Andrew McCarthy revisits his Brat Pack days in the documentary Brats, now streaming on Hulu.
The term Brat Pack was coined by author David Blum for a 1985 New York magazine article. It referred to a group of actors who at the time were making it big in teen movies like Sixteen Candles, St. Elmo's Fire and Breakfast Club, and McCarthy tells ABC Audio its release was "a seismic event that changed the course of my life."
“None of us really liked the term at the beginning at all,” he shares. “The journey for me has been to kind of grow 180 degrees in the opposite direction, to now I feel like [it's] one of the great blessings of my professional life.”
After writing a book about coming to terms with the label, McCarthy got curious about how fellow members of the pack felt.
“I said, 'Well, what did everybody else feel?'” he says. “I knew everyone didn't like it at the beginning, and where have they come to now with it?”
Several members of the so-called Brat Pack appear in the doc, including Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, as well as Emilio Estevez, which was something Andrew didn’t expect, because he says Emilio “never talks about this ever.”
Also in the film is Blum, and McCarthy says he surprisingly found himself having “great affection” for the writer, noting Blum was very much a part of what they went through. He shares, “He hasn't been able to escape it his whole career."
And while the actors may not have liked the term, the public seemed to embrace it, something McCarthy only now sees as a good thing.
“Well, the public was right all the time,” he said. “To make friends with it, I certainly think it's a liberating feeling.”
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