TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)

By: Crockett Doob
April 5, 2023

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of heartthrobs from our adolescences). Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

DREW BARRYMORE

In 1995, if you’d searched my pockets — and dug deep enough, I kept a lot of stuff in there when I was 12 — you would have eventually found crumpled-up pictures of Drew Barrymore. These were magazine cut-outs, but I didn’t put them on my walls — out of secrecy? I don’t remember. I do remember, a decade later, after a party, crashing at my friend’s parents’ house and waking up to a wall full of Jake Gyllenhaal magazine cut-outs; apparently, this was his sister’s former bedroom and explains why my friend was so adamantly anti-Jake. Anyway, no, I was not a Drew Barrymore decorator; I’d keep those smiling shots hidden beside candy wrappers and homework assignments and show them, upon request, to my friends, like they were drugs or stolen jewelry.

This was during Drew’s bad-girl phase: when she was flashing Letterman, flashing movie cameras, and in one picture, wearing a short dress and no underwear, mooning the lens. Drew was the pinnacle of excitement to me. I was on the cusp of adolescence, discovering bands like Butthole Surfers and Melvins as well as more unheard of bands — remember Gren? — so Drew fit right in.

And then she didn’t. Because she grew up.

The turning point was a movie called Home Fries. Drew Barrymore starred alongside an unknown Luke Wilson. Drew was pregnant on the poster–she’d also been pregnant in Boys on the Side, but this was still during her wild phase. Whereas this Home Fries movie looked… reasonable. I’d heard, in real life, she was dating Luke Wilson. Which seemed reasonable, too. Not to mention that he looked reasonable, as did Drew, or closer to it, on the poster. I did not see the movie. Her trajectory was clear. And you know, that could be a good thing.

As my friend and colleague, Heather Quinlan, pointed out when discussing Ms. Barrymore, “Drew survived her bad-girl phase.” It’s true. And there are lot of women who haven’t. Or they’re forever — how to phrase — in the shadow? of their bad-girl selves. I’m thinking, naturally, of Lindsay Lohan. But again, Lindsay at least survived.

Drew Barrymore became a movie producer, a Charlie’s Angel — a movie she also produced. She was in the dramatization of Grey Gardens alongside Jessica Lange. She also was in the first Scream, deftly sacrificing herself from the franchise and making the original that much more affecting.

These days, I see Drew when I’m waiting in line at the pharmacy. She’s selling glasses and being relatively funny about it, putting multiple glasses on her face while making a serious model face. I acknowledge her joke and her success in the glasses business — as well as the movie business (though I’m not all that loyal; the last movie I saw of hers was the unmemorable Going the Distance circa 2010). But when we come together at the pharmacy — her selling glasses; me picking up my prescriptions — it’s a reminder that we’ve both come a long way. We’ve both grown up.

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TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)

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