At times, watching Brats is like watching a high school reunion, if the high schoolers in question frequented the Sunset Strip in the 1980s and the theater teacher was John Hughes.
In the doc, director Andrew McCarthy asks members of the Brat Pack to reflect on and unpack what it meant to be a part of one of Hollywood’s most exclusive clubs — like the Frank Sinatra-fronted Rat Pack before them. There are moments of embarrassment, humility and catharsis, with apologies offered and new perspectives gained.
The “Brat Pack” was coined by journalist David Blum in a 1985 New York Magazine profile of Emilio Estevez that contextualized Estevez and peers like Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe within the new dynamics of a Hollywood that sought to cater to the tastes of younger audiences. It was a not-wholly-flattering portrait that at times painted the actors as undertrained and overestimated, scoring free movie tickets that they could likely afford and picking up girls in the Hard Rock Cafe.
Reading the article today, audiences may be surprised at how far the label morphed and expanded outside its original classification. The name Molly Ringwald, the canonical Queen Bee of ’80s coming-of-age cinema like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, doesn’t even appear in the story. “It was always really more of an idea than a fixed thing. The culture decided who was in it,” explains McCarthy.
Largely, the Brat Pack is considered to be performers who, like McCarthy, appear in St. Elmo’s Fire or the larger Hughes oeuvre. In the doc, the director talks to fellow Brat Pack-ers Estevez, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy and Lowe. They reveal how the label led to being typecast by a comp-obsessed Hollywood, missing out on roles and potential projects. They also talk about how age and decades’ worth of distance and full careers have bred an appreciation and new perspectives such as that inclusion in the Brat Pack may be, as McCarthy describes it, “perhaps the biggest professional blessing of my life.”
Ahead of Brats‘ premiere on June 13 on Hulu, McCarthy talked about convincing his former co-stars to participate, a nerve-wracking interview with Charlie Rose and why a cultural phenom like the Brat Pack could never happen again.
Why make Brats now?
I wrote a book called Brat about that time, about my experiences of the Brat Pack and what it felt like at the time, and to look under that rock that I’ve run from for a long time. And it was really illuminating. So when I finished it, I thought, “That’s what I feel like. What does everybody else feel like?” Someone said to me, “We were members of a club, and we didn’t ask to join, and we were the only members. We’re the only ones that know what that felt like.” As for why now: Yes, the movie is about the Brat Pack, but to me it’s about how we interpret and make sense of the events of our lives and how our perception of them changes and evolves over time. I feel 180 degrees different about the Brat Pack now than I did 30-odd years ago. I hated it then. Now, I look at it as perhaps the biggest professional blessing of my life.
Your own experience and history with the term “Brat Pack” is the cornerstone of Brats. When starting work on the doc, did you know that would be the case?
I wasn’t making a definitive Brat Pack movie, I was making a very subjective movie about my experience and this seismic event that happened in my life and maybe get some clarity on that. It’s the evolution of my relationship to that term is what the event of the movie is to me. How we received it — whether it was fair or not fair, whether we received it appropriately or selfishly like immature children — none of that matters. What matters is that I did experience it that way and then it’s come to be experienced in an entirely different way. That was fascinating to me. When I went and talked to people, one of them, I can’t remember which, said, “Do you have questions for me that I can look at before you come?” I’m like: “No. I’m just gonna come talk to you.” Even talking to David Blum when I called him and asked him if he’d do it, he said, “What’s your agenda?” My only agenda is to see what was your experience of it then, what is it now and has that changed. That was my agenda for him and for everyone. I turned 60 last year, so you get started looking at time differently, particularly when you get old.
Your book Brat, where you explored similar topics and themes seen in the doc, seemed to be a more solitary experience, whereas the making of Brats was more of a communal conversation.
That’s a really interesting point, because we can experience these things and begin to grow and to understand them, alone. But it’s so nice to connect with people. It reminds you of why we shouldn’t be alone, and why we need community, because that connection helps us feel less isolated. It’s just a better feeling than when we’re in our own heads alone. I can figure something out alone and go, “OK, that makes sense to me. All right, I’m good with that.” Once you share it with other people, and they share with you, this bond happens. That’s why movies are so powerful. Like I said to Howie, this generation saw us on the screen, and they went, “That’s me. I feel less alone now.” That’s why we became famous and why people still love us, because we represent that moment in their lives when they’re just blossoming. That’s a very scary, wondrous and isolating time. So if you see yourself up on the screen and go, “That’s what I feel like,” you can forever hold me or Molly or whoever is in that position. So, reconnecting with everyone, for me, was also meaningful in that way, as opposed to just holding it alone.
At what point did you know you wanted to talk to journalist David Blum?
I always knew I would talk to him because he’s the pink elephant in the room. He’s the fifth Beatle. And I always wanted to talk to him. And his whole thing was: “What’s your agenda?” My agenda is to hear your experience. Then, he was willing to jump right in. And, frankly, [he was] a lot easier to schedule than everybody else was.
There is that great moment in the doc where you have gotten an interview canceled last minute and you are in the car, and you recall your wife telling you that making the documentary would likely be a humbling experience. In that moment, you said you understood what she meant.
