero, weakened at Bernie's,

the list goes on and on.

And Andrew started writing for travel magazines,

and then also wrote a young adult novel,

his memoir, he's been a New York Times bestseller,

and his latest book is called Who Needs Friends?

And I guess the whole concept came from his son, Sam,

who's also an actor.

If you remember the Netflix series Dead To Me,

he was in that, but I guess a question from his son, Sam,

asking his father, why didn't he have any friends?

So it got Andrew into examining why guys,

over time, lose a connection to people

that played a very important role in their lives

when they were younger.

You know, your friends, your buddies,

you know, over time you get married, you have families,

jobs, taken different directions, and you lose touch.

I think it's something all guys can pretty much relate to.

So Andrew goes on a across country journey

in search of some of the friends of his youth,

and not talking about Brat Pack Brethren, like real friends,

not in showbiz from his earlier years.

So again, very relatable to a lot of us guys.

I only have like one friend from like eighth or ninth grade

and through high school that I still talk to a couple times a week,

other than that, not many.

Who needs friends?

From actor, travel writer, television director, filmmaker,

and author, Andrew McCarthy.

First job, by the way, at a pizza place on seaside heights.

Right after, he graduated from high school,

and before he got kicked out of NYU.

And what's funny to me is that he mentioned his big break

was on the set of Pretty and Pink.

And after his audition, he walked out.

Molly Ringwald said, that's the guy.

The filmmaker, John Hughes said, that went.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, I totally get it.

But maybe it was Molly Ringwald,

who ultimately got Andrew McCarthy

to become a member of the Brat Pack.

Hey, I sure hope he takes my advice of doing a current

Brat Pack style film with all those guys.

I think it would be really, really cool.

Great stuff.

Thanks so much for listening to another episode

of the Celebrity Jobber podcast.

Follow on Instagram, celebrity underscore,

jobber underscore podcast.

Also, youtube.com slash the at sign celebrity jobber.

And follow on sub stack at celebrity jobber.

So if you really like the podcast and you want more content,

I recommend subscribing to sub stack.

Who are these people?

Who were they before they were famous?

Some of them might hold a completely different job today

than what we initially knew them from years ago,

just like Andrew McCarthy, now an author.

But always, in my mind, a member of the Brat Pack.

Thanks so much for listening.

And until next week, I'll see you then.

I'm Jeff Zito.

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