Brats: A Deliberation on Labels and Fame

In 1985, David Blum, a 29 year-old writer bestowed the sobriquet Brat Pack on a group of rising young actors with a now infamous  New York Magazine cover article. The piece which was originally intended to be a profile of then-emerging star Emilio Estevez  (The Breakfast Club) expanded into a broader commentary about Hollywood’s new box office golden boys after the writer spent an evening at the Los Angeles Hard Rock Cafe with Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson, two of his co-stars from the ensemble film,  St. Elmo’s Fire  (1985).  Blum thought that he had found a linguistically clever way to illustrate the transition from the Rat Pack of the 1960s, which included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr., to his evening companions along with other eighties stars such as Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Timothy Hutton, Andrew McCarthy, and Matt Dillon. The Brat Pack category would later be expanded to include the actresses who appeared in The Breakfast Club (1985), St. Elmo’s Fire, and Pretty in Pink  (1986), among them Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, and Molly Ringwald.

While Blum correctly calculated the catchiness of the Brat Pack term, the actors saw the branding as a mixed blessing. While they appreciated their newfound fame, they resented the pejorative term “brat” and the article’s connotation that they were entitled young people who had not paid their dues and did not take the acting profession seriously. Moreover, they were concerned about being typecast and losing out on future roles. Their agents and managers at the time shared these concerns and consequently tried to downplay the “Brat Pack” concept in their clients’ media interviews, and they also imposed some limits on how often the Brat Packers appeared together in public. (READ MORE from Leonora Cravotta: Hit Man Is Destined To Become a Hit)

Forty years later, the Brat Pack and their movies have metamorphosed into a cultural touch point for the Generation X’ers and Young Boomers who came of age in the 1980s. The Brat Pack label has also lost its professional sting with time. After all, everyone who was in the Brat Pack or “adjacent” to it is either already over sixty or approaching that milestone. Yet Andrew McCarthy, the fourth male lead in St. Elmo’s Fire and a guy who was not in the New York Magazine article photograph, released a new documentary (Brats) now airing on Hulu in which he talks about the professional  challenges he experienced as a result of this classification. The documentary includes interviews with his former co-stars along with those who worked behind the scenes on Brat Pack productions.

New York-based McCarthy was likely not at the Hard Rock the night of the cover photo because he may have been back in New York. Or maybe, he wasn’t that tight with the other LA based actors. One of the three actors (Estevez, Lowe, Nelson) reportedly said of McCarthy to Blum, “He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity. I don’t think he’ll make it.” Perhaps it was this comment that no one in the media seems to remember that has haunted McCarthy. Nevertheless, the talented actor has worked consistently in front of and behind the camera over the past four decades. He has also built a reputation as a travel writer.

McCarthy has leaned into the Brat moniker before, most recently in his 2021 book Brat: An ‘80’s Story, where he discusses his struggles navigating a Hollywood career and his personal life while dealing with self-confidence issues and substance abuse problems.  McCarthy, now 61, was 59 when he decided to create a documentary about the significance of the Brat Pack. How has the label effected the Brat Pack members’ careers and their personal lives? What is their perception of the role of the Brat Pack on the entertainment industry and the broader cultural landscape?

What makes Brats so interesting is that since McCarthy’s former co-stars are geographically dispersed, he needed to travel to interview them.  So he took to the road to meet with Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, and Rob Lowe along with Brat Pack adjacent actors like Jon Cryer, Timothy Hutton, and Lea Thompson. We literally observe him picking up the phone to call former co-stars that he hasn’t spoken with in over thirty years, a humbling experience to say the least. He also interviewed Pretty and Pink Director Howard Deutch, journalist Malcom Gladwell, and other film industry personnel.

Interestingly enough, most of the people he contacted said yes, with the exception of Molly Ringwald who wanted to focus on the future and Judd Nelson who made public statements about the fact that he hadn’t spoken to McCarthy in over thirty-five years, an action which shows more about Nelson’s needs than McCarthy’s. The interviews with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe are particularly compelling in that these two “bigger names” saw value in the documentary not just as a project but also as an affirmation of the contribution that the talent pool known as the Brat Pack made to the 1980’s popular culture zeitgeist. Moore was warm but firm with McCarthy when she agreed with him that forty years ago he took things too seriously but admitted that they all did because they were young. She also expressed gratitude  to Joel Schumacher, the director of  St. Elmo’s Fire, for keeping her in the film despite her problems with substance abuse. “He really stuck his neck out for me, it’s not like I had any box office draw….. They paid to have a companion, a sober companion with me 24/7 during the whole shooting. They could have easily just found someone else.”

Lowe also expressed gratitude for not only his movie career but also for having had the opportunity to play a role in the changing face of the film industry. “We were so lucky to be in the right place at the right time as the movie business was beginning the transition to where it landed and still exists — which is movies made almost exclusively for 18- to 20-year-olds, every summer movie that’s out is geared towards that audience. It wasn’t always like that. We were there at that time that it began.” 

The documentary also includes a  tête-à-tête between McCarthy and David Blum where the writer essentially stated that he was just trying to make a name for himself and that he wasn’t trying to ruin anyone’s career. He also conveyed to McCarthy that the very fact that are still talking about the Brat Pack forty years later is indicative that he helped their careers. In an interview with Vulture  about Brats Blum additionally took issue with  the documentary not discussing the career successes of the Brat Packers. (READ MORE: The Fall Guy Honors Stunt People, Traditional Values)

While there are moments in the film where McCarthy sounds like he is whining about a lost opportunity or a slight that seems insignificant to the viewers, on the whole Brats is very watchable. The unpolished rawness of the interviews along with the grainy eighties footage gives the production a friendly accessibility. The viewers feel like they know Andrew McCarthy and we do know him. After all, we have been watching his movies for forty years. And for those of us who came of age in the 1980’s, it is helpful to see him look in the rear view mirror because it enables us to look back as well. And right now, Hollywood 1980’s throw-backs are everywhere with reboots of Ghostbusters,  The Fall Guy. and the soon to be released Beverly Hill Cop.

I highly recommend Brats as a nostalgic, introspective conversation between a group of sixty something actors looking back on their twenty-something selves. It is also the story of one man, Andrew McCarthy, and his journey to find peace with himself. And while most of us do not have public forums for exorcizing our demons, we can relate to McCarthy’s quest for catharsis.

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