1h 32m | Documentary | June 13, 2024
In the 1960s, a Hollywood social group consisting of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop, were dubbed “The Rat Pack.” They were the epitome of 1960s cool.
In the 1980s, a group of young, successful Hollywood actors who co-starred in many movies together, consisting of Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, and Judd Nelson were dubbed “The Brat Pack.” This was compliments of a disingenuous, jealous young journalist out to make a name for himself. He used guile to secure their trust, then wrote a hit piece.
The moniker stuck immediately, to the immense annoyance of all involved. It affected some more deeply than others, and more or less traumatized Andrew McCarthy for 30 years. He wrote a book about it and has now made a documentary about it. The man feels his career could have had so much more potential had it not been for this predatory potshot.
Word Play
McCarthy, figuratively wringing his hands over the vast injustice the loathed nickname bestowed upon him and his colleagues, doesn’t seem to have taken into account America’s unabated relish for wordplay. In America, if you make a hugely successful movie called “The Terminator,” and then successfully run for governor—you’re immediately going to get called “The Governator.”
Rapper Eminem rapped: “Though I’m not the first king of controversy, I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley. To do black music so selfishly, and use it to get myself wealthy.” Now, both we and Eminem himself enjoy calling him “Rap Elvis.”
And so obviously, if there’s an actor collective that does a lot of movies together, where some of them (like McCarthy himself) play entitled characters, and if they’re all riding that crest of early, extreme fame that can easily infuse any individual with a mega-dose of entitlement on the level of smoking crack, then it’s just a matter of time before some journalist or comedian coins the term “Brat Pack.”
Especially if that journalist personally observes the euphoria and hubris of such stars out drinking on the town, possibly griping about not having had a sufficiently large trailer on their last movie. It’s even more salt in the wound if that ordinary-looking journalist has to watch those young, incandescently hot stars enjoying by-now ubiquitous Beatlemania-type young female feeding-frenzy. It’s not really surprising. In fact, it’s pretty much to be expected.
What Goes On
The “Brats” felt that in one fell swoop, the label erased all their hard work spent on honing their art and craft. Now people perceived them as a bunch of self-involved lightweights, who had managed to be in the right place at the right time and got lucky.McCarthy, deeply invested in seeing whether his former co-stars from 1980s teen classics like “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Pretty in Pink” were as negatively affected as he was, drives around America with a little camera crew doing interviews. He hasn’t seen most of them for 30 years.
Hutton’s Robert Redford-directed movie, “Ordinary People,” heralded the 1980s wave of movies exclusively about young people. For the first time in movie history, a trend and zeitgeist took teens and all their little adolescent problems very seriously. Many of these films are Brat Pack movies.
Emilio, Demi, and Rob
At times, “Brats” has the feel of a colleague-facilitated therapy session for McCarthy. He is able to blend their various outlooks and get some much-needed perspective.
Everything in tabloid newspapers in grocery store checkouts across the nation is untrue click-bait-y blather about the outrageously out-of-control and unhappy lives of movie and rock stars. If one took that stuff seriously, one would expect McCarthy to discover Demi Moore in a homeless camp, strung out on various drugs.
But there she is by her pool, looking healthy and happy, and dispensing comforting words of wisdom to McCarthy. Her interview is clearly therapeutic for him. I could have spent at least 15 minutes more, listening to her talk about the things she’s learned in life.
Rob Lowe’s interview was easily the most fun of all. What he had going for him, in the same way Emilio was a to-the-manor-born showbiz, er, brat, is that Lowe was a classic, stunningly good-looking, young West Coast actor, with self-confidence and schmooze-ability that are off the charts. This is a guy who was never going to be unsuccessful. In the same way comedian Chris Rock recently said of singer Rhianna, “Rhianna is so fine, if she didn’t sing her life would be exactly the same"—ditto for Rob Lowe.
Malcolm Gladwell
Andrew McCarthy went so far as to recruit renowned author Malcom Gladwell of “The Tipping Point” and “Outliers” fame to weigh in on the cultural relevance of the the Brat Pack. Mr. Gladwell doesn’t disappoint; he says it was a new wave of youth culture that everyone at the time could identify with, and that it was a one-shot-deal. It could never happen again, because youth culture now is like everything else in America and the world, in the social media age—totally atomized and fractured.
Gladwell validates the cultural impact for McCarthy by saying that as a teen he identified with Ducky in “Pretty in Pink,” (played by Brat Pack-adjacent actor Jon Cryer). When Gladwell looked back many years later after having forgotten that aspect of his formative years, he was surprised to see similarities between himself and Ducky. But then hilariously remembered that he'd consciously patterned himself after Ducky in the first place. Movies are powerful.
McCarthy acknowledges that the Brat Pack actors became avatars for the young peoples’ aspirations. The fact of the matter is, the Brat Pack, along with director John Hughes, made some of America’s most beloved movies. That’s a huge achievement. We’ll probably never see the likes of the Brat Pack again.
Hopefully McCarthy has gotten some much-needed closure, although the arguably most prominent Brat Packer of all, Molly Ringwald (and Judd Nelson too), refused to be interviewed.
It was a great reminder to mind one’s speech. It’s a perfect example of how one ill-intended, careless word or phrase can cause someone else 30 years of grief, and the karma that can ricochet back from that. If you believe in such things.
