Words matter, and the two who named a group of up-and-coming actors in their twenties in 1985 – “Brat Pack” – were groundbreaking. Not in a good way for Andrew McCarthy.
“It had a long shadow over us,” McCarthy tells Yahoo Entertainment.
In his new documentary Bratspremieres June 13 on Hulu, the Beautiful in pink And St. Elmus Fire star reconnects with fellow Brat Packers Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, whose lives and careers were defined by the term, which was coined in a scathing expose in a New York magazine. McCarthy, who wrote and directed the film, had not seen most of it in thirty years.
To audiences, the Brat Pack became an endearing label, not only for the young stars who played characters people can relate to, but also for their beloved ’80s films like The breakfast club. Meanwhile, McCarthy and his colleagues avoided collaboration after the article portrayed them as spoiled and untrained in their field. Some lost work. It clouded careers and friendships.
“The interesting thing was the disconnect we felt towards it,” says the reluctant Brat Packer. “It took me personally decades to realize that the public was right. It’s actually something beautiful, and not something negative.”
Brats takes viewers along as McCarthy, now 61, visits the homes of Moore, Lowe and the others (minus a few who declined to participate) for an unscripted conversation. What’s so human is that each person has a unique, different perspective on being part of a club that none of them wanted to join.
For Estevez, the main subject of the magazine profile, things still seem raw. He said in the film that his career had completely gone off the rails. Moore said it felt “unjust” at the time, but over time didn’t take it personally. She spoke candidly about dealing with bigger issues at the time, like staying sober while making it St. Elmus Fire. Lowe considered it “something special” to be part of something that people are still talking about “more than thirty years later.”
McCarthy says he “kept fighting it” for years. The turning point was when it clicked – through meetings with fans – that the Brat Pack wasn’t about him, or even the others.
“People come up to me, start talking about those movies, and their eyes glaze over,” he says. “I realized: they are actually talking about themselves and their own childhood. They don’t talk to me anymore. They think of that moment when they become adults and the world is a blank slate to write on. I represent that to the people. This also applies to the other members of the Brat Pack.”
McCarthy calls it “an amazing gift” that he can give fans “by receiving their goodwill” – as they mentally journey back to Beautiful in pinkBlane tells Andie that he loved her at the prom, or remember a quote from him St. Elmus Fire character, Kevin Dolenz – “and that is 180 degrees different from how I first experienced it a long time ago.”
‘A professional blessing’
For McCarthy, the documentary is part of the ’80s heartthrob’s journey in unraveling 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 fixed, but the past is rarely final, and our relationship with it can change completely,” he says. “The same events I watched all those years ago [and] hated, now I consider them a professional blessing.
When it came to interviewing his former co-stars, McCarthy, who has been directing TV shows for nearly two decades, purposefully didn’t come in with a “bunch of interview questions.” His intention was to “have real conversations” about “what the Brat Pack means to us as we sit in the room together.”
He had “no idea” what to expect, but found that “everyone was very open” and “candid.” At one point in the film, Estevez reveals that McCarthy has been cut from a film project, thinking it would be “kryptonite” working together amid the fallout from the Brat Pack.
McCarthy was also present. When he walked into the doctor’s office to interview Lowe, he admitted that they were “competitive” and “not close” at the time. Their conversation changed that.
“Rob comes in and I see myself again at 19,” McCarthy says. “I had so much affection for him because as a young boy I immediately had so much affection for myself. It was a very nice feeling – and that 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 at the time.
McCarthy tried to bring in Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson for the film. (He cold-calls the entire Brat Pack in one scene that’s fun to watch.) Despite pleasant conversations about it, neither was ultimately motivated to revisit the subject on camera, which he understands. He did get a yes from Brat Pack-adjacent actors Jon Cryer, Lea Thompson and Timothy Hutton.
“Certain people think a certain way, and others feel how they feel,” he says. “The film was made with love for all of us.”
Revisiting the Brat Pack story
One of the most complete moments was when McCarthy sat down with the journalist who wrote the Brat Pack article, David Blum. Blum made no apologies for the story’s long-lasting fallout, 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 actively tried to do with David was not play ‘gotcha’ for him like he played gotcha for us. I mean – he wrote in an era of gotcha journalism, that ’80s snark that was prevalent, [and] to capture that moment. I think Demi said it best: “He wasn’t going to label us for life. He was just looking for 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 divided,” he says, while technology offers us so many choices (movies, shows, channels, movies) “that there’s nothing left that gives us unites. It’s not happening now. That’s neither good nor 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 was changing and the transition was happening. Youth cinema has gained the upper hand in a way like never before… We were at the forefront of this. … Then came this really catchy phrase to label it, and boom.”
