I have embraced my membership in Generation X and I am proud to have been a young man during the great pop culture awakening of the 1980s. Most of my favorite movies were either first released in that decade or were at their franchise best then. The 1990s was when things “grew up” and the stars of our youth transitioned to “serious roles” as dads or serious men and women struggling against social injustice or acting in small art pieces about life, love, and family. But the 1980s gave us a new generation of young actors who often appears together in films targeted at young adult audiences. This loose collection of actors was often referred to as The Brat Pack.
The Brat Pack was a term coined by New York Magazine contributor David Blum in 1985 to serve as a title for a piece he wrote chronicling a few hours in the social life of actor (and rising young star) Emilio Estevez and some of his friends who happened to be in a movie with him. The article referred to a general group of actors who happened to show up in the same kind of youth-oriented dramedy films. The cast of The Breakfast Club and anyone under 30 who was ever in a John Hughes movie is an automatic member, but also anyone in the film The Outsiders, including Tom Cruise. Movies like St. Elmo’s Fire is cited as part of the Brat Pack “canon”. Dozens of actors have been names either as living on the center of Planet Brat Pack or orbiting it at some distance.
The documentary is written and directed by Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy. He also serves as the center of attention as he uses this opportunity to reunite with several fellow members (many of whom he says he hasn’t spoken to in three decades) to talk about what that term meant to their career trajectory at the time and how they feel about it after all these years. He begins with an indictment of the New York Magazine article that he feels colored a group of actors unfairly, implying that they, like the “Rat Pack” which inspired the comparison, were a cartel of young, rich, and carefree friends who liked to party together and enjoy life between million dollar movies. The article implied they were irresponsible kids who leveraged their fame to create this new film genre to amplify their fame both individually and collectively from some secret clubhouse reminiscent of a Las Vegas casino where all their plans and plots came together.
McCarthy, who admits he was kicked out of theater school, considered himself a serious actor and had dreams of taking on roles of the kind that “senior” member of the Pack Timothy Hutton was earning later in his career. McCarthy talks to Hutton about the phenomenon though it is apparent that the former did not suffer the career or identity issues that McCarthy talks about throughout the documentary. Hutton, like many of the other subjects of the film, speak carefully about their experiences saying there was both great advantage in being tied to a massive marketing push at the height of their demand but also challenges in finding the kind of work they would have rather earned because that marketing “typecast” them in some ways.
The movie begins and ends as a vehicle of a an actor, 60 year old Andrew McCarthy, searching to understand his legacy, resentful of how control of his acting career was taken from him by one man’s magazine article 39 years earlier. McCarthy, who has had a long career as an actor, writer, and director, wants to know from his contemporaries – Did you feel that way, too?
Emilio Estevez does. He is probably the most outspoken critic of Blum’s ‘hit piece’ that perhaps prevented him from following his father, Martin Sheen, into more serious film projects. But we don’t go into a lot of depth. Estevez, like most of the people talking to McCarthy, are there for a quick chat in their kitchens or on the patio, cutting between several grainy or weirdly-angled shots to animate what is more a conversation in sound bites than real feelings. It makes sense that we hear the same kind of notes from working actors Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Jon Cryer, Rob Lowe, Lea Thompson, and others. Their careful conversations seems to acknowledge McCarthy’s premise, but temper his regrets by mentioning the opportunities they had as actors that others with the same talent and drive never experienced.
Conversations with critics, historians, and professional peers show a more critical and detailed account of The Brat Pack phenomenon, perhaps revealing why fellow Packers were not so open about any criticism they might have. From the outside, the Brat Pack was an experience that audiences mythologized back then and even more so now. Seeing those movies – Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Repo Man, Less Than Zero, Young Guns, Youngblood, Mannequin – represented time with pretend friends in the same way that younger audiences connect with reality show stars. As young moviegoers, these movies gave people characters they identified with or aspired to be. And even if the “Pack” wasn’t a real thing, the industry knew the box office value of combining its alleged members in projects together, reinforcing that cultural identity.
McCarthy interviews those outsiders (pun unintended) with a sense of incredulity at times, wondering how that body of work can endure given that there were, perhaps, a handful of quality films in the entire spectrum. He acknowledges this as if just academically, but cannot seem to relate to the cultural power that term had on audiences.