I was like, “Oh my God, Rob canceled, again, and I’ve got the whole crew here. So let’s go talk to somebody because I paid for this crew.” The whole movie was like that! It took a year. And it was maybe 10 days of filming, but it took over a year to get everybody to sit down. Some days people would cancel and I’m like, “Who can I call? [St. Elmo’s Fire producer] Lauren Shuler would love to talk!” It was all just me calling people that I knew and going, “Will you talk to me about this?”
When did you reread the New York Magazine story?
I can’t remember when I reread it. I don’t think I reread it for the book, but for the movie I did. And you know, when I reread it, I found it to be — it’s not so bad. I mean it’s not like we [were] treated like Britney [Spears], you know what I mean? It wasn’t that. It’s kind of snarky in that ’80s way. It was clearly, to me, him trying to make an impression to get himself into, as he said, Tina Brown’s office. That was his agenda. His agenda wasn’t to portray us in a clear, insightful way. His agenda was to get himself into Tina Brown’s office and this is how he thought he could do it, which is fine. I can’t remember when I reread it, but I didn’t think it was as scathing as I did, initially.
You don’t talk to Brat Pack players Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson in the doc, and you include their reasoning behind not participating in the doc. Why did that also feel like that was something you had to include?
They are in the movie, in a smart and sensitive way that I know them to be. I thought it just simply needed to be addressed in as quick and gracious way as possible. Otherwise, you would go, “Where’s Molly?” And Judd was Judd. In the beginning, he agreed to do it and was wonderfully insightful. On camera, I’m saying [on the phone to Judd], “Don’t tell me now. Don’t tell me. No, I want to get on film!” He just launched in. And then he eventually became a unicorn and disappeared and decided he didn’t want to do it. But I think even that is insightful and has insight into the Brat Pack.
Was any one conversation the most edifying when it came to your understanding of the Brat Pack?
What I found really illuminating to me was how it happened and why it happened at that moment. All the conditions that made the Brat Pack ripe to happen. There was this seismic, cultural change happening where movies were suddenly about young people. Hollywood discovered kids go to the movies half a dozen times, grown-ups go once, the hell with the grown-ups, let’s make movies for kids. And that happened overnight, and we were the ones right out in front of that. Youth culture was very unified — all of our culture was pretty unified at that time. Every Friday night, every kid knew what movie they were going to see. Every kid was gonna see Karate Kid this week and Teen Wolf the next week. Now, [the culture] is so fractured. We can’t even comprehend that. Then David Blum comes along next [with] really witty phrase calls, so Hollywood can grab us and put us in a satchel. We were just the ones who fit the costumes at the time. We were in the right place and the right time for that to happen. In my opinion, none of that could ever happen again. People always say to me, “Can you imagine now with social media, what it would be like?” It never would have happened. It wouldn’t even have registered, except for a day or two in the news cycle.
The archival talk show interviews and television segments you have sprinkled throughout Brats were pretty great to watch. How was it to relive those?
When we first dug up the Charlie Rose [interview] that begins and ends the movie I was like, “Oh, no, don’t show it to me! I don’t want to look at it!” It’s like, “This kid is so uncomfortable and so scared.” That was the first interview I’ve ever had where I was told to look at a dot on the camera and I’m like, “I’m talking to a dot? He’s on the other side?” That’s why I was so afraid to look up, because I felt so self-conscious looking at a dot. It was a very naive, innocent time. When we’re doing archival stuff, I knew I wanted a moment when multiple journalists were saying, “The Brat Pack! The Brat Pack. The Brat Pack.” And I said it’s only going to happen between June and August of 1985 because, after that, no publicists would allow any show that we ever went on to use the words “Brat Pack.” Our archival researchers, who were great, said, “I can’t find anybody saying that.” And I told them, “That’s because you have to look at this one six-week window before all the publicists shut it down.” Things like that all came back to me. We’re also so naive and innocent and unsophisticated, in certain ways, and it was just kind of fantastic. It made me feel really tender toward everyone.
There wasn’t as much media training in the way there is now.
No. It was, “You go on and look at this dot.”
But that meant there also wasn’t any type of performance in those interviews.
We were all just experiencing it and coming of age and growing up and figuring it out, in real time. That’s why a bunch of times we used [the footage] from before the interview starts where we are just sitting there like deer in the headlights. That appears a lot in the film: Us just sitting there, not knowing what to do, which was what it felt like at the time.
I don’t think we will ever see moments like that, again, either.
No. There is too much protection and people are too savvy. When I did an audition tape for my first movie, Class, I’d never seen myself on tape, moving. I’d never seen myself moving through space before. Everyone’s so much more sophisticated now and self-aware and self-conscious in a way that we just were not. But of course, at that time, we thought we were at the cutting edge of sophistication.
What do you hope audiences glean from Brats?
I suppose in the same way they saw themselves in us in those movies, whether they do it consciously or not, I hope they see their own journey through life in our journey with this relationship with the Brat Pack. Like: “I felt this way about certain seismic events in my life and over time and with different understandings, I have come to feel a different way about it.” All these things that we go through, depending on how we choose to perceive them and experience them, can lead to positive things.