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The ironic thing of the Brat Pack moniker that sprung up coined by writer David Plum of New York Magazine was that the actors it referred to were just thrust together into a handful of movies in the mid-1980s, but they weren’t very close. On top of that, it was the beginning of the end before it even really started.
Hollywood is like that sometimes. People see a trend and they try to capitalize on it but they don’t realize that eventually it is no longer popular. Sometimes the popularity wears out sooner than they’d hope. For a brief time between 1983 and 1987, maybe the first part of the year, a lot of young actors seemed to dominate the most popular movies hitting theaters. The slasher horror craze was over. The John Hughes era was beginning. But even that didn’t last long either.
Andrew McCarthy, who directs the documentary Brats and was considered one of the key members, looks at the time and what it meant to the actors. Some of the actors are MIA, most notably Judd Nelson who politely declined. Molly Ringwald was another actor who declined to be interview. And there was a reason, the moniker was kinda insulting. Many of the people in the “Brat Pack” were hoping to become well-established actors. Unlike the New Hollywood movement that started in the late 1960s and was at its peak during the 1970s, there was a negative connotation to the term. New Hollywood sounds of prestige and nobility. Brat Pack sounds like a bunch of snot-nosed teens and college-aged 20-somethings getting Hollywood gigs because of who they know.
Now, that term is called “Nepo Babies.” And while some of the “Brat Packers” did have family in the business, most of them struggled. Emilio Estevez, who is one of the interviewees, is the son of actor Martin Sheen and was initially the focal point of Blum’s article. The story was written after Blum spent time on the set of St. Elmo’s Fire (a movie I didn’t like nor did it get good reviews), but it seemed to have them all. Along with McCarthy, Estevez and Nelson, there was Rob Lowe (who’d become all the girls wanted), Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore and Mare Winningham. The last of which mostly was forgotten about probably to her relief as she would go on to be appear in more acclaimed movies and get an Oscar nomination.
Basically, it was Hollywood producers trying to capitalize on the young actors before they can begin to ask for more money. John Wayne and Steve McQueen were dead. Clint Eastwood wasn’t getting any younger. No one was wanting to go to the growing megaplexes to see aging actors. As J.T. Walsh’s sleazy producer told Kevin Bacon in The Big Picture, kids are not going to go to the movie theaters to see movies staring their parents. Strangely, one avenue McCarthy doesn’t focus on in the documentary is how Eddie Murphy who was only in his early 20s himself would become a box-office star.
Maybe it’s because it was still the 1980s and the Brat Pack was a selective group of WASP suburbanite youth who hung out at the malls. There’s no mention of Fast Times at Ridgemont High which had more future stars and celebs in it than St. Elmo’s Fire. Part of the reasoning behind the New York Magazine story is believed to be that Blum and Estevez had some bad blood or Blum didn’t like Estevez and wrote the article as a way to cut him down.
But really most of the actors were just happy to get gigs. It seemed to start with the 1983 movie Class featuring Lowe and McCarthy as well as John Cusack in his first role and exploded in 1985 with St. Elmo’s Fire and The Breakfast Club. There’s a debate on who was and wasn’t in the Pack with Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Jr. being excluded but Anthony Michael Hall and Jon Cryer kinda included. Cusack has previously publicly denounced it saying he was just a young actor being cast in Class and Sixteen Candles. Neither Cusack nor Hall is interviewed but Cryer is as they recount their time on Pretty in Pink. That movie made Cryer and McCarthy the stuff of Tiger Beat cover stories.
Fans of Pink might like to hear about the original ending where Cryer’s Duckie and Ringwald’s Andy have a friendship dance at the prom as she rejects McCarthy’s Blane. We actually see some footage but most of the original ending is reportedly lost. The theatrical ending had to be filmed all within a day and McCarthy had to wear a wig as he had shaved his head and lost some weight as he was performing a play.
There’s a funny story the documentary doesn’t go into and maybe because McCarthy doesn’t want to bring it up but the whole reason Mannequin was made because he at the time he was very popular with teenage girls. It’s no wonder it’s left out of the documentary. Most of the actors even in their 20s didn’t want to see themselves as show ponies to be paraded around. It might have cost them some jobs and roles but many went on to have good careers. It’s been reported after the phenomenal success of Risky Business, Tom Cruise got out of America as fast as he could and took the role in Legend because he didn’t want to deal with all the hype. (Incidentally, he almost never got the iconic role that made him a star because Paul Brickman only knew him as the psychotic angry military cadet in Taps who goes on a shooting spree at the end.)
There’s so much McCarthy could’ve done but I understand sometimes you got to go with what you have. Blum is interviewed at the end and there seems to be a truce called between the two even though Blum acts like he doesn’t understand it was that big of a deal. But he, himself, will only be remembered as the writer who coined the phrase “Brat Pack.” But it really did hurt some of the actors. I think McCarthy has come to peace with it even though he said in interviews years ago he didn’t want to talk about it much.
Actors don’t want to get typecast. Micky Dolenz said The Monkees hurt his career afterwards because he’d go into auditions only to be told it’s not a musical and rejected. But it happens in a lot of jobs. It’s not just acting where someone will look at your previous job and not think you’re up to the task. Estevez and McCarthy were going to be in a movie that feel through because of the bad label.
It’s a nice little nostalgia piece for a lot of Gen Xers who grew up during the period, but never knew the full story. It’s also a good 10-15 years past when it should’ve been made. A better time would’ve been around the Y2K era when a new batch of teen movies for Millennials such as Ten Things I Hate About You, Save the Last Dance and She’s All That were popular. And they seemed to be produced at a faster and more massive rate than the Brat Pack movies.
What do you think? Please comment.