LEHMANN: The Brat Pack was weird.
It was like an explosion. It just happened.
All of a sudden, there were all these young actors who nobody had heard of,
and within a year, they were famous.
That was unique. I don't really think there was another time like that.
Brat Pack sort of came out of an Entertainment Tonight culture
that needed to sort of lump actors
and performances and kinds of people together.
In 1985, I was planning to write an article
for New York Magazine about Emilio Estevez,
who, at the time, was about to star in St. Elmo's Fire and to make his own film.
SHEEDY: It was supposed to be an article on Emilio only.
So the journalist had asked for him
to get together some of the kids, you know, from Breakfast Club
and then St. Elmo's was coming out.
So what New York Magazine did was they assigned this reporter
to do an interview with all these hot, young actors
that were becoming the young male celebrities of that era.
Called them all to dinner. It was Rob and Judd and Emilio and all these guys.
So I went out to Los Angeles, and we hit it off,
and ended up spending some time together.
He introduced me to a lot of his friends who were also actors.
It was staged. The whole...
That evening was staged.
And he had asked me, and I just said, "I won't go."
You know, it was, like, they were hanging out in a bar.
You know, I don't drink, so I wasn't gonna go.
BLUM: Over the course of the week,
various aspects of their behavior started to strike me as bratty.
They would go to movie theaters and say,
"I'd like to get in free, please, because I'm famous."
They would go out to a restaurant and get the center table
and try to attract as much attention as possible.
And I just thought it was funny.
I mean, here were these young, successful actors who were all doing well,
but they couldn't help themselves.
They just wanted to be thought of in a certain way.
And somehow,
I made this odd connection in my mind to the Rat Pack from the '50s
and wrote a piece about the group of them
instead of writing just about Emilio Estevez.
The guy drew a lot of conclusions that, you know, weren't true,
and just painted us with such a broad stroke.
They just torched us, that guy torched us.
And then, it was so easy for other people to pick up on it and...
It's real creative, like, Rat Pack, Brat Pack.
It just portrayed as, like, you know, bad people, whereas we weren't.
And it was like...
But we had fun, and that, of course, is, I guess, not allowed.
HALL: it basically seemed like kind of a ploy to get them all talking about their exploits.
And then the title of the article just became "The Brat Pack,"
you know, sort of alluding to the Rat Pack.
So I think it was really just a term that got coined from this cover-story article.
BLUM: New York Magazine put it on the cover with the words, "Hollywood's Brat Pack,"
and it went on from there.
I included in it basically anybody
who was roughly between the ages of, say, 21 and 30,
and was successful and working in Hollywood.
And it was a convenient, fun title.
I didn't, at the time, have any way of knowing
that it would latch on to them forever.
NELSON: As soon as they could, they would label us something,
and then, you're no longer actors. Then you're personalities.
Then, you know, it's all about your temperament.
'Cause it seems like most of the actors I've worked with from my generation
were incredibly professional.
On time, they know their lines,
they hit their marks, treat everyone nicely.
It's like, how is that a group of, like, you know, hellions?
Rapscallions?
It was unreal, is what it was.
And so, what I noticed after it came out was more that there was this
really uncomfortable feeling around everybody.
And by then, St. Elmo's Fire had come out, so that included everybody.
It was sort of this thing about...
The guys were the ones who would go out and hang out a lot,
and suddenly were being, like, really careful about it, and they didn't want to...
It was feeling more than anything else, you know'?
It wasn't really in good faith or good spirit, I think, to kind of misconstrue
and edit or re-edit people's words to make them all look like, you know,
a bunch of pains in the asses.
These guys were just exploding and becoming known as the Brat Pack.
And I think that was a mixed blessing.
Yeah, you can have a moniker attached to you,
it can be something that you can identify with,
but it can also be something that sort of cages you in.
LEHMANN: And it was used, at the time, as a derogatory phrase.
By calling them the Brat Pack, you were saying they weren't genuine.
But then, it stuck as sort of...
You know, the negativity went away,
and it became just a description for this group of actors.
CUENCO: I think there was definitely something very special
about the Brat Pack.
They had an everyday relatability
to the audience members who watched their movies.
Some may have been older at the time the movies were filmed than others,
but once they were onscreen,
they just were like the people you saw in high school,
versus the people who were kind of the teen idols before them.
They seemed like more of a product of the movie companies.
But I think the Brat Pack definitely had that relatability with everybody.
I mean, these days, somebody's on American Idol,
and, you know, within a year or two, they're a movie star.
But these were kids who were good actors, who then became famous.
And, you know, the whole idea
of showing your acting talent precedes your celebrity or not is...
It's a funny thing in the world today.