Andrew McCarthy Opens Up About ‘Stigmatizing’ Brat Pack Label, Wearing a ‘Cheap Wig’ in ‘Pretty in Pink’ and the ‘Unfortunate’ Way Virginia Madsen Was Treated on the ‘Class’ Set
It’s often hard to pinpoint the precise origin of a cultural phenomenon. The opposite is true when it comes to Hollywood’s Brat Pack. The catchy moniker that came to define the ’80s cineplex can be traced to June 10, 1985, when New York Magazine published a cover story pegged to the release of “St. Elmo’s Fire.”
The piece, written by David Blum, followed three of the film’s stars — Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson — over several nights of heavy boozing and douchey antics, like ogling Playmates, encouraging groupies and trash-talking their rivals. Blum dubbed the group of young movie stars the “Brat Pack,” a phrase still recognizable four decades later.
The trio’s “St. Elmo’s Fire” co-star Andrew McCarthy remembers the exact moment when the film’s producer, Lauren Shuler Donner, burst into an office on the Paramount lot waving a copy of the magazine. At first glance, he was disappointed that he had been cropped out of the cover image — a publicity still from the movie, the shadow of his shoulder still visible.
After poring over the 5,000-word piece, he was relieved by the omission: No good could come from being anointed a member of this A-list tribe of enfants terribles. But like it or not, he and the other stars of Joel Schumacher’s coming-of-age drama about post-collegiate ennui — including Estevez’s fiancée Demi Moore — would soon be engulfed by the pop culture tsunami.
“We were in rehearsal for ‘Pretty and Pink,’ and I just remember sitting in that office going, ‘Oh, fuck,’” McCarthy recalls. “It portrayed everybody as these frat boys who just wanted to party and get laid. Is it a good idea to take a journalist drinking with you? Probably not. I think everyone learned that lesson pretty quick.”
Indeed. On a sunny morning in late May, McCarthy is sipping iced tea at a café inside the Museum of Modern Art. Wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, a pair of reading glasses perched atop his graying hair, he looks more like a prep-school teacher than the high school heartthrob who once wooed Molly Ringwald in “Pretty in Pink” and made teens girls across America swoon.
He declines my offer to check out any of the museum’s exhibits. “Another day,” he says, a note of impatience creeping into his voice. This location was chosen for convenience, being just blocks away from the Upper West Side apartment he shares with his wife, Irish writer and director Dolores Rice, and their two children, Willow and Rowan. (His older son from a previous marriage, Sam McCarthy, has followed in dad’s footsteps, starring in the Netflix series “Dead to Me.”)
