Thoughts & Opinions "Brats" Documentary by Andrew McCarthy

Let me clarify before jumping in that I was born in 1995 - well past the era of cinematic iconography that was the Brat Pack and all things John Hughes.  I was largely ignorant of the pop culture news stories of that time period until watching this documentary.  When I watch any of the movies of that time I am entering with thoughts and opinions untouched by any particular bias or prejudice of that era due to this somewhat beneficial ignorance, or rather, anachronistic awareness (this is just me getting stuffy and gassing myself up).  So, I am not a child of the 80s and simply love the movies for their neat and self-contained portraits of a world where the conflicts are simple and clear-cut, and all is always resolved by the end of a movie wrapped with a perfect and quintessential bow of an 80s pop song.  The fashion is quirky and overstated, the world itself is simple and without the immense awareness of looming existential, global problems that is so difficult to endure in modern day reality.  That’s what I like about this time period’s movies, and I suppose most movies in general - the fantastic escape into better, more justified worlds governed by a director with a pop aesthetic and simplistic sense of right and wrong.  I’m getting off track.

So, let me talk about Brats. Andrew McCarthy, famed actor from the 80s teen/young adult movies including but not limited to St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty in Pink, wrote and directed this documentary that explores in retrospect the rippling effects of one particular journalistic article that looked into the careers of the group of young actors finding immense success in show business with the boom of young adult entertainment.  Basically, the sequence of events of this drama went roughly like this:

> teen cinema experiences huge growth

> directors like john hughes gain huge acclaim for their talent in creating entertaining teen cinema

> john hughes (and other like directors of the time) tended to pull from a select group of young actors to star in their films

> massive hits like Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire features the prior mentioned young actors, catapulting them to success and fame

> enter journalists/paparazzi that paint the group of actors as insular, privileged, and as not having “paid their dues” yet for the massive success they are experiencing at a young age. To sum it up, they are dubbed the “Brat Pack” in this one particular New York Magazine article that critiques and questions their skills and talent as actors, questions whether or not they’ve properly “earned” their success, etc. etc.

> other journalists grab onto this narrative, and the name Brat Pack sticks to the group of actors permanently

> the young actors are entirely unprepared for the massive and sudden wave of fame and now the bad press, this can be seen in certain awkward interviews of the time where journalists and interviewers seemed to like to spring questions on the actors about the infamous article

> each of the individuals in the Brat Pack handles and reacts to this drama differently, as Andrew McCarthy explores in retrospect in this documentary 

So we pick up now a few decades later with Andrew McCarthy putting his thoughts to words and  attempting to sociologically explore the ripple effects of this one particular article.

I’d like to say my good thoughts first, because overall I am glad that Andrew McCarthy made this piece and I enjoyed watching it.  It was eye-opening certainly, but not necessarily in the way the writer/director intended.  The editing and writing were logical and effective, and it was almost like a reunion special watching McCarthy reconnect with co-stars from thirty to forty odd years ago.

This next part is going to sound condescending and critical, but I do want to say that I don’t mean it reproachfully: again, I enjoyed watching the documentary and I’m glad it exists. But I think a fitting subtitle for this piece could be “Boomers Go to Therapy.”  It felt like this whole piece was Andrew McCarthy finally addressing age-old feelings and grievances and therapizing himself well past due.  It felt as though he had one of the more bitter outlooks on the entire “Brat Pack”-article backlash when compared to his co-stars.  He painted the article as basically having stalled his career, at least in part if not entirely.  

Essentially though, what he went through, and though it is not a struggle in its own right, he lost control of the narrative of his career - this is a difficult thing to experience, certainly, but it is not an uncommon thing in the least. He felt the term “brat” was and could only ever be an insult that publicly labeled him as undeserving of his success. Mind you, this man was a professionally trained actor who had studied at NYU, who played sincerity and vulnerability in a way that left teens everywhere swooning.  He was also a vulnerable young adult without a solid sense of self.  And this one outside perspective deeming him a brat seemed to shake him to his core, causing him to question his own skill in acting.  Perhaps it is this questioning of himself that lent insecurity and hesitation to his career - or perhaps I’m just overspeculating.

