W MAGAZINE, Vol. 32 issue 8 Aug '03

They're sometimes mad, they're usually bad and they can be dangerous to know. And often, they're the ones that have the most fun--until they fly off the rails and crash into the undergrowth at the edge of social responsibility.

Call them the Wrecks: those darkly glamorous creatures who fling themselves through life with fearless abandon. Forgetting the old maxim that discretion is the better part of valor, they say "Yes!" to whatever comes their way--and then ask for seconds. At a party, the Wreck may laugh the loudest, show the most skin and boast a general air of dishabille--hair out of kilter, a cigarette in one hand and a double highball in the other.

"I'm definitely pro-Wreck," says Tuleh designer Bryan Bradley, one of many who idolize the Wreck's devil-may-care spirit. For the real Wreck, the consequences--tomorrow's hangover, a gossip mag's "Where Are They Now?" list--seldom figure in their reckoning until it's too late. It's all fun while it lasts, although more than one Wreck has dropped from the A list to the AA list.

And sometimes they make it back again--because Wrecks aren't necessarily a bad lot. They just allow themselves to be carried away by excess. Like Elizabeth Taylor, whose enthusiasm swept her down the aisle eight times. Of Winona Ryder, Naomi Campbell, Angelina Jolie, Yves Saint Laurent and Claude Montana, all of whom have skidded off the straight and narrow at some point or another, and some of whom may be good and wrecked by now. Or maybe not--it's a kind of parlor game to decide, a grown-up version of Chutes and Ladders.

Some, Like Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith and surgery shocker Jocelyn Wildenstein always seemed like Wrecks in the making: Look in a Webster's under "W" and their faces would be staring out from the page. With others, like Liz, wreckdom, despite compelling evidence (see her onetime best friend, Jackson)--is harder to prove. It's a gut judgment. With Wrecks it usually is.

"Wrecks are people who have had a temporary moment of glory," notes feisty European society fixture Giampiero Dotti, "but then, through the fault of their own personality, have fallen from grace. Wrecks are not victims of age, illness or financial misfortune. It's their own fault."

Then there are those who turn what is a temporary state for some into an art form, creating an intricate dance of ill-fated marriages, chemical dependencies and social faux pas. "Few of us have the time or inclination to be a real Wreck," says one New York decorator, who professes admiration for the career Wreck. "And money helps. Being a Wreck is a full time job."

The Marketable Wreck

Call them the new hyphenates: actor-director-Wreck. One kind of Wreck lies in bed all day--curtains drawn--trying to recover from the night before. The Marketable Wreck, though, manages to work through the pain and make the gain.

JT LeRoy

Survivor of one of the most wrecked childhoods imaginable (enforced cross dressing and physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his prostitute mother; his own experience as a prostitute) 22 year old writer and It boy LeRoy would certainly have us think he's still a Wreck. The author of two acclaimed best-sellers--Sarah (which is being made into a film by Gus Van Sant) and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things--LeRoy makes a big fuss over being pathologically shy and camera phobic. But he's made friends with an awful lot of famous people (rocker Stephan Jenkins, Winona Ryder and Van Sant among them). And there is some serious fashion flair going on with those "disguises" of his---big dark glam glasses and platinum blond (ambition?) wigs.

Carrie Fisher

Once described as "Betty Ford for the Star Wars generation," Fisher has managed to turn her manic depressive-addict past into a cottage industry. She did drugs like cocaine, acid and an array of pharmaceuticals with the best of them: John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (who proposed to her during one drug fueled night). Post-Princess Leia, she married Paul Simon, had a child with CAA's Brian Lourd and then, in 1997, suffered a psychotic break and was diagnosed as bi-polar. Her manic episodes provided inspiration, however, for three novels, including Postcards From the Edge and Surrender the Pink. One of Fisher's famous annual parties with Penny Marshall featured I.V. hookups at the tales. The cake? A bed with Fisher lying in it.

Courtney Love

She's hit every rough spot in the rock star's rocky road. Older, but not necessarily wiser, Love was arrested at Heathrow Airport earlier this year after verbally abusing a flight attendant. "I cussed at a lady," she said after the police had released her. No doubt. In a recent interview, Love dismissed her former boyfriend Salma Hayek: "He can barely understand half of what she's saying," Love snarled. Still, to her fans, she's a twisted American Sweetheart--the name of her new album.