BEFORE: Conan O'Brien carries over from "Personality Crisis: One Night Only". We've reached the point in the Doc Block where I only need to use talk show hosts and U.S. Presidents to connect the films. Also the point where someone at the IMDB is getting very tired of me submitting updates with all the stars who appeared in archive footage who were left out of the main credits in these documentaries. Well, they haven't disabled my account yet, but sometimes they do ignore my submissions.
And I'm going to send out a Birthday SHOUT-out today to Ilan Mitchell-Smith, one of the stars of "Weird Science", there's footage of him in this doc somewhere... I just missed John Cusack's birthday, which was yesterday. OK, fine, he gets a SHOUT-out too.
THE PLOT: Centers on 1980's films starring the "Brat Pack" and their profound impact on the young stars' lives.
AFTER: I hate to break it to everyone, but the calendar doesn't lie - this year we'll celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of the two biggest "Brat Pack" movies, "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire", and also two of the lesser ones, "Back to the Future" and "Weird Science". Just in case you didn't already feel very old. The actors from these movies may have aged well, but they definitely aged - I know this because Andrew McCarthy tried to contact them BY PHONE, and nobody calls each other any more. He could have e-mailed them or texted them, it would have been more efficient, but maybe not as cinematic. Anyway, watching him stand there as all his calls go to voice-mail wasn't very interesting at all, so it really wasn't the best way to show that he was trying to reach his old friends. Jeez, why didn't he just wait for a reunion at a film festival or Comic-Con or something?
It turns out that there are three kinds of ex-Brat Packers in the modern world, though. The first kind is like Andrew McCarthy, they tried very hard to escape the "Brat Pack" label, because they felt it was degrading or insulting, and they made career choices to do different things apart from their fellow Brats, but found after time that the label never went away, that feeling of not being good enough because they were defined by the perceived privilege, having been young and successful at the same time. This meant that they have friends who they have not seen or spoken to in thirty years (news flash, many regular people have this too) and so now later in life they're trying to re-connect with their peers and deal with this "problem" or perhaps perception of a problem. Like I want to feel sorry for them, but most of them have had 40-year long careers in film and/or television, so really, come on, what is the difficulty?
The second kind of Brat Packers are the ones who've seen it all, done it all, been through it all, went through therapy and are now somehow above it all, or over it. This is basically just Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, maybe Ally Sheedy. They've all had career ups and downs, but they tried to make good choices over the last four decades, said "yes" to a lot of different things, probably have been married and divorced and married again, and sure, spent a lot of time and money getting their heads screwed on straight. The Type 1 Brat Packer really needed to get out and re-meet the Type 2 Brat Packer, as a form of their own therapy, that much is clear. Leave it to Rob and Demi to put a positive spin on the whole thing, as in "Sure, we got labeled, but we shouldn't let that label continue to define us, and plus, we changed the world of filmmaking, we have thousands if not millions of fans, and really, we're in a good place." Rob and Demi have the power now to do whatever they want, if Rob Lowe wants to host a game show, he can do that. If Demi wants to make a career change and star in a psychological horror film, she can do that. Getting out of acting and into producing or directing is a path for a lot of actors who aren't as young as they used to be, which is all of them, plus it gives them more control over their own careers.
The third kind of Brat Packers are the ones who didn't respond to the invitation to appear in this film, so we don't really know HOW they feel about the distinction, but we can probably guess. This includes Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald. (Sean Penn was determined to not be an official member of the pack, and Jon Cryer was willing to be interviewed, but also doesn't consider himself as a Brat Packer, and you know, it's largely a self-identifying thing.) Yeah, if you don't have Ringwald, you almost don't have a movie here, that means you have to give a lot more time to Ally Sheedy. And maybe Mare Winningham, except Andrew McCarthy seems to have forgotten completely about her, that's understandable. There's a bit at the end where McCarthy pretends that maybe Judd Nelson is calling him, only it's too late to include him. Yeah, nice try but if I don't hear his voice on the call, it didn't happen. I think we can assume for these Brat Packers that they just don't want to revisit this era of their life, for whatever reason. Send them over to Rob Lowe's house, maybe for a chat.
McCarthy also lands an interview with David Blum, the writer for New York magazine who coined the phrase in the first place. He was assigned to write a feature on Emilio Estevez, and instead focused on the whole group of actors from "St. Elmo's Fire" and found a phrase that would lump them all together, rhymingly based on the "Rat Pack" of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. (and for some reason Joey Bishop) from the 1960's, just a group of guys that hung out and often starred in movies together and (one imagines) got into a lot of good trouble in Vegas together. But the Brat Packers didn't really spend THAT much time together off the set, and even less once the article came out and they got branded as a cohesive unit. David Blum hashes things out with the leader of the Pack for the sake of the documentary, and while he realizes that his article may have had negative effects on some people, and unfairly lumped them together, they all became more famous because of it, so you'll notice that he feels no need to apologize.