Though the media portrayed, and the public believed, that the Brat Pack actors were a tight-knit group of friends in their day-to-day lives, this was not the truth.  At least from McCarthy’s perspective, the actors generally kept to themselves and didn’t really socialize outside of working together.  As McCarthy reconnects with certain previous co-stars like Ally Sheedy and Demi Moore he feels a sense of camaraderie at their shared experiences with the press - and it is healing for him to realize that he was never actually alone in his struggles at dealing with the pressure of fame at a young age.  But at the time of the struggle, the actors were apparently isolated and disconnected from each other on the personal level that would have allowed them to commiserate and endure together.

Some of this social isolation from that time must have left residual resentment amongst some of the actors.  As McCarthy talks with Emilio Estevez, the tension is nearly palpable.  As McCarthy exposits, he perceived Estevez as something of a golden boy, with deep roots in Hollywood and seemingly the world at his feet.  Estevez too seems to struggle with feelings of wanting to ignore that era of the past, as he seems to only be participating in the documentary begrudgingly - giving terse, non-emotive answers at every turn.

Some actors like Molly Ringwald refused to appear altogether, giving reasons such as wanting to “leave the past in the past” and refusing to reconnect with the people and memories of that time period entirely. (Side note, being unwilling to talk about the past is not a sign of having healthily accepted and moved on from it.) I understand not wanting to be defined by a single point in your career and wanting to build something more for yourself, but there is no denying the past happened without some serious cognitive dissonance.

My personal question at this point was, “Where the hell is Anthony Michael Hall?” (AKA the geek in The Breakfast Club or Farmer Ted in Sixteen Candles). He is never mentioned or contacted and if anyone is trying to say he was not part of the Brat Pack, I will be personally offended at your serious misjudgment.

In my humble yet anachronistic opinion, the two performers who fared the storm of bad-press with the most grace and found the most further career success would be Rob Lowe and Demi Moore.  These are the two that seemed to best roll with the punches and keep on moving forward.  They discuss the fluid interpretation the term “Brat” could have (it could just be shorthand for a young person, and lest we ignore it is simply a clever play on the Rat Pack) and how they chose not to take it as an insult - there was no stopping people from hurling the word at them, and so they owned it and moved on. Ally Sheedy too seemed to have a healthy and nuanced take of the 80s press drama as well, I just personally wouldn’t put her career into the same tier of success as Rob Lowe’s, but again, I’m no expert.

I was so happy that McCarthy talked with some of my favorite Brat-Pack-adjacent actors of the day, Jon Cryer and Lea Thompson.  The spotlight-adjacent actors, and really anyone in a spotlight-adjacent social role, tends to have interesting perspectives and insights, having had the clearest and most up-close view of the people actually in the spotlight.  In true high school fashion, Lea Thompson admits she had wanted to be with and in the Brat Pack at the time, likening it to the most popular clique in a school.  Everyone wants to be part of “that” group of friends, the ones that are self-possessed and beautiful and charismatic. Jon Cryer took a different route, in the moment in the era he staunchly denied association to the Brat Pack, taking a more contrarian and self-proclaimed outsider stance. Their takes on the entire situation were phenomenal ways to round out the discussion of pop culture in retrospect.

It seems like Judd Nelson was impossible to contact, so who knows what his take or reaction would have been on all this.  I would’ve loved to hear from him but hopefully in maintaining his privacy he has found peace of some sort.

Anyway, after all this retrospective introspection, Andrew McCarthy comes to have a widened and more positive perspective on the events of the past.  He hasn’t come entirely to simple acceptance of all the turbulent drama, as evidenced in his talk with the journalist who wrote the famous New York Magazine article: David Blum.  It seemed to me that McCarthy was passive aggressively and insistently trying to niggle an apology from Blum for the entire affair (which Blum did not give, much to my respect).  Blum takes a detached and journalistic point of view of the affair, and he admits he did de-personalize the actors in writing the article so critically, but that it was simply a moment in time that has since passed.  He does not regret his work or words.  This clearly leaves McCarthy a little bit miffed, because of course he thinks an apology from this man would resolve his long seated resentment, but honestly my guy, that’s some internal work you gotta do for yourself.