Brat Pack
Entry in progress—B.P.
Wikipedia: Brat Pack
The Brat Pack is a nickname given to a group of young actors who frequently appeared together in teen-oriented coming-of-age films in the 1980s. First mentioned in a 1985 New York magazine article, it is now usually described as the cast members of two specific films released in 1985 – The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire – although other actors are sometimes included. The “core” members are considered to be Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy.
The actors themselves were known to dislike the label. Many of their careers peaked in the middle of the 1980s but declined afterwards for various reasons. However, the films they starred in together are frequently referenced in popular culture and are regarded as some of the most influential of their time.
Membership
The term “Brat Pack”, a play on the Rat Pack from the 1950s and 1960s, was first popularized in a 1985 New York magazine cover story, which described a group of highly successful film stars in their early twenties. Writer David Blum wrote the article after witnessing several young actors (Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson) being mobbed by groupies at Los Angeles’ Hard Rock Cafe. The group has been characterized by the partying of members such as Robert Downey Jr., Estevez, Brimley, Lowe, and Nelson. However, an appearance in one or both of the ensemble casts of John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club and Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire is often considered the prerequisite for being a core Brat Pack member.
New York magazine
Hollywood’s Brat Pack
They’re Rob, Emilio, Sean, Tom, Judd, and the rest—the young movie stars you can’t quite keep straight. But they’re already rich and famous. They’re what kids want to see and what kids want to be.
By David Blum
From the June 10, 1985 issue of New York Magazine.
It was a Thursday night, and like all the Thursday nights in all the bars in all the cities in all the world where young people live, the Hard Rock Cafe brimmed over with boys and girls. This was Los Angeles, so the boys wore T-shirts and sunglasses and shorts, and the girls wore miniskirts and Madonna hairdos. Over the blare of rock music, the boys and girls were shouting jokes and stories to one another, talking about their jobs and their classes and their dreams, eating enormous cheeseburgers and washing them down with swigs from long-necked bottles of Corona beer.