The Brat Pack: A Hollywood Historical Defining Moment
The mid-1980s Brat Pack films are as entertaining as they are illustrative of a change occurring in American film culture. Memorable coming-of-age pictures as The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, St. Elmo's Fire, and Pretty in Pink gave young people a mirror of their own life on the big screen that was once absent in Hollywood film.
In his New York Magazine piece coining the phrase "Brat Pack," David Blum positioned the performers as young and somewhat unworthy of their success. Still, the Brat Pack actors were accomplished artists of their trade despite their age. By developing a relevant view of young in the Movies, definitive Brat Pack stars Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy added innovative elements to Hollywood film culture.
Hollywood Rising From The Gritty New Hollywood Era Of The 1970s
Comprising all the best synth-heavy sounds of the 1980s, the Brats Documentary soundtrack is a fantastic reminder of where the Brat Pack films originated in time. Hollywood was coming out of the gritty New Hollywood Era in the 1980s. Often referred to as the Hollywood Renaissance, the mid-1960s to the early 1980s was a period of Hollywood film where filmmakers used more creative freedom over their works.
While before major studios had limited output, new directors arrived to Hollywood and could be auteurs of their work. Directors from the essential New Hollywood Era are Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorses, and Steven Spielberg. Musicales and historical pictures dominated Movies before the Hollywood Renaissance. Released in the late 1960s, movies including Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, Mike Nichol's The Graduate, and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde characterized and inaugurated the New Hollywood Era, so indicating the tides turning away from Hollywood's past. Directors of Essential New Hollywood produced more commandeering and unique stories. Gritty, edgy filmmaking emerged to challenge earlier restrictions on personal expression by both filmmakers and actors. The change cleared the path for the 1980s personal stories of young people to flourish.
Hollywood came to see that films on young people could be enormous moneymakers.
McCarthy focused in Brats on the 1980s shifts that resulted in the emergence of the Brat Pack. In her Brats interview, Susannah Gora—author of You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried—discussed the part malls performed in the Youth movement of the 1980s. Teenagers visited malls to see Movies with pals, hence increasing the motivation for filmmakers to appeal to young viewers.
Author of Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis, reflected the same idea. Teenagers were ready and able to commit their time buying tickets hours in advance, therefore guaranteeing their seats. Tim Hutton's participation in Ordinary People in 1980 helped young people to be more fairly shown in movies. At just twenty years old, Hutton received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1981, indicating that viewers embraced his honest depiction of young life. Hutton is the youngest actor ever to bring home the prize, therefore attesting to the importance of the change for Hollywood even today. Andrew McCarthy also interviewed Malcolm Gladwell in Brats to explain the social shifts orbiting the BRat Pack. Gladwell says the group's name suggested a generational shift occurring in Hollywood. As the pun on the Rat Pack stressed, the Brat Pack label marked the change to a new era of Hollywood. As Gladwell clarified, if the "Brat Pack" nickname were not a metaphor for that more significant societal change, it would not have had such longevity. The Brat Pack was leading the way as Hollywood started to pay more attention to the life of young people.
Hollywood Hadn't Paid Attention To Young Actors As The Main Drivers Of Movies Before The Brat Pack
Hollywood had not fully realized the possibilities of including young people as the major movie drivers before the Brat Pack. Generally, movies focused on grownups or considerably younger people. Remembering that movies were designated for "grown-up things," either serious or humorous, Gora spoke of the cultural change the Brat Pack drove in terms of her experience. She described how, for her, the quotable, classic Brat Pack film The Breakfast Club altered that since it was the first movie she had seen focused on topics pertinent to her life.
She contends, then, the Brat Pack films were "the golden age of youth cinema." Part of the appeal of concentrating on young people in movies, Gore notes, is that they offered a visual representation of the friend groupings young people so yearned for. The Brat Pack flicks accorded the relationships between friends the same value in movies as those fundamental ties set aside for romantic love. Interviewed in Brats, Michael Oates Palmer, a screenwriter, agreed that the Brat Pack films worked not only because they highlighted adolescent culture but also because they "took young people's life seriously". Perhaps best characterizing the period in Hollywood was legendary 1980s movie filmmaker John Hughes. Hughes saying young people at the time "a very receptive audience" appears in the Brats Documentary. It reflects how author Bret Easton Ellie characterized movies and Youthful culture—that young people are like sponges absorbing all around them. Rob Lowe adds in his interview near the close of the movie that not only is young culture where movies arrived in the 1980s, but it's where they have stayed since the society made that shift.
The Legacy of the Brat Pack: Still Influencing Hollywood
Unquestionably, the Brat Pack changed Hollywood. The films they starred in helped usher in a new age of young-centric filmmaking and mirrored the fears, aspirations, and worries of a generation. Audiences found great resonance in these films, which examined friendship, love, identity, and coming of age. The popularity of the Brat Pack's movies also proved the value of marketing and focusing on a particular audience, which helped studios to give young-oriented material more and more top priority.
The Brat Pack left behind a multifarious legacy. Their films have become cult masterpieces; their legendary characters still inspire and entertain; and their impact on Hollywood's attitude to depicting young people is clearly seen in films and television series today. Beyond their individual performances, the Brat Pack's influence on Hollywood extends to a cultural change that has molded the terrain of film and the portrayal of young people on television.
