‘80s idols have a new film out — just don’t call them the Brat Pack

A new documentary explores the impact of the nickname that some believed ‘wounded everyone in its path’.

Ally Sheedy, Andrew McCarthy and Demi Moore attend the Brats premiere in New York last week. Picture: Getty Images

When an American magazine writer in the 1980s coined the term “Brat Pack” to describe the brash young stars of Hollywood’s new coming-of-age movies, he never imagined it would endure almost 40 years later.

Yet for decades actors such as Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore, Andrew McCarthy and Judd Nelson could not escape the tag after featuring in beloved films such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and St Elmo’s Fire.

Now, after years of debate over whether the nickname “mortally wounded everyone in its path”, some of the stars have confronted its legacy in a new documentary directed by McCarthy.

Brats, from US streaming service Hulu, explores the impact the nickname had on the group – which, according to the subjects, was significant. The term, 61-year-old McCarthy says in the documentary, “affected my life massively” and may have led to him being pigeonholed for the rest of his career.

Estevez, 62, apologises to ­McCarthy for declining to star alongside him shortly after the article was published in 1985 due to being spooked by the nickname.

Like all good stories, the tale of the Brat Pack requires a villain – and up steps David Blum, the New York magazine writer who invented the name. His account of his time partying with Estevez, Nelson and Lowe included a line describing them as “a roving band of famous young stars on the prowl for parties, women and a good time”.

Blum’s label stuck and the phrase was soon attached to stories about the emerging actors and the films they appeared in.

Late-night television host Johnny Carson referenced the nickname in a monologue and the subjects were furious at Blum for what they perceived as a slight. The label was a riff on the Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra’s crew of crooners who became synonymous with living the high life in Las Vegas.

While a pithy nickname for rising stars, Blum’s phrase came to symbolise a new era in Hollywood when the film industry realised huge profits could be made from young people who had only occasionally seen their lives reflected on the big screen. Often set at high schools and exploring the everyday angst of teenagers, movies such as John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off proved coming-of-age stories had box office appeal.

“The 1980s was a moment in time when Hollywood was discovering the power of the youth market and they were realising that you could make a movie like The Breakfast Club for very little money,” said Susannah Gora, the author of You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes and Their Impact on a Generation.

While the actors have long had mixed feelings over the label, for a generation of fans the term was aspirational. “It was this incredibly romantic, exciting idea,” Gora said. “This group of young, cool actors who had the world in their hands.”

Quite how profound the Brat Pack nicknamed affected the actors’ later careers is up for debate. Those doubtful that it played a significant role point out that Demi Moore, who is interviewed for Brats, became one of the biggest box office draws of the 1990s.

Blum, for his part, has no regrets. The writer, 29 when he wrote the story, notes that for all the controversy, the actors considered part of the pack enjoyed long and successful careers.

“It struck me as an odd omission that the Brat Pack’s current careers and successes don’t even earn a mention in McCarthy’s Brats,” he wrote last week in New York magazine. “Maybe all their success contradicts McCarthy’s thesis that the Brat Pack moniker mortally wounded everyone in its path.”

Brats is available in Australia on Disney+.

THE SUNDAY TIMES