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In the documentary \u201cBrats,\u201d<\/a> Andrew McCarthy attempts to come to terms with being part of the Brat Pack, the group of young actors who were ascendant in \u201980s movies. Turns out, many of them didn\u2019t like the nickname, or the association. \u201cI lost control of the narrative of my career overnight,\u201d McCarthy said of the period after the writer David Blum coined the immediately catchy term, in a 1985 New York Magazine profile<\/a> of Emilio Estevez.<\/p>\n He and other actors, like Estevez and Rob Lowe, who had been frequently cast together in ensemble coming-of-age dramedies (\u201cSt. Elmo\u2019s Fire\u201d), scattered, fearful that appearing together would be a career liability. In the documentary, streaming on Hulu, McCarthy, an actor, director and travel writer<\/a>, checks in, after many years of absence, to see how they processed this pop culture twist.<\/p>\n Some \u2014 like Demi Moore, a \u201cSt. Elmo\u2019s\u201d co-star \u2014 handled it all a lot better than others.<\/p>\n In a phone interview from his Manhattan home, McCarthy, 61, said his impulse was not nostalgia \u2014 though he knows that\u2019s what might draw an audience \u2014 but an excavation of how time and memory collide with youthful expectations. <\/p>\n It was a leap: He walked around New York and cold-called Brat Packers he hadn\u2019t seen in decades, with a camera crew trailing. \u201cI thought, if anyone calls me back, I have a movie,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Prompted by McCarthy\u2019s low-key, conversational style, Moore, Lowe, Estevez and others turned up; Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald did not. In kitchen table and couch-side interviews that also serve as a kind of celebrity home tour \u2014 Ally Sheedy\u2019s Upper West Side apartment ranks as the most relatable \u2014 the movie cracks the time capsule of the Brat Pack\u2019s appeal. Here, some takeaways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Brat Pack \u2014 a riff on the Rat Pack, midcentury entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin \u2014 signaled a shift in Hollywood, away from the swaggering auteurs of the \u201970s toward movies that expressly dealt with young people\u2019s lives and feelings. What is \u201cThe Breakfast Club,\u201d the author Bret Easton Ellis asks in the doc, but \u201ca therapy jam?\u201d<\/p>\n And Lowe argues that the entertainment industry\u2019s swing toward a youth audience started then, pushed by the Brat Pack\u2019s film success, and never ended. \u201cFriends\u201d is just \u201cSt. Elmo\u2019s Fire\u201d with more laughs, and fewer cigarettes.<\/p>\n McCarthy was circumspect. \u201cWe just happened to be the ones who fit the wardrobe at the time that was happening culturally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The documentary explores how the idiosyncratic soundtracks of the Brat Pack movies \u2014 especially the English New Wave bands that John Hughes, director of \u201cPretty in Pink\u201d and \u201cThe Breakfast Club,\u201d loved \u2014 became synonymous with the era, and now have a sentimental weight. \u201cForever Young\u201d<\/a> plays as McCarthy searches for Moore in her house.<\/p>\n One non-synthy song McCarthy desperately wanted to include in his film: Bob Seger\u2019s \u201cOld Time Rock and Roll,\u201d for Tom Cruise\u2019s underwear slide in \u201cRisky Business.\u201d \u201cThat changed pop culture, that instant,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n With a low budget, he wrote \u201cbegging letters\u201d to musicians \u2014 \u201c\u2018Bob Seger, you and I went and got drunk one night in the \u201980s, do you remember?\u2019\u201d\u2014 to get permission.<\/p>\n The other must-have track was \u201cDon\u2019t You (Forget About Me),\u201d<\/a> by Simple Minds, the closer from \u201cThe Breakfast Club.\u201d \u201cJudd pumping his fist<\/a> like that, that\u2019s a quintessential Brat Pack moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The 1986 classic \u201cPretty in Pink,\u201d in which Ringwald\u2019s striver Andie is stuck on McCarthy\u2019s richie Blane, while her much more interesting<\/em><\/a> <\/em>friend Duckie (Jon Cryer) pines for her, originally ended with Andie and Duckie together at prom. Test audiences booed, so it was reshot on a tight schedule and budget, with Andie and Blane pairing off.<\/p>\n But McCarthy was playing a Vietnam War-era Marine in a Broadway play; he arrived with a shaved head. Production whipped up a drab wig. \u201cIt just sat on my head like some bird\u2019s nest,\u201d he says in the doc. \u201cIf they\u2019d known that we\u2019d still be talking about it 35 years later, they would\u2019ve paid for a better wig.\u201d (Even more shocking, Ringwald hated<\/a> Andie\u2019s blush-pink sack of a prom dress, bursting into tears when she first saw it.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In \u201cSt. Elmo\u2019s Fire,\u201d McCarthy\u2019s character suddenly plays the bongos<\/a> in one scene. \u201cI\u2019d read that Marlon Brandon played bongo drums,\u201d McCarthy explained, \u201cso I bought a set.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there was the time that Lowe and McCarthy, normally rivals, ended up on a post-Spago bender with Liza Minnelli at Sammy Davis Jr.\u2019s house: Brat Pack meets Rat Pack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Interviewed outdoors, in a lush poolside setting, Moore emerges as a fount of inspirational, Instagrammable wisdom, like, \u201cI look at everything as happening for us, not to us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the film,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we called her, in the editing room.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nDid the Brat Pack Change Culture?<\/h2>\n
Blane\u2019s Terrible Mop-Top, and Other \u201980s Mysteries<\/h2>\n
Demi Moore Is a Philosopher Queen<\/h2>\n
Does the Original Article Hold Up?<\/h2>\n