‘Brats’ Director Andrew McCarthy Is Still Coming To Grips With The “F***ing Nightmare” Of The “Brat Pack” Label, Nearly 40 Years Later

In June 1985, Andrew McCarthy was on top of the world. That summer he’d co-star with Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson and more in St. Elmo’s Fire. Earlier that year saw the release of foundational teen dramedy The Breakfast Club, which starred Nelson, Estevez and Sheedy plus Molly Ringwald (who would later star opposite McCarthy in Pretty in Pink and Fresh Horses) and Anthony Michael Hall. These performers (plus Matt Dillon, James Spader, Lea Thompson, Jon Cryer, Timothy Hutton and a few others) had suddenly and without warning overtaken popular culture, and radically changed Hollywood’s focus onto high school-oriented stories.

So it came as a bit of a shock when New York magazine ran a profile ostensibly on Estevez, but really about all of them, which instantly sucked all the air out of the balloon. Riffing on the Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. crew known as “the Rat Pack,” journalist David Blum shrugged this new generation off as “the Brat Pack.”

Cute, right? Well, not to McCarthy, who decades later, has turned his PTSD from that trip to the newsstand into the documentary Brats, an inquiry into fame, criticism, and personal growth.

McCarthy lays out the facts as he sees them— that article created obstacles for many of the members getting treated seriously in Hollywood—and that there’s another reality where he worked with directors like Scorsese and Spielberg instead of doing projects like Weekend at Bernie’s II. McCarthy then hunts down many of the former members of the “pack” and they share their feelings. 

McCarthy hadn’t spoken to most of these people in ages. (Molly Ringwald politely declined involvement; no one seems to know how to get ahold of Judd Nelson.) It’s fascinating to see how different performers—Estevez, Sheedy, Lowe, Cryer, Thompson, Hutton—interpret the release of the article, and its impact. (Though good luck understanding anything Demi Moore has to say; that woman communicates in pure therapy-speak, and it’s a fascinating thing to watch.) Brats also includes commentary from notables like The Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, writer Bret Easton Ellis (whose Less Than Zero was adapted into a film featuring McCarthy) and some cultural critics including IndieWire’s Kate Erbland, who I happen to know and think is very nice. 

McCarthy debuted the project at this year’s Tribeca Festival in advance of its release on Hulu on June 13. Our chat has been modified for clarity.

DECIDER: There are a great many documentaries about 1980s culture, but not one quite like this.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: The movie is about the inside versus the outside. The public perceived the Brat Pack to be the cool kids. We perceived it as a fucking nightmare. 

I’m forever fascinated with how the past never really passes. I’m looking at incidents from 30 years ago, and my feelings have changed 180 degrees. The incident didn’t change, but I’ve changed. My perception and response has changed. We all do this. For example, I was cut from the high school basketball team, which at the time I thought was a terrible thing. But it led me to be in a play, which led me to become an actor. Now I say “thank God I got cut from the team.”

The Brat Pack phenomenon is similar, which is why I had to make a subjective film, not a definitive, clear-eyed explanation. All I knew is that I hated it, [my colleagues] all hated it, but now that I’ve come to see it as a blessing, what do they all think?

You talk about the moment David Blum’s New York magazine article came out and you instantly felt the chill, you knew it meant big trouble when you read the term “brat pack.” Do you think the bubble would have burst anyway, or was it just the vituperative nature of that article and the clever phrase?

There would have been a sifting out, sure. The only thing that people like more than building people up is to knock them down. And some of us were better geared for success than others. I was not particularly equipped for fame, and I also began drinking at that time, which had more to do with my own proclivities than anything else. I certainly would have slid to the side anyway. But this [article] was out of left-field, arbitrary and decisive. It brought things to a head much quicker.

What I did not understand at the time, but see clearly now, was how ripe this was to happen. Movies became about young people very suddenly, and we were at the tip of that. So David Blum comes along, thinks up this great name and slams it on us. Many in Hollywood resented the hell out of these young punks coming in and taking over. “Hollywood movies should be like The French Connection or by auteurs, and here are kids making movies about going to a dance!”

So when we got our legs chopped out from under us, a lot of people were thinking “good! Get rid of ‘em!”

But of course, what Hollywood didn’t reckon with was that the public loved us. I certainly didn’t understand that for decades.

My older sister was 15 in the magic year of 1985, so right in the mix, and she had all your posters up in her bedroom, and she didn’t find the term “brat pack” to be a pejorative at all. 

Sure, but from a personal point of view, who wants to be called a brat? And who wants to be part of a pack?

People have come up to me for decades and say “the Brat Pack! Those movies…” and they get swoony. They are really talking about themselves, they’re not even looking at me. 

Watching Brats, I’m thinking “well, is McCarthy going to go find this Blum guy and talk to him?” And then you do have a showdown of sorts, in an interview at his home. Now, unless I missed something, he never really apologized. He acknowledged that he caused you and your colleagues duress, but he never said “I’m sorry,” did he?

No. No.

Should he have?

We all tell ourselves what we have to tell ourselves so we can live with ourselves. I think his perspective as writing this magazine piece as a young man was to make a splash and get the next job. This was a heyday of snark journalism, and New York magazine was at the forefront of it. He wasn’t thinking about his subjects. I think he ultimately came down on “I know this wasn’t cool, but I stand by it.”

Sitting in his living room, did you want to kinda yell at him for a minute?

I actively restrained myself from saying “what the fuck, dude?” But I didn’t want to do to him what he did to us. Really, I just wanted to get his take. At the end, when I asked if he could have been nicer, he simply said “sticks and stones.” A callous remark, but I let him speak for himself. 

Do you think younger actors today … like, who is the Andrew McCarthy of 2024? I dunno, Tom Holland. Do you think Tom Holland has it easier than you with press, harder, or is it exactly the same?

Well, I don’t follow too much of the younger actors now, though my daughter loves Tom Holland.

He’s a handsome, likable kid, just like you were!!

Yes, he seems like a likable guy. But it was a different time, obviously. For example, people can look at this and say “oh, it was just one magazine article.” But that’s missing it. It’s the same way Elvis went on Ed Sullivan and the next day the world was different. Because everybody watched Ed Sullivan. So, yes, it was just one magazine article, but we have Malcolm Gladwell talking about this in the documentary—how today we do not have a unifying culture anymore. People were spoken to with one voice. New York says “the Brat Pack” and there it was for everyone.

Today I could push back instantly on Instagram, and the news cycle is so fast no one can focus for more than five seconds, so I don’t think it could happen like that anymore. 

Brats, by design, is not really a look at the Brat Pack films per se. But if people didn’t love the movies in the first place, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. So, with that, allow me to say that my wife and I watched Mannequin recently for the first time in a hundred years and hot damn that is one extremely entertaining picture.

I love Mannequin! There’s not a cynical bone in its body, thanks to its director Michael Gottlieb, who has such a childlike sensibility. That’s something that could never be made today—a woman who only comes to life for a man???—but it is very open-hearted and generous. I think it’s a delight.

Is there one of the classic movies of the era you wish you were in?

Well, no, but The Breakfast Club, which I am not in, is the definitive Brat Pack film. It’s the definitive youth culture movie of the 1980s, and the best one.

They shouldn’t have had a sixth member of the club?

Eh, I played that part in Pretty in Pink.

Jordan Hoffman is a writer and critic in New York City. His work also appears in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and the Times of Israel. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and tweets at @JHoffman about Phish and Star Trek.