And throughout the documentary, McCarthy continues to bemoan the experience that somehow is the fault of a journalist who watched a few young actors get drunk, spend money, and have fun one night in Los Angeles, leading to a final act confrontation between himself and the author of that hated article. These men, much older now and with a lifetime of experiences since that time, talk candidly about WHY the article was written as it was.
Blum, who has always responded to criticism of his article with Hey, I’m a journalist. They knew I was a journalist. They did and said stuff around me while I was working on an article about them. I don’t know what else I could have done beyond hanging a sign around my neck to remind them once they decided to cut loose. Further, Blum admits that a piece about young, affluent actors in New York wasn’t supposed to be all that interesting and so he tried to make it more engaging by adding a sense of humor to the piece. The title, “Brat Pack” was intended to be a joke. Would he do anything different if he got to do it over again? No, he says.
Despite this scene representing a formal presentation of McCarthy’s personal grievances about how Blum’s article impacted his life negatively and the set up for an apology or confrontation between the men, it is actually just an opportunity for McCarthy to get things off his chest to a very polite but comfortably confident writer who shares some of the same realistic points aired by McCarthy’s peers. Specifically, he had a career. It wasn’t perhaps the one he wanted, but he was a star and made money. His success was due, in part, to Blum providing Hollywood a way to market a tribe of actors to a hungry audience. Blum claims that his article had more to do with the success of St. Elmo’s Fire in 1985 than he received credit for, an assertion that visibly gets McCarthy a bit worked up but is accepted without any argument.
What the documentary lacks is a challenge to Blum’s article itself, which frames its narrative with a chronicle of Estevez, Lowe, and Judd Nelson in a Los Angeles club and expands into a discussion of young actors in general. McCarthy is only mentioned ONCE in the entire article:
For actors so imbued with the ensemble spirit, the Brat Pack members are out for themselves. “Sean is crazy with all of his role preparations, becoming the character in every way,” one says. And of Andrew McCarthy, one of the New York–based actors in St. Elmo’s Fire, a co-star says, “He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity. I don’t think he’ll make it.” The Brat Packers save their praise for themselves.
-David Blum (Hollywood’s Brat Pack, New Yorker Magazine; June 1985)
The article dismisses him from the Brat Pack in the words of one of its members, yet McCarthy does not reject the accusation of membership as others like Jon Cryer will attempt on camera. McCarthy is lumped in with Sean Penn because they are too intense to be part of this artificial collective, so what’s McCarthy’s problem? Blum made a point of noting his exclusion from a group he defines as largely overrated; therefore it was the media machine to follow that insisted his membership and McCarthy’s management that must have embraced it to some degree.
And as Hollywood hit pieces go, Blum did not sharpen too many daggers. He does refer to a cameo by Timothy Hutton by describing him in a less than flattering way, but otherwise the group of Estevez, Nelson, and Lowe come off as ordinary despite the surface coating of charm and celebrity appeal. They are normal, not lecherous or petty. They are not racist or predatory. They are just “awkward” and perhaps for the time that was cruelty enough for up and coming young men in Hollywood.
But almost 40 years later, it seems petty when viewed in context.
All of this is interesting if you were a fan of Brat Pack movies or if you ever wondered what Emilio Estevez’ kitchen looks like (or Demi Moore’s lovely back yard) but as an exploration of some philosophical or moral issue faced by a working actor 40 years ago, it is not very deep. It reminds us that this pop culture “thing” happened and that people remember it fondly. The only people who seems to have been harmed by this emotionally are Estevez and McCarthy who still hold a grudge over an article in a magazine that arguably provided career security and opportunities for them both. We don’t pick up with these stars as they bag groceries at an Indianapolis grocery store or catch them between the acting classes they teach in Miami to pay the bills. We see that most of these actors have done well for themselves despite one writer’s article and despite countless articles that tried to dismiss, belittle, or disrespect the actors under that umbrella over the years.
It’s a lot like a Glory Days documentary where the subject is trying to work out what went wrong when the evidence on screen more than suggests that a lot seems to have gone well for all involved.
THEunJAYdedBOOK 
Leave a comment