The Brat Pack, Revised

When David Blum introduced the term “Brat Pack” in a New York Magazine story in June of 1985, he was referring to a specific group of male actors who co-starred in teen movies and hung out together in real life. They were, in his view, “a roving band of famous young stars on the prowl for parties, women, and a good time,” a group that Blum cleverly named to evoke the Rat Pack of 20 years prior.

But once that phrase entered the lexicon, its meaning morphed into something broader and more culturally significant than Blum could have anticipated. The Brat Pack became shorthand for the key actors who stood at the epicenter of the 1980s’ teen-movie explosion. There was no official list of its members; who was in and who wasn’t remained a matter of debate, although Blum offers his own (extremely misguided in retrospect) assessment in his piece. But most Gen-Xers who grew up during that period shared a common understanding of who qualified and who did not.

The Brat Pack included some mix of the stars of John Hughes movies, the postgrad pals of St. Elmo’s Fire, and the faces that decorated the covers of Beats both Tiger and Teen. Everyone in it was a distinctive actor, but collectively, their filmographies (and, occasionally, personal lives) overlapped like the paths of students who keep crossing each other on campus. We’re talking Emilio Estevez and Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, and Andrew McCarthy. You know: the Brat Pack.

But as more time passes, the definition of the Brat Pack continues to evolve. Even though Blum’s article was published in June of 1985, the term it invented has become synonymous with the 1980s as a whole. For too long, the Brat Pack — the subject of the new documentary Brats, a revisitation of the group’s significance directed by one of its members, McCarthy — has been defined by people who weren’t in it and didn’t grow up on the coming-of-age films its actors helped popularize. Like the kids in The Breakfast Club, its members were initially categorized (cough by baby-boomers cough) “in the simplest terms, and the most convenient definitions,” with little nuance or respect for what each actor had to offer.

It’s time to redefine the Brat Pack in light of what it now signifies — to create a Revised Brat Pack, if you will — using a carefully considered list of criteria and an openness to the entirety of the decade and its impact on youth culture. Yes, this group skews male and is white as hell. Sadly, that was how mainstream Hollywood was back then.

The Revised Brat Pack consists of three tiers — the Brat Pack Inner Circle, the Brat Pack Adjacent, and the Next-Gen Brat Pack — and includes actors who meet some or all of the following criteria.

1. They played a teenager or very young adult in multiple popular films in the 1980s aimed at young audiences and, for a period, were defined by that. Every word in this requirement should be taken very literally, which is why some actors don’t quite fit under the Brat Pack umbrella. Timothy Hutton, identified as a member in Blum’s piece, is not really in the Brat Pack because, with the exception of Taps, his notable early works were not teen movies. This is also true of Forest Whitaker, who played a small role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, arguably the first ’80s high-school movie of consequence, but pivoted to more adult roles too quickly to feel “Brat Pack–y.” The same can be said of Matthew Broderick, who, with the exception of WarGames and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, did not appear in many explicitly teen-oriented movies. (Before you ask: Tom Cruise is in his own category and that is not open to debate, sorry.)

2. They became famous in movies, not on TV first. The Brat Pack was born when the biggest, most revered stars were products of the movie business. So while Michael J. Fox may have starred in Back to the Future and Teen Wolf, he was known first for his breakout role on Family Ties, which knocks him out of contention. One could argue that Molly Ringwald, the queen of ’80s youth cinema, is also disqualified by this since she technically appeared in the first two seasons of The Facts of Life. But it was Sixteen Candles and the John Hughes oeuvre that truly catapulted her to fame, so she’s totally in the group, whether she wants to be or not. (Both she and Judd Nelson opted not to participate in McCarthy’s documentary.)

3. They were in The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, or more than one of these films. These three ensemble movies came along in the middle of the decade and established the appeal of the teen movie. 1983’s The Outsiders turned every guy in its cast into instant heartthrobs, while the overlapping ensembles in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire in 1985 reinforced the idea that the hot young actors of the moment were members of the same clique. Blum name-checks all three of them in his original piece, and on this point he was correct.

