Words matter, and the two used to label a group of rising 20-something actors in 1985 — “Brat Pack” — were revolutionary. For Andrew McCarthy, not in a good way.
“It had a long shadow over us,” McCarthy told Yahoo Entertainment.
In his new documentary, Bratspremiering June 13 on Hulu, the Beautiful in pink It is St. Elmo’s Fire star reconnects with fellow Brat Packers Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, whose lives and careers have been defined by the bluntly coined term New York magazine exhibition. McCarthy, who wrote and directed the film, hadn’t seen most of them in 30 years.
To audiences, the Brat Pack has become a catchy label not only for the young stars who play characters people can relate to, but also for their beloved ’80s films like The Breakfast Club. Meanwhile, McCarthy and his colleagues avoided working together after the article described them as spoiled and untrained in their field. Some lost work. This clouded careers and friendships.
“What was interesting was the disconnect we felt about it,” says the reluctant Brat Packer. “Personally, it took me decades to realize that the public was right. It’s actually a beautiful thing – not a negative thing.”
Brats takes viewers as McCarthy, now 61, visits the homes of Moore, Lowe and others (minus a few who declined to participate) for impromptu conversations. What’s so human is how each person has a unique and different vision of being part of a club that none of them wanted to join.
For Estevez, the main subject of the magazine’s profile, it still seems raw. He said in the film that his career was completely “derailed.” Moore said it felt “unfair” at the time, but didn’t take it personally over time. She spoke candidly about facing bigger struggles back then — like staying sober while doing St. Elmo’s Fire. Lowe considered it “a special thing” to be part of something people still talk about “more than 30 years” later.
McCarthy says he “kept fighting it” for years. The turning point was when he realized – through meetings with fans – that the Brat Pack wasn’t about him or even about others.
“People come up to me and start talking about these movies and their eyes glaze over,” he says. “I realized: they are actually talking about themselves and their own youth. They’re not talking to me anymore. They are thinking about that moment when they will come of age and the world will be a blank slate to write on. I represent that to people. The same goes for the other members of the Brat Pack.”
McCarthy calls it “a great gift” he can give fans “by receiving their goodwill” – as they mentally journey back to Beautiful in pinkin Blane telling Andie he loved her at the dance or remember a quote from him St. Elmo’s Fire character, Kevin Dolenz — “and this is 180 degrees different from how I first experienced this a long time ago.”
‘A professional blessing’
For McCarthy, the documentary is part of the ’80s heartthrob’s journey to unravel his complicated relationship with stardom and follows his 2021 memoir, Brat: a story from the 80s. He calls the film “a present-day exploration of how the past can change.”
“We think the past is the past and is resolved, but the past is rarely resolved and our relationship with it can change completely,” he says. “The same events I observed so many years ago [and] hated, I now see them as a professional blessing.”
When it came to interviewing her former co-stars, McCarthy, who has been directing TV shows for nearly 20 years, purposely didn’t come in with a “bunch of interview questions.” Her intention was to “have real conversations” about “whatever the Brat Pack means to us while we’re sitting in the room together.”
He had “no idea” what to expect, but felt that “everyone was very open” and also “open-hearted.” One moment in the film finds Estevez talking about having McCarthy cut from a film project, thinking it would be “kryptonite” working together amid the Brat Pack fallout.
McCarthy was also available. In the document, when coming in to interview Lowe, he admitted that they were “competitive” and “not close” at that time. Their conversation changed that.
“Rob walks through the door and I find myself 19 again,” says McCarthy. “I had a lot of affection for him because I instantly felt a lot of affection for myself when I was a boy. It was a really lovely feeling – and it surprised me. One of the things that surprised me the most was that we all had so much affection for each other in a way that we didn’t necessarily have back then.”
McCarthy tried to hire Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson for the film. (He calls the entire Brat Pack in a fun-to-watch scene.) Despite pleasant conversations about the topic, neither was motivated to revisit the topic on camera, which he understands. He received a yes from Brat Pack-adjacent actors Jon Cryer, Lea Thompson, and Timothy Hutton.
“Certain people feel one way about it, and some people feel the same way,” he says. “The film was made with love for all of us.”
Revisiting the history of the Brat Pack
One of the most fulfilling moments was McCarthy sitting down with the journalist who wrote the Brat Pack article, David Blum. Blum hasn’t apologized for the story’s lasting ramifications, but McCarthy says he wasn’t looking for that.
“I didn’t expect anything from anyone. I was just trying to see where people were,” he says. “The one thing I was actively trying to do with David was not play ‘gotcha’ at him the way he played it at us. I mean – he was writing in a time of sticky journalism, that ’80s snark that was very prevalent, [and] capturing that moment in time. I think Demi said it best: ‘He didn’t want to pigeonhole us for the rest of our lives. He was just looking to get his next job.
McCarthy also realized what a unique place in Hollywood history these ’80s films hold.
“It’s something that could never really exist today because our culture is so fractured,” he says, with technology giving us so many options (movies, shows, channels, reels) “that there’s no unifying thing. That doesn’t happen now. This is not good or bad. It’s just a different time.”
What McCarthy also realized was that “the Brat Pack isn’t about anything real,” he says. “It’s about a moment in pop culture when pop culture changed and the transition was underway. Young cinema took hold in a way like never before… We were at the forefront of it. … Then came up with a really catchy phrase to label it, and boom.”
