An ‘80s Thing

I just finished reading Brat: An ‘80s Story (Grand Central Publishing, 2021) by actor Andrew McCarthy. His absorbingly honest, breezily insightful memoir takes one back to a simpler snapshot in time. The book’s titillating title is a riff on the pejorative label “Brat Pack,” coined by a New York magazine writer who spent a night on the town—at the Hard Rock Café in Los Angeles—with three of Andrew McCarthy’s co-stars from the movie St. Elmo’s Fire. Despite not being among said brats—Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson—on the infamous night in question, McCarthy was nonetheless considered a member in good standing of the Brat Pack, which—it should be noted—was not quite as prestigious as the previous generation’s Rat Pack.

McCarthy makes a compelling case that the Brat Pack, as it were, never truly existed. For instance, he hasn’t seen Estevez or Nelson since the making of St. Elmo’s Fire, which was released in 1985, and wasn’t pals with any of the pack that included the likes of Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall, whom he’s never even met. In fact, the only mention of McCarthy in the damning New York magazine cover story was an anonymous diss by one of the brats, likely Lowe, who said: “He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity. I don’t think he’ll make it.” Now, I ask, is that a nice thing to say about a fellow actor in a movie you are promoting? But, then again, brats will be brats.

Aside from a memorable musical score, what I remember most about St. Elmo’s Fire is how unmemorable it was. The characters were, by and large, a disagreeable lot, some more so than others. I recall one reviewer panning the movie and making reference to its “lone conscience,” Mare Winningham’s character Wendy Beamish. But that’s yesterday’s news. The Brat Pack moniker is no longer viewed as a dismissive put-down of an ensemble of indulged, arrogant young actors. Instead, these many years later, it’s a blast from the past with a decidedly nostalgic feel. I saw The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, and About Last Night—movies starring various Brat Packers—in the waning years of the Dale, a local movie theater in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. Shortly thereafter, small neighborhood movie houses, like the Dale, in the outer boroughs of New York City were mere memories. Something lost, nothing gained.

Conscience-deficiency notwithstanding, St. Elmo’s Fire did hit home in one sense. I graduated from college in 1984. The characters in the movie were Georgetown University friends and graduates unceremoniously dumped into pay back student loan time, otherwise known as adulthood. I vividly recollect that moment and the accompanying sinking feeling of what next? Que up the theme from Mahogany, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To”: Do you like the things that life is showin’ you? Where are you going to? Do you know? Hold on, that’s from the 1970s and was played at a slideshow retrospective—get out the handkerchiefs—of my high school years just prior to us parting ways.

And so, with the passage of multiple decades, it’s easy to appreciate why the Brat Pack—even if it wasn’t really a pack at all—is remembered so fondly. If Andrew McCarthy now sees it that way, so can you. Brat is a worthwhile and entertaining read—and a further reminder that time doesn’t stand still.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)