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Sure, here's a more detailed paraphrase of the text:The actor and director turns his lens on himself and members of the eponymous '80s cohort for the documentary 'Brats,' where Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and others unpack what it means to be a part of Hollywood's most exclusive club that none of them asked to join.
The answer is complicated.
At times, watching is like watching a high school reunion, if the high schoolers in question frequented the Sunset Strip in the 1980s and the theater teacher was John Hughes.
In the documentary, the director asks members of the Brat Pack to reflect on and unpack what it meant to be a part of one of Hollywood’s most exclusive clubs—like the Frank Sinatra-fronted Rat Pack before them.
There are moments of embarrassment, humility, and catharsis, with apologies offered and new perspectives gained.
The term “Brat Pack” was coined by journalist David Blum in a 1985 profile of Emilio Estevez that contextualized Estevez and peers like Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe within the new dynamics of a Hollywood that sought to cater to the tastes of younger audiences.
It was a not-wholly-flattering portrait that at times painted the actors as undertrained and overestimated, scoring free movie tickets that they could likely afford and picking up girls in the Hard Rock Cafe.
Reading the article today, audiences may be surprised at how far the label morphed and expanded outside its original classification.
The name Molly Ringwald, the canonical Queen Bee of ’80s coming-of-age cinema, doesn’t even appear in the story.
“It was always really more of an idea than a fixed thing.
The culture decided who was in it,” explains McCarthy.
Largely, the Brat Pack is considered to be performers who, like McCarthy, appear in or the larger Hughes oeuvre.
In the documentary, the director talks to fellow Brat Pack-ers Estevez, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, and Lowe.
They reveal how the label led to being typecast by a comp-obsessed Hollywood, missing out on roles and potential projects.
They also talk about how age and decades’ worth of distance and full careers have bred an appreciation and new perspectives such as that inclusion in the Brat Pack may be, as McCarthy describes it, “perhaps the biggest professional blessing of my life.
”Ahead of the premiere on June 13 on Hulu, McCarthy talked about convincing his former co-stars to participate, a nerve-wracking interview with Charlie Rose, and why a cultural phenomenon like the Brat Pack could never happen again.
He wrote a book about that time, about his experiences of the Brat Pack and what it felt like at the time, and to look under that rock that he’s run from for a long time.
And it was really illuminating.
So when he finished it, he thought, “That’s what I feel like.
What does everybody else feel like?” Someone said to him, “We were members of a club, and we didn’t ask to join, and we were the only members.
We’re the only ones that know what that felt like.
”As for why now: Yes, the movie is about the Brat Pack, but to him, it’s about how we interpret and make sense of the events of our lives and how our perception of them changes and evolves over time.
He feels 180 degrees different about the Brat Pack now than he did 30-odd years ago.
He hated it then.
Now, he looks at it as perhaps the biggest professional blessing of his life.
He wasn’t making a definitive Brat Pack movie, he was making a very subjective movie about his experience and this seismic event that happened in his life and maybe get some clarity on that.
It’s the evolution of his relationship to that term is what the event of the movie is to him.
How we received it—whether it was fair or not fair, whether we received it appropriately or selfishly like immature children—none of that matters.
What matters is that he did experience it that way and then it’s come to be experienced in an entirely different way.
That was fascinating to him.
When he went and talked to people, one of them, he can’t remember which, said, “Do you have questions for me that I can look at before you come?” He’s like: “No.
I’m just gonna come talk to you.
” Even talking to David Blum when he called him and asked him if he’d do it, he said, “What’s your agenda?” His only agenda is to see what was your experience of it then, what is it now and has that changed.
That was his agenda for him and for everyone.
He turned 60 last year, so you get started looking at time differently, particularly when you get old.
That’s a really interesting point, because we can experience these things and begin to grow and to understand them, alone.
But it’s so nice to connect with people.
It reminds you of why we shouldn’t be alone, and why we need community, because that connection helps us feel less isolated.
It’s just a better feeling than when we’re in our own heads alone.
He can figure something out alone and go, “OK, that makes sense to me.
All right, I’m good with that.
” Once you share it with other people, and they share with you, this bond happens.
That’s why movies are so powerful.
Like he said to Howie, this generation saw them on the screen, and they went, “That’s me.
I feel less alone now.
” That’s why they became famous and why people still love them, because they represent that moment in their lives when they’re just blossoming.
That’s a very scary, wondrous and isolating time.
So if you see yourself up on the screen and go, “That’s what I feel like,” you can forever hold him or Molly or whoever is in that position.
So, reconnecting with everyone, for him, was also meaningful in that way, as opposed to just holding it alone.
He always knew he would talk to him because he’s the pink elephant in the room.
He’s the fifth Beatle.
And he always wanted to talk to him.
And his whole thing was: “What’s your agenda?” His agenda is to hear your experience.
Then, he was willing to jump right in.
And, frankly, [he was] a lot easier to schedule than everybody else was.
He was like, “Oh my God, Rob canceled, again, and I’ve got the whole crew here.
So let’s go talk to somebody because I paid for this crew.
” The whole movie was like that! It took a year.
And it was maybe 10 days of filming, but it took over a year to get everybody to sit down.
Some days people would cancel and he’s like, “Who can I call? [producer] Lauren Shuler would love to talk!” It was all just him calling people that he knew and going, “Will you talk to me about this?”He can’t remember when he reread it.
He doesn’t think he reread it for the book, but for the movie he did.
And you know, when he reread it, he found it to be—it’s not so bad.
I mean it’s not like they [were] treated like Britney [Spears], you know what I mean? It wasn’t that.
It’s kind of snarky in that ’80s way.
It was clearly, to him, him trying to make an impression to get himself into, as he said, Tina Brown’s office.
That was his agenda.
His agenda wasn’t to portray them in a clear, insightful way.
His agenda was to get himself into Tina Brown’s office and this is how he thought he could do it, which is fine.
He can’t remember when he reread it, but he didn’t think it was as scathing as he did, initially.
They are in the movie, in a smart and sensitive way that he knows them to be.
He thought it just simply needed to be addressed in as quick and gracious way as possible.
Otherwise, you would go, “Where’s Molly?” And Judd was Judd.
In the beginning, he agreed to do it and was wonderfully insightful.
On camera, he’s saying [on the phone to Judd], “Don’t tell me now.
Don’t tell me.
No, I want to get on film!” He just launched in.
And then he eventually became a unicorn and disappeared and decided he didn’t want to do it.
But he thinks even that is insightful and has insight into the Brat Pack.
What he found really illuminating to him was how it happened and why it happened at that moment.
All the conditions that made the Brat Pack ripe to happen.
There was this seismic, cultural change happening where movies were suddenly about young people.
Hollywood discovered kids go to the movies half a dozen times, grown-ups go once, the hell with the grown-ups, let’s make movies for kids.
And that happened overnight, and they were the ones right out in front of that.
Youth culture was very unified—all of our culture was pretty unified at that time.
Every Friday night, every kid knew what movie they were going to see.
Every kid was gonna see this week and the next week.
Now, [the culture] is so fractured.
We can’t even comprehend that.
Then David Blum comes along next [with] a really witty phrase call, so Hollywood can grab us and put us in a satchel.
They were just the ones who fit the costumes at the time.
They were in the right place and the right time for that to happen.
In his opinion, none of that could ever happen again.
People always say to him, “Can you imagine now with social media, what it would be like?” It never would have happened.
It wouldn’t even have registered, except for a day or two in the news