4. They were in at least one John Hughes teen movie. Because Blum’s article was published before Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Some Kind of Wonderful were released, it de-emphasized the importance of the Hughes canon, which is synonymous with what the Brat Pack came to represent. And that is wrong.

5. They co-starred in a project with at least one of the actors in the Brat Pack Inner Circle or Brat Pack Adjacent category. There has to be some IMDb overlap with the first two tiers of Brat Packers to be included.

The OGs of ’80s teen cinema.

She was John Hughes’s muse, an actress who could believably play the popular snob (Claire in The Breakfast Club) and the outsider too hip for the normies (Andie in Pretty in Pink). To practically every preteen and teenage girl in the ’80s, she felt like both a relatable best friend and the cool girl you desperately wanted to be.

Criteria met: All five.

The “nucleus” of the original article, as McCarthy puts it in Brats, he is the only actor who pulled off the Brat Pack hat trick by appearing in all three of the films mentioned in the third criterion for inclusion: The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, and St. Elmo’s Fire.

Criteria met: All five.

It’s odd that Hall’s name is not mentioned in Blum’s article — perhaps because he was still an actual teenager at the time? — or in McCarthy’s documentary, because he is core to the Brat Pack as the only person other than Ringwald to star in three of the Hughes teen movies (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science). He and Ringwald also briefly dated in the ’80s.

Criteria met: All five.

She played Matthew Broderick’s girlfriend in WarGames, Rob Lowe’s love interest in Oxford Blues, and Judd Nelson’s conflicted partner seeking independence in St. Elmo’s Fire. But it was her role in The Breakfast Club as Allison Reynolds, the introverted goth weirdo who decorates her artwork with her own dandruff, that made her a forever Gen-X icon.

Criteria met: All five.

While Nelson meets all the Brat Pack requirements, it’s true that he did not appear in as many popular teen movies as his colleagues. Counterpoint: He played John Bender in The Breakfast Club, a role that freeze-framed him with his fist raised in the air, creating one of the most recognizable symbols of ’80s teen cinema.

Criteria met: All five.

Somehow, he was never cast in a John Hughes movie, but Lowe racked up more than enough coming-of-age credits in the 1980s, including The Outsiders, Class, Oxford Blues, and St. Elmo’s Fire, to qualify for Brat Pack success. In his piece, Blum described him as the Brat Pack’s “Most Beautiful Face,” and that face was on the cover of every teen magazine, over and over again.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 3, and 5.

Like Nelson, she doesn’t have as many blatantly teen-friendly ’80s credits as her cohorts. She started out playing women in their early 20s, but in movies that were aimed at teens (No Small Affair, St. Elmo’s Fire, One Crazy Summer). But largely because of her role in St. Elmo’s — and, perhaps, the fact that she and Estevez were once engaged — she’ll always be an OG Brat Packer.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 3, and 5.

The sensitive soul among the Brat Pack men, he meets all the criteria. He gave Molly Ringwald the perfect first kiss in Pretty in Pink, and he made a documentary about the Brat Pack. While he once obviously yearned to shake his association with all these ’80s teen movies, he seems to have finally embraced it.

Criteria met: All five.

They traveled in the same cinematic terrain as the members of the Inner Circle but weren’t quite one of them.

Dillon broke out as a teen star in 1980’s My Bodyguard well before the Brat Pack existed. That always made him feel separate from it, as did his status as the face of another ’80s teen-movie subgenre: the S.E. Hinton adaptation. He starred in three of those: Tex, The Outsiders, and Rumble Fish.

Criteria met: 1, 2, and 5.

Because he was a Chicago guy and, at first, more of a supporting player, maybe Cusack didn’t make it onto Blum’s radar. But this guy was all over the teen-movie spectrum in the ’80s and one of its most beloved representatives. Class, Sixteen Candles, The Sure Thing, Better Off Dead (!), The Journey of Natty Gann, and Say Anything as Lloyd Dobler, the high-school graduate who doesn’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career? People, bow down.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 4, and 5.

