Andrew McCarthy on 40 Years of Pretty in Pink

Here is something Andrew McCarthy did not do before he agreed to star in Pretty in Pink: read the script.

“I needed a job and I needed the $50,000 they were going to pay me,” the actor, 63, tells host Seth Abramovitch on this week’s episode of It Happened in Hollywood. “So I read the script on the way out, on the plane.”

What he found next alarmed him. In John Hughes’ original screenplay, his character Blane — the dreamy rich kid who wins working-class Andie Walsh’s heart — didn’t actually deserve her. By the end, he buckles under peer pressure and dumps her entirely. McCarthy landed at LAX and went straight for the phone.

“I called my agent and said, ‘You’ve got to get me out of this movie. This guy’s a jerk.’”

It is one of several eye-opening revelations in a conversation that doubles as a love letter to a film that still makes teens and aging Gen X-ers cry. The occasion is the film’s 40th anniversary, and McCarthy, now deeply affectionate toward a movie he once dismissed as “a silly, tepid story about a girl who wants to go to a dance and makes a dress,” is in a generous and funny mood.

The part was written for a “broad-shouldered, square-jawed, quarterback hunk type,” he explains —which he decidedly was not at 22. But when he auditioned, a certain someone in the room disagreed with the conventional wisdom.

“Molly apparently turned to John and Howie and said, ‘That’s the guy.’” Hughes, characteristically blunt, shot back: “That wimp?” Ringwald held firm. McCarthy got the part. The rest is Brat Pack mythology.

Then there is the matter of the ending — the one you know, with the OMD song swelling as Blane finally tells Andie he believes in her. It wasn’t always that ending. The original version screened for test audiences in an Orange County mall, and the room turned ugly the moment Blane bailed on Andie.

Hughes spent weeks stewing before calling director Howie Deutsch with the solution. They had one day to reshoot. One problem: McCarthy was in New York doing a play, and had shaved his head to play a Marine.

“If they knew we’d still be talking about this movie 40 years later,” he says, laughing, “they would have paid for a better wig.” The bird’s nest of a hairpiece he wore for the now-iconic prom climax is, he insists, so bad it almost works in the scene’s favor. “It just made me look so sad.”

On the new episode, McCarthy and Abramovich also dig into how Hughes built the film’s legendary soundtrack, wandering onto set each morning with a boombox and a stack of cassettes, playing songs for the cast while they waited for camera setups.

They talk about how the VHS revolution transformed these films into generational totems, how Ringwald’s quiet steel defined the film’s moral center, and what it means for a movie to become, as McCarthy puts it, “an obligatory rite of passage” — the Catcher in the Rye of its era.

Four decades on, Pretty in Pink still hits somewhere between the knees and the chest. So does this conversation. Some highlights:

Let’s start at the beginning. How did you even get this part?

The part was written for a broad-shouldered, square-jawed, prom-king type. I was decidedly not that at 22. I was this frail, overly sensitive kind of guy. But I had just done St. Elmo’s Fire and there was a little buzz about that movie. So they said, “He’s not right for this at all, but he can audition if he wants.”

I went in, John was sitting in the back slumped on the floor looking vaguely disinterested, and I read my one scene. They said thank you. I left thinking it was a waste of my afternoon. And then Molly apparently turned to John and Howie Deutsch and said, “That’s the guy.” And John — to his credit, this is very John Hughes — said: “That wimp?”

Molly said: “No, he’s not some boring jock. He’s sensitive and soulful and poetic. He’s the guy.” And John, to his enormous credit, actually listened. He didn’t just give young people lip service. He put his money where his mouth was. From the moment he hired me, he was fully behind me. But it was entirely Molly who got me that job.

You also hadn’t read the script yet.

I read it on the plane to Los Angeles. I needed a job, and I needed the $50, 000 they were going to pay me. So I read it on the way out, and at the end of the original movie, my character Blane dumps Molly. Just ditches her completely because of peer pressure from his rich friends. I landed and called my agent and said: “You have to get me out of this movie. This guy’s a jerk.” They said, “Honey, you read the movie?” And I said, “I just read it. “

So what happened to that ending?

They shot it. They did a test screening in a mall somewhere in Orange County — 300 people, no idea what they’re watching. And apparently they were loving it, loving it, until I dump her and she goes to prom with Duckie. And then they turned on the movie viciously. Just hated it. Hughes spent weeks stewing. Didn’t know what to do. Then he called Howie and said: “I’ve got it.” I was in New York doing a play. John Cryer was doing a film. We had one day between us to reshoot. So they flew us back to Los Angeles. Small problem: I was playing a Marine in the play. My head was shaved.

Hence the wig.