Andrew McCarthy finally comes to terms with the Brat Pack label - thank GOD, because, honestly that was keeping me up nights - and thanks to therapy with Dr. Lowe and Dr. Moore, he realizes that he was part of something special, a three-year period of time that redefined the movie world, ever since then most movies have been targeted squarely at the 18-25 demographic, the young single people with money to burn and time to go out to the theater. That time is over now, because since then we've been through the VHS market, the DVD phase and the streaming revolution. If you're a Brat Packer and you don't already have a podcast, you're way behind the times. The people who go the movies now are people in their 40s with three kids who just want 90 minutes of peace and quiet while their kids are sitting in a dark theater spilling popcorn all over the place. Really, can you think of any other reason to remake the animated film "How to Train Your Dragon" as the exact same movie, only animated in a different way?
Oh, and senior citizens still go to the movies, I can confirm that - bless their hearts, they still haven't figured out streaming platforms, so when there's a revival of something they recognize, they turn up and turn out. The Tribeca Festival this year screened "When You're Strange", which is a documentary about the Doors that was released in 2009, and you can probably watch online for FREE somewhere, but because John Densmore was going to do a Q&A after the screening, a whole load of seniors turned out and paid like $28 a head. Go figure, we had almost a full house at the theater, and this is what you have to do these days to get people to leave home, you have to have a celebrity there to talk about the movie, at least you'll get the superfans.
So my advice to the Brat Packers, even the reluctant ones, is to lean into it - again, it's the 40th Anniversary of "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire" so if any movie theater, film festival or Comic-Con wants to get a group of B.P.'s together to speak on a panel after and charge people extra to watch a movie they can see for free at home, I say you'd better say "Yes" to that, cash the check and stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Yep, I'm talking to you, Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald.
From a technical standpoint, there were WAY too many angles in every interview here - you really don't need 10 cameras covering every two-shot set-up from all around, in fact it's very distracting and confusing when the person on the right is suddenly on the left and vice versa. Just use the standard talk-show set-up, you only need three camera angles, one on the interviewer, one on the person being interviewed, and a two-shot - anything beyond that is overkill. Seeking out those weird angles or moving the camera to get another framing is just pointless.
I know, I know, the big "Brat" summer was last year - people made a fuss over some song by Charlie XCX and then the term kind of got applied to Kamala Harris during all the election stuff, leaving newscasters to argue over what it meant for a political candidate to be called a "Brat", like is that good or bad? I'm always playing catch-up though, so I don't know what the big trends are this summer, I guess we can't have two Brat Summers in a row, right?
Directed by Andrew McCarthy
Also starring Andrew McCarthy (last seen in "Sr."), Emilio Estevez (last seen in "Freejack"), Ally Sheedy (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Demi Moore (last seen in "LOL"), Rob Lowe (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Timothy Hutton (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Lea Thompson (last seen in "The Year of Spectacular Men"), Jon Cryer (last seen in "Shorts"), David Blum, Howard Deutch, Lauren Shuler Donner (last seen in "Maverick"), Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Erbland, Malcolm Gladwell (last seen in "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years"), Susannah Gora, Marci Liroff, Ira Madison III, Michael Oates Palmer, Loree Rodkin,
with archive footage of John Ashton (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Kevin Bacon (ditto), Christopher Atkins, Jacqueline Bisset (last seen in "Domino"), Matthew Broderick (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Tom Cruise (ditto), David Hartman (ditto), Jay Leno (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Valerie"), Merv Griffin (ditto), David Letterman (ditto), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Faye"), Gene Shalit (ditto), John Cusack (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Sammy Davis Jr. (last seen in "LIza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Liza Minnelli (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), George DiCenzo (last seen in "About Last Night"), Matt Dillon (last seen in "American Dreamer"), Phil Donahue (last seen in "Framing John Delorean"), Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "A Scanner Darkly"), Michael J. Fox (last seen in "See You Yesterday"), Paul Gleason (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Anthony Michael Hall (last seen in "Clerks III"), Arsenio Hall (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Jason Hervey, C. Thomas Howell (last seen in "Old Dads"), John Hughes, Alan Hunter, Peter Lawford (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Christopher Lloyd (last seen in "Love, Wedding, Marriage"), Ralph Macchio (also last seen in "Sr."), Dean Martin (last seen in "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Cliff Robertson (ditto), Frances Lee McCain (last seen in "End of the Road"), Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Mary Tyler Moore (also last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Judd Nelson (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Deborah Norville, John Parr, Jane Pauley (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Chris Penn (last seen in "At Close Range"), Sean Penn (ditto), Molly Ringwald (last seen in "The Kissing Booth 3"), Charlie Rose (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Richard Schickel, Joel Schumacher, Martin Sheen (last seen in "Imagine That"), Brooke Shields (last seen in "Keith Haring: Street Art Boy"), Lori Singer (last seen in "The Falcon and the Snowman"), James Spader (last seen in "The Homesman"), Eric Stoltz (last seen in "Her Smell"), Patrick Swayze (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Fee Waybill, Mare Winningham (last seen in "Dark Waters"), William Zabka (last seen in "The Karate Kid Part III")
RATING: 5 out of 10 rental cars (required whether you're driving to the Estevez house in Malibu or Timothy Hutton's farm in upstate NY)
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