I was on the fence about including Sheen because, you know: #winning. But it’s hard to act as though he weren’t a notable part of the ’80s teen-movie scene — he was in Red Dawn and the sweet and underrated Lucas (best slow clap in an ’80s teen movie!), and, most memorably, he played a burnout in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He’s also connected to the Inner Circle by birth, as Estevez’s brother.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 4, and 5.

He had an impressive run in 1983 and 1984 with three back-to-back hits: The Outsiders, The Karate Kid, and Teachers. But he was so defined during this time by the Karate Kid franchise that he falls a little outside the core Brat Pack.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 3, and 5.

When McCarthy interviews Thompson in Brats, she describes herself as “Brat Pack adjacent,” which is why this category is called that. And she’s right. She wasn’t quite in the Brat Pack, but her career ran right alongside it. She played Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in All the Right Moves, went to Space Camp with a very young Joaquin Phoenix (then known as Leaf), hit on her own son (in her defense, she didn’t know he was her son) in Back to the Future, and eventually made her way into a John Hughes movie thanks to Some Kind of Wonderful.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 4, and 5.

She played a teen in three of the most memorable youth movies of the era: Red Dawn, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Dirty Dancing. The latter two were among the top-grossing teen movies of the decade. So we’re not putting her in a corner, but we are putting her in the Brat Pack Adjacent tier.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 4, and 5.

He played a high-schooler in some quintessential ’80s movies — E.T., The Outsiders, Red Dawn — and a white Harvard Law student posing as a Black guy in the extremely ill-advised Soul Man. But most importantly: He’s Ponyboy.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 3, and 5.

He was in the center or the margins of some of the most seminal coming-of-age movies of the era: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Mask, Some Kind of Wonderful, and, lest we not forget, Say Anything, in which he plays the guy who designates Lloyd Dobler as the keymaster.

Criteria met: 1, 2, 4, and 5.

These were the teen stars who emerged in the latter half of the decade and therefore got completely ignored by the New York Magazine article. They also more clearly represent the Gen-X sensibility: These actors were a little edgy, a tad outside the mainstream, and cool as hell.

She was a nerd in Lucas, a goth freak in Beetlejuice, and a borderline sociopath in Heathers before blossoming into one of Gen X’s brightest stars in the ’90s. (She also co-starred with Lowe in the movie Square Dance.)

Criteria met: 1, 2, 4, and 5.

While we think of Reeves these days as an action star and a seemingly very nice guy who actually dates women his own age, he got his start mostly by playing sweet stoner types in films like the influential indie River’s Edge, Parenthood, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, in which he portrayed San Dimas High School’s own Theodore “Ted” Logan. (He also co-starred with Lowe in Youngblood and would later work with Ryder on more than one occasion.)

Criteria met: 1, 2, 4, and 5.

Greetings and salutations to the bad boy of late-’80s teen cinema, who made his mark in The Legend of Billie Jean and Gleaming the Cube, and, most importantly, as J.D., the James Dean of the darkly comedic classic Heathers, in which he seduces Ryder. (Pump Up the Volume and Young Guns II, in which Slater acts opposite Estevez, came out just after the ’80s ended, in 1990.)

Criteria met: 1, 2, and 5.

If Phoenix hadn’t died of an overdose so tragically in 1993, it’s possible he would have become the most accomplished actor on this list. It was clear that he was gifted from the very beginning, whether he was starring in coming-of-age fare — Explorers, Stand by Me, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon — or major films like The Mosquito Coast or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In addition to appearing in Stand by Me, as Cusack did, he co-starred in multiple films with Reeves.

Criteria met: 1, 2, and 5.

The most well-known duo in all of ’80s teen cinema, they established themselves individually — Feldman in Gremlins, The Goonies, and Stand by Me, Haim in Lucas — before co-starring in a series of ’80s movies made for the youths: The Lost Boys, License to Drive, and Dream a Little Dream.

Criteria met: 1, 2, and 5.