Hence the wig. And I have always said: if they knew we’d still be talking about this movie 40 years later, they would have paid for a better wig. It’s just this bird’s nest sitting on top of my head in the prom scene. It looks terrible. It kind of looks like my hair does now, actually. But here’s the thing — and I mean this — the wig kind of saved the day. It just made me look so sad. So pathetic. When I walk up to Molly and say “I believe in you, I didn’t believe in me,” I’m wearing this tragic hairpiece and it just lands. So the wig gets its credit.

The parking lot kiss at the end — was that the first time you and Molly had kissed?

I think we may have had a kiss earlier in the film … we might not have. But I’ll tell you this: that shot was done on a soundstage, in the middle of the day. They pulled a car over to one end, put up some plastic plants, pulled the camera way back on a long lens, and just shot it. So all that magic, that moonlit parking lot romance, was a soundstage at noon. Still works though.

How was Molly to work with?

She was the most equal among equals. I had enormous respect for her as an actor and as a professional. I was the new guy, really. She and John had already made a few movies together, she had this whole established thing with him. And I was sort of the interloper.

Now, Molly has said this publicly so I’m not talking out of school, but she had a bit of a crush on me at the time, which I didn’t reciprocate. Not because I didn’t like Molly — I did — but because I was so scared and insecure that I kept pulling back. My fear manifested as aloofness. She thought I was dismissing her when really I was just trying to get through my days because I was the new kid here and I didn’t want anyone to see I was insecure.

But here’s what’s interesting: that friction offstage — her feeling a little rebuffed, me being a little guarded — it actually fueled the onscreen tension in ways that were completely accidental and completely right for the movie.

You also cut a lot of your own dialogue from your scenes.

I was really into Montgomery Clift at the time. Studied him obsessively. He would cut his own dialogue whenever he could — just look, react, let the face do it. So in that early scene where I first walk into the record store and Molly looks up, that scene originally had lines. And I just said, can we cut them? Can we just cut everything? And Molly said, “Yeah, actually, good idea.” And John said, “Yeah, sure.” So we just took all the dialogue out. And it became this moment of two sensitive young people being sensitive in each other’s vicinity. Which is, I think, more powerful than anything we could have said.

There’s a scene where you essentially go on the first internet date.

The library scene. Yes. And at the time we were shooting it, I remember thinking: “This is insane. This is like science fiction. People are not going to be dating on computers. This would never happen.” Which is just absolutely incredible in retrospect.

What was John Hughes like on set?

He was not directing the film, Howie Deutch was, so he didn’t have all the clock pressure that a director has. He was just there, sauntering around in this sort of loose, slouchy way. Very chill.

He would show up in the morning with a boombox and a stack of cassettes. Just sit down with us while the crew was setting up and play songs. Go: “What do you think of this one?” And we’d listen and say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Or “Not sure about that one.” And that’s what became the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. People just sitting around a boombox going yeah or no.

One day he sauntered over while I was on set and tossed a script at me. Said, “Take a look at this.” I read it overnight and came back the next day and said, “Yeah, that’s really good.” And he goes, “Really?” It was called Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. So full disclosure: I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. My resentment [at not being cast as Ferris] was so strong that I just never went.

Let’s talk about the Brat Pack. The documentary you made, Brats, was really fascinating as a piece of media criticism. How much did that label actually damage your career?

You have to put yourself in the time. There was one movie everyone went to Friday night. The culture was looking in the same direction. And this article comes out in New York magazine — a piece about young Hollywood actors who are just a bunch of partiers who want to be famous and don’t respect the work. And it catches on overnight because the phrase is just perfect, linguistically. Brat Pack. Two words, instant meaning.

I’m barely in the article. Someone’s quoted saying “Andrew McCarthy? He’ll never make it.” That’s my only mention. Molly wasn’t in it either. The original “Brat Pack” was Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, Tim Hutton. We weren’t even the Brat Pack. But the thing metastasized. And suddenly, inside the industry, if you’d walked into an executive’s office on Monday before the article, it was “Andrew! Sit down! What can I get you? What do you want to make?” And by the following Monday it was, “Sorry to keep you waiting … have a seat … What do you got?” An overnight shift. Completely real.

But the audience didn’t feel that way.

The audience didn’t care at all. They embraced the term immediately and with total warmth. Because to them it just meant: those are our people. Those are the ones who understood what it felt like to be young and confused and in love and terrified. The label just gave them a word for something they already loved.
I didn’t understand that for a long time. For years I pushed all of it away. And now — and I mean this — it is nothing but love. When someone comes up to me about these films, they’re not really talking to me. They’re talking to their own youth, and I am the avatar of that. And I have come to understand that as the greatest professional gift of my life.

If the Brat Pack thing hadn’t happened, I’d just be some actor who made a bunch of random ’80s movies. Instead I’m part of this iconic movement. Which is a beautiful thing to be part of. It just took me about 30 years to see it that way.

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