New & now: Brats
A reporter once said a mean thing about Andrew McCarthy & now it's everyone's problem.
It’s human nature to dwell on the criticisms we receive rather than the compliments. No matter how successful we are, or how much praise we get, it’s the thoughtless insults that linger and fester, even years later.
However, most of us don’t get a film crew and studio funding to make a documentary about overcoming that bitterness and insecurity. But Andrew McCarthy did, and the result is Brats, a fascinating exercise in self-pitying introspection that, by its very existence, contradicts McCarthy's point.
After a decade of weathered character actors dominating movie screens, Hollywood was ready to return to the era of unblemished teen idols, and 1983’s The Outsiders marked the beginning of that transition. Two years later, New York writer David Blum spent time with Outsiders co-star Emilio Estevez and his up-and-coming actor pals, including Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson, and that resulted in a now infamous snarky, mean-spirited article that portrayed Estevez and the others as vapid, arrogant, and undeserving of their overnight success. Blum dismissively referred to them as “the Brat Pack,” and the name stuck.
The first thing that’s important to know about the Brat Pack is that whoever you thought was a member of it is probably wrong. Save for Estevez, who Blum arbitrarily deemed the core of it, the only other members anyone can agree on for certain were Lowe and Nelson. Blum’s article also names Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Timothy Hutton, and Nicolas Cage, none of whom starred in the movies one tends to associate with the Brat Pack. It does not name Molly Ringwald, though no one else would argue that she didn’t belong there. Demi Moore is only mentioned in passing as Estevez’s occasional girlfriend, and Ally Sheedy isn’t mentioned at all.
You know who else isn’t mentioned? Andrew McCarthy.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Blum quotes an unnamed co-star as saying they thought McCarthy brought “too much intensity” to his performances and wouldn’t make it as an actor. Blum himself has nothing to say about him either way. Yet, it would appear that McCarthy has spent the past nearly forty years stewing over the article, and convincing himself that being lumped in with the Brat Pack destroyed his chances of being taken seriously as an actor.
When I look back on my Gen X youth, I try not to do it through the mayonnaise-smeared lens of nostalgia. Few things encapsulate the extremely bland, extraordinarily white culture of the mid to late 80s like Brat Pack movies. While The Breakfast Club is still a solid flick, Pretty in Pink coasts mostly on its soundtrack, Molly Ringwald’s inherent likability, and the sleazy, reptilian charisma of antagonist James Spader. St. Elmo’s Fire, in which a bunch of unlikable, self-absorbed assholes whine about their lives being over at the ripe old age of 22, is all but unwatchable at this point.
Nevertheless, when I was the target audience (a teenager who thought all I needed was the right crushed velvet hat and all my problems would be solved), I watched them all multiple times. I didn’t think much one way or the other about what it meant to be a member of the Brat Pack. Considering the name was inspired by the Rat Pack, which included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and several other of the coolest motherfuckers who ever lived, I assumed it was a net positive.
By McCarthy’s estimation, however, Blum’s article (which, again, barely mentions him) effectively shot down any hope he had of working with such directors as Martin Scorsese and doomed him to making fluffy teen romances like Pretty in Pink, which he apparently hated, even though it’s arguably his most beloved role. It’s a bizarre argument to make, considering that before the article’s publication, McCarthy’s most notable film role was in 1983’s smutty middle-aged woman-teenage boy sex comedy Class, the rare movie about which you really can say “They couldn’t make that these days.”
Regardless, McCarthy has an ax, and by god he’s gonna grind it. Film crew in tow, he travels all over the country to visit his old colleagues (save for Nelson and Ringwald, noticeably absent), all of whom are still working in show business and also can’t make the argument that their careers were ruined by a single sour grapes article that reads as positively tame in comparison to the hatchet jobs that pass as pop culture writing today. He’s surprised and perplexed to discover that no one else has a dartboard with a picture of Blum on it in their homes, nor are they particularly interested in dwelling on the past.
