Duckie made Jon Cryer famous in 1986, and the audiobook of his memoir puts Duckie himself in the reading chair for nine hours and eight minutes. That fact does more work than it looks like it does. A memoir by a comic actor read by the comic actor is a different product from the same text handed to a hired voice, and on a book whose best material is timing, it is the difference between an anecdote and a performance.
The Long Middle Between Pretty in Pink and Alan Harper
Cryer charts three decades, and the two poles are obvious from the cover: Molly Ringwald's loyal, lovable best friend in Pretty in Pink at one end, Alan Harper on a massively popular sitcom at the other. What sits between them is the actual subject. This is a book about the long middle of a career, the parts that did not become cult classics, the choices that looked sensible and were not, and the peculiar business of remaining employable in an industry that has no memory and no loyalty.
The Name That Sells It and Misleads
Charlie Sheen is the name that sells this and the name that misleads about it. The publisher lists him first among the people Cryer has worked with, then keeps going: John Hughes, Robert Altman, Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Christopher Reeve. That list is the honest description of the book. Cryer is interested in what he learned from each of them, who mentored him, and what combination of heart, talent and wisdom lets somebody survive not only the bad years but the good ones, which the copy correctly identifies as the harder problem.
Reading it himself changes the register throughout. Self-deprecation is a difficult thing to write and an easy thing to say, and Cryer has spent a working life on the delivery of exactly that tone. The job the recording hands him is to keep nine hours of career anecdote from turning into a list of names, which means every story has to be paced as a bit rather than as a paragraph. Skip ahead to a stretch about the years between the famous roles, since that is where the writing is least propped up by recognizable material.
Converting a Reader Who Knew Nothing About Him
Converting a stranger is the harder test, and this book passes it. One reader arrived knowing effectively nothing, having loved the sitcom cast without ever having watched anything else Cryer did, never having seen Pretty in Pink, and having at one point confused him outright with the star of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That entry, from somebody who once toured as a lighting designer, still calls the result a real page turner. Memoirs by familiar faces usually run on affection a reader brought with them. This one seems not to need any.
Never Carrying a Project, Never Blamed for One
For viewers who did come for the sitcom, the promise is straightforward and it is kept. Another entry, from somebody who watched every episode and bought this as the natural next step, says the book explains what happens behind the curtain and does it in a way that stays funny while it informs. That is the register Cryer holds for most of the running time: an insider who has decided to be useful rather than discreet, without ever becoming cruel about people he still has to work with.
Range matters here as much as candor does. A career that touches John Hughes and Robert Altman, that includes Christopher Reeve, and that ends up inside one of the biggest sitcoms of its era is not a typical shape, and Cryer is unusually clear-eyed about the luck involved. He is a character actor by temperament as much as by casting, and the book is at its sharpest on what that means: never carrying a project, never being blamed for one either, and lasting longer than most leading men as a result.
One Rating Can't Land on 4.2 Either
A score of 4.2, over exactly one rating, sits at the top of this page above five paragraph-length verdicts. Two different populations are being described by a single badge: the people who clicked a score, of whom the counter claims one, and the people who sat down and wrote something, of whom five are visible with dates attached. A lone voter cannot land on 4.2 in any case, since one click buys a whole star. The number is not a summary of anything you can see.
What the written column contains is stranger still. One three-star entry is largely somebody else's review: it reproduces a second person's four-star verdict, flagged in the text itself as a review of another edition, and then points readers at an archived Twitter conversation with the author for the rest. Elsewhere a five-star warns that people arriving for the inside story on Charlie Sheen's decline will find that is not really what this book is about, and grades it five only after openly debating four. Both are useful. Neither is describing the recording.
Cryer's Own Voice Elevates the Unglamorous Parts
Sitcom viewers and anybody who grew up on 1980s comedies are the core audience here, and so are listeners who enjoy the working details of acting as a trade. One four-star entry calls Cryer naturally honest, funny, self-deprecating and intelligent, then concedes what other readers had said about the book dragging in places, and makes the fair point that a life contains boring stretches. The same entry found the theater camp material fascinating, which is a good test: if that sounds appealing, this is your book.
Steer clear if you want the tell-all. The scandal is a chapter of a career here, not the reason the career is being told, and a listener holding out for it will spend most of nine hours waiting. Anybody impatient with training, theater and the unglamorous mechanics of staying employed should also keep moving, because that occupies a real share of the book. Cryer's own voice is what turns the unglamorous parts into the good ones, and it is the reason to choose this format over the page.
- Narrator: Jon Cryer performs his own memoir, so the timing of every anecdote belongs to the person who lived it and wrote it down
- Subjects: A working actor's career, 1980s Hollywood, sitcom fame, mentorship and survival in a fickle business
- Tone: Wry, self-deprecating and gossipier in reputation than in fact
- Bottom line: A generous, genuinely funny career memoir that will disappoint anybody who came for the Charlie Sheen chapter, which is not the book Cryer wrote.
Questions Listeners Ask
How much of this audiobook is actually about Charlie Sheen?
Considerably less than the reputation suggests. Sheen appears well down a roster of directors and co-stars the publisher lists, and the book is organized as a working life rather than as a scandal book. Anybody buying purely for the scandal will feel short-changed.
Does Jon Cryer narrate So That Happened himself?
Yes. The author field and the reader field carry the same name, which on a comic memoir by a working actor is exactly the arrangement you want. Every pause and every piece of self-deprecation is timed by the person who wrote it, rather than reconstructed by somebody reading it cold.
Do you need to have seen Pretty in Pink first?
No. The book explains where Duckie sits in the career as it goes, and it never assumes familiarity with any single title. Listeners who know only the sitcom will follow everything, though the 1980s chapters will land as history rather than as recognition, which changes the pleasure without reducing it.
What does the audiobook cover beyond the famous roles?
The publisher promises friendships, mentors, missteps and the peculiar mixture of heart, talent and wisdom it takes to survive both the bad years and the good ones. Expect substantial stretches on training, theater and the working life of a character actor, which is a different book from the one a highlight reel implies.
