“It was one magazine article, and suddenly it caught the zeitgeist and was there,” Andrew McCarthy said of the moniker “The Brat Pack,” which came to define him and his closest peers in Hollywood in 1985. A profile on Emilio Estevez in New York Magazine to promote St. Elmo’s Fire gave a youthful twist to The Rat Pack, and it caught on quickly. “That was one magazine article, a regional magazine that came out on a Tuesday; and by Friday, the nation was using the term ‘Brat Pack, and our lives were different.” Andrew McCarthy took the stage at the TCA Winter Press Tour to promote his new documentary film, Brats, which he directed and executive produced with ABC News Studios.
(Disney/PictureGroup)
The phrase came to define Andrew McCarthy’s life so much that in 2021 when he published his memoir, the title was Brat: An '80s Story. But for a very long time, he and the rest of young stars considered to be part of the Brat Pack tried to push that branding away. “The whole thing came about because several years ago, I wrote this book. I thought, finally, I should look under that rock of my youth. That was a seminal moment in my life. Everything that's happened after has been shadowed by that. That's cast a long shadow over my life. So I wrote this book looking at that and then I [wondered], what did everyone else feel? To bring it up into the present was of real value to me, and I certainly know that everyone seemed to really embrace the experience. And after everybody was like, ‘Wow, dude, thanks for coming over. I enjoyed that more than I thought I would.’ I certainly did, too. But I think that's a testament to age, too. And we're not so competitive anymore. We're not so desperately yearning and striving… As Rob [Lowe] says in the movie, ‘Thirty-five years later, they're still talking about it.’ That's not nothing in Hollywood.”
“The minute the Brat Pack term came into existence, everyone just scattered,” Andrew revealed about the sad knee-jerk reaction the stars had. They felt like they were no longer taken seriously in Hollywood after that point, and the cast of teen classics like Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club, and Sixteen Candles suddenly tried to shed that image by separating from their most frequent on-screen collaborators. “I hadn't seen Rob [Lowe] in 30 years. I hadn't seen Emilio [Estivez] since the premiere of St. Elmo's Fire. I hadn't seen Demi [Moore] in a couple decades. And I know they have not been in touch because they were each saying, ‘Have you talked to so-and-so? Oh, how are they doin'?’ So nobody, as far as I could tell, has really been in touch with each other. I mean, there are a few little things, people that do, but as a group and as a core, I don't think that exists.”
Brats represents somewhat of a reunion for the Brat Pack, although not everyone was willing to participate. “I asked Molly [Ringwald] if she wanted to talk in the film, of course, and she said she'd think about, but that she would probably just like to keep looking forward. And I talked to Jon Cryer about it. When I was talking to Jon, I said, ‘Why do you think Molly didn't want to chat?’ And he said, ‘You know, a lot of time as actors, we want to be free of the baggage of our pop cultural associations and we just want to act.’ And I thought, fair enough. But Molly is very much in the movie and a part of the movie. There are clips and interviews from the past and backstage stuff.” Another iconic The Breakfast Club star also declined to be interviewed. “Judd [Nelson] didn't want to talk. Judd said, ‘The Brat Pack didn't exist, so I'm not talking about it.’”
As a fan, it was surprising to hear an original member of the Brat Pack say it didn’t exist, but after learning about how the branding damaged their lives and careers, it made sense. Brats explores the definition of the group, and how it’s not really easy to define who was or wasn’t in it. “I'm in it and I can't even tell you who the members are specifically. I think there's a certain core group of seven of us that are undeniably in the Brat Pack: Me, Emilio, Judd, Rob, Demi, Ally [Sheedy], and Molly Ringwald.” After the magazine article was launched, the core members of the Brat Pack tried to resist the label, while other young stars in Hollywood sought it out. The film explores the core Brat Pack and people who were Brat Pack-adjacent. “It's some silly little term, The Brat Pack. And yet, [there] was before that Tuesday when that article came out, and there was after.”
Dive deep into life after The Brat Pack in Brats, now streaming exclusively on Hulu.