His body language suggesting that he’s barely tolerating an Amway salesman spiel, Estevez looks exasperated to even be talking about this. Lowe and Moore, meanwhile, are more bemused than irritated. Lowe looks back on that period positively, while Moore gently, lovingly suggests to McCarthy that he needs to get the fuck over it already. Ally Sheedy comes the closest to conceding that the article was hurtful, but even she seems taken aback at how much resentment McCarthy still holds for the Brat Pack label.
If McCarthy had never worked again after the little-seen romantic drama Fresh Horses, his argument that the New York article ruined his career would have some weight. But a quick skim of his Wikipedia page belies that: he’s never stopped working, and some of his most successful films, such as a comic turn in Weekend at Bernie’s, came years after being branded as a member of the Brat Pack. When film roles began drying up, he transitioned into television and directing, and has since enjoyed a successful second career as a travel writer and novelist. If anything, McCarthy’s life is enviable from an outside perspective, and so it’s unclear what exactly he’s so upset about.
The bizarre misconception that McCarthy is a failure puts an even more surreal spin on his interview with David Blum, who doesn’t regret writing the article, no matter how much McCarthy tries to browbeat and guilt-trip him into admitting that he does. Should Blum have apologized to the actors he critically profiled? Well, according to a recent article Blum wrote for Vulture, he did: to Emilio Estevez, the primary subject. McCarthy is, at best, a tertiary figure in the original article, and so it’s unclear what he thinks Blum owes him for all the opportunities he believes he lost.
While I don’t know that it accomplished what McCarthy set out to do (other than to make Blum look like a smug jerk, which he definitely does), Brats is an interesting, poignant watch. There’s an innate sadness to McCarthy that I’m not sure any amount of success could have satisfied, and one hopes that this film brought him some peace and closure, even if the point of it is a bit muddled.
What could have been a lightweight walk down Memory Lane becomes bittersweet when it’s quickly revealed that the image of the Brat Pack as close friends who hung out even when they weren’t making movies together was far from reality. They were friendly co-workers at best, and McCarthy’s interactions with Estevez suggest that only the second half of that applies to their relationship. The fallout of the Brat Pack label, rather than drawing them all closer together as one might expect, put a distance between them as they scrambled to protect their own careers. Though he doesn’t say as much, one suspects that’s a big part of McCarthy’s bitterness.
It also effectively captures a moment we’ll never get back, when we’d see a movie at the local theater, then go directly to the nearest mall record store to buy the soundtrack, followed by a trip to a bookstore to buy a copy of Teen Beat and read breathlessly written puff pieces on the stars. I won’t pretend I’m too cynical to admit that the opening notes of “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” still strike a chord deep in my heart. The Breakfast Club was released four months before the New York article and that song still dominated both radio and MTV by then. St. Elmo’s Fire was released within weeks after the article, and that had two hit theme songs. Now, theme songs are heard exactly once: during the film and then never again, unless they happen to be nominated for a Best Song Oscar.
Brats also makes me nostalgic for a time when celebrity journalism was mostly harmless and frivolous, rather than a weapon of gleeful destruction. You know, back before people like Perez Hilton became celebrities themselves by harassing young starlets for having the audacity to eat in public, or haranguing Britney Spears into an emotional breakdown. Back during a very silly time when being called a “brat” was the most grievous insult imaginable.
Thank you confirming this is the low stakes true crime doc that I like falling asleep to.
Just watching the preview the other day, I imagined the giant cork board with red yarn that Andrew uses to connect the Brat Pack together.
And if we are to stretch the Rat Pack metaphor to the point of breaking, I like to think about how there was the core members and then the honorary members. Dean Martin--an undeniable member--brought in Jerry Lewis. Don Rickles was not in the Rat Pack but he definitely hung out with them. I imagine this being the equivalent of Cesar Romero making a whole documentary trying to justify his place in the Rat Pack because he sometimes hung out with Humphrey Bogart and Angie Dickinson.