Brats and St. Elmo's Fire: The Message is the Same

 

Lessons from the Brat Pack of the 80s

I spent time this past week with two related movies, the Brats documentary and St. Elmo’s Fire.

Reminiscing About the 80’s

 I watched Andrew McCarthy’s Brats first, a retrospection of popular 80’s actors and films. I was too young to see these movies at the time, but it still piqued my interest. I had to familiarize myself with the term “Brat Pack” for one thing. I had some notion that It featured a particular group of young, hot actors in the 80s. A slew of films were made with late teenage to early adult aged kids around this time.

An article in New York magazine called this group of actors in the movie St. Elmo’s Fire the "Brat Pack". It wasn’t a pejorative at the time. Andrew McCarthy, who directed Brats, and starred in the documentary talked about how much they all hated the phrase. “They all” being (McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson). I thought it was a clever turn of phrase meant to signal popularity and an obvious connection to the Rat Pack from the 1960’s. But most of those kids acted for years and even they didn’t all become stars, they had a good run. McCarthy whines about it like it was the bane of his existence. Does anyone believe it cost him roles while Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Demi Moore somehow had no problems?

Watching the ‘Classics’

Brats was a waste of time but at least put me on a path toward watching some of these too-cool films I missed as a kid. I watched St. Elmo’s next. Someone described it in a short review I read as “soapy”. That’s as close to it as any word. Young adults navigate the career world after college and try to shed their immature notions of what life looks like. As a signature 80’s movie with a message it’s quite thin.

It’s roughly about the inherent selfishness we all must contend with at some point in life. We want what we can’t have. The image we have of ourselves and what we think we want are false. The name St. Elmo’s Fire is an illusion that sailors would sometimes observe because the electric field around an object, like a ship’s mast, creates a glow. From a distance it looks like fire. I’m probably not explaining it very well so here’s a description. Rob Lowe’s character Billy explains this to a distraught Jules (Demi Moore) in a scene that encapsulates the message of the film. The idea is that much of what we think we want out of life is an illusion.

Finding Connections

All of them have selfish interests and desires but struggle to shed their immature college selves. Even Wendy (Mare Winningham) in her frumpy-girl way wants a different path than the one her father tries to give her. She can’t let go of her infatuation with Billy no matter how much he takes advantage of her. Both Kirby (Estevez) and Kevin (McCarthy) pine for women they can’t have. Alec (Judd Nelson) wants a mistress and a wife but quickly learns he can’t have both. Jules (Demi Moore) wants to sleep with her boss and stay out late at parties. Billy is a father and young husband who spends his time flirting with groupies at the bar who come to watch his band. Of all the friends making the transition from college student to responsible adult, he has the hardest time.

The opening scene shows the friends in caps and gowns, crossing the quad of Georgetown University and walking toward us. It’s clear this story will involve a group dynamic in the post college phase of life. 

The strength of the story is that friendships can be meaningful and supportive with the right people. It fails on a basic level though to hold anyone accountable. We’re to believe that friendship is stronger than the mistakes we make in pursuit of our own pleasure. It’s not true of course. Relationships gets destroyed over the kind of drunk sex and dishonesty these kids engage in. But it’s a soap too. The force of emotion is supposedly stronger than the damage of betrayal. In its own way though, St. Elmo’s Fire gets it partly right. We do create illusions based on our perception of what’s important in life. But instead of selling us on responsibility it leads to a different illusion, one of self-discovery and false choices.

It turns out the solution to selfishness is…more selfishness.

Discovering the Format

The movie gets the attitudes right. There’s a party energy to the characters that fits a young adult in their post college phase of life; and an appropriate sadness when things fall apart. Jules in particular has an exaggerated sense of her own importance and charm. I wonder if Demi Moore was a lot like her character? Apparently she had some drug or alcohol problems during the filming. It’s mentioned in Brats as McCarthy sits down with her for an interview. She was required to be in rehab when not filming.

A common theme of the Brats documentary was how these movies examined the lives of the youth. Movies weren’t made like that before about 1980. Adult actors made movies with adult themes. This new breed featured young people, with problems that young people could supposedly relate to. John Hughes either wrote or directed a lot of these from the Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink to Sixteen Candles. St. Elmo’s Fire was Joel Schumacher. But the phrase Brat Pack became a generic phrase for any young star in this period. Hardly anyone knew who the original crew was. It’s kind of a running joke in Brats. Some think John Cryer and Lea Thompson, others think Timothy Hutton and Anthony Michael Hall were Brats.

But how bad could a phrase be that sums up your collective ‘sky’s the limit’ careers? The worst anyone can say is that’s it’s a little snarky. The writer David Blum used the word “brats” as a catch-all for upcoming talent while following the male crew of St. Elmo’s for the article. But he mentions Tom Cruise and Sean Penn as Brats in their own right. Most magazine features use a person or group of people as the backdrop for a larger movement. A similar piece on someone like Iggy Pop would’ve examined the larger punk rock movement happing in the country at that time. Other than the clever name it’s a straightforward feature.

Conclusion

The whole idea for the Brats documentary fell apart after the second or third interview. A  mean-spirited writer whose signature article doomed these talented actors doesn’t make sense when so many of them became famous. I think even Andrew McCarthy put that together for himself near the end. His star faded shortly after Weekend at Bernie’s but he isn’t an unknown. It’s also not clear how much he believed the angle of his own film. One of the producers from St. Emo’s (Donner I think) makes a great argument for the success of the New York magazine piece. Brats seems to take a turn into the maybe-she’s-right-about-the-article right around this point in the film.

But then McCarthy sits down with the author David Blum for a mea culpa of sorts about the article and its aftermath. Blum doesn’t offer one. Probably because I’m sympathetic to writers, I was pleased his Blum’s candor. Between the actors’ cocky behavior at the restaurant and their collective rising stars he though “brats” made sense. He has nothing to apologize for.

Neither should McCarthy feel overlooked, we can’t all be Rob Lowe after all. Maybe he should take the message of St. Elmo’s to heart and stop wishing for something he can’t have.