The Brat Pack, but no Breakfast Club? Why members are missing from the Andrew McCarthy documentary

Andrew McCarthy has now accepted and even loved the Brat Pack. But it has been a long road.

For years, the Pretty In Pink and St. Elmo’s Fire actor bristled at the mention of the unflinching description forced on a generation of young aspiring stars in the 1980s. But in his new Hulu documentary Brats (out Thursday), McCarthy seeks out other forever-entrenched members – stars like Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez – to talk about the Brat Pack.

“All of this happened to just a handful of us, the only ones who know what it feels like. But we never talked about it,” director McCarthy, 61, tells USA TODAY of his “Brats” discussions with co-stars he hadn’t spoken to in decades. “Something really profound happened in our lives, and they were willing to talk about it with me on camera.”

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How did Andrew McCarthy get the Brat Pack to speak in “Brats”?

“Brats” begins with McCarthy making contact with the Brat Pack by building up old contacts and even getting Judd Nelson’s phone number from a manager. McCarthy makes the first filmed call to Estevez, who was the subject of a scathing 1985 New York Magazine cover story that coined the term “Brat Pack.”

“I felt like I’d lost the core of my career overnight,” McCarthy says of the infamous article. The ensemble film “St. Elmo’s Fire” (starring Estevez, Moore, Sheedy, Lowe and Nelson), released a few weeks later, became the red-hot center of the Brat Pack sensation.

Contrary to popular belief, the Brat Pack members did not hang out with each other, especially after the article came out. And they did not stay in touch. McCarthy’s cold calls to unleash the “Brats” are blatant. Many go to voicemail.

“When I call someone, it’s the first time in over 30 years. But it’s like, ‘Let’s call Emilio,'” says McCarthy. “I wanted the audience to go on this journey with me. I seem suspicious and scared at first.”

When McCarthy meets the 62-year-old Estevez in “Brats” at his Malibu home, it’s their first face-to-face meeting since the premiere of “St. Elmo’s Fire.” The conversation turns to Estevez’s telling past comment that “Brat Pack will be on my tombstone” (he still believes that and accepts it). The “Young Guns” actor also reveals that he avoided acting in films with McCarthy and the others because they were “kryptonite to each other.”

“Emilio was particularly poignant,” McCarthy says of the discussion before the two hugged.

In back-to-back conversations with Lowe, Sheedy and Moore (whom he calls “the Obi-Wan Kenobi of my film”), McCarthy explores the Brat Pack’s confusing past and the long, often painful road to appreciating their shared history.

“Everyone started at the same point: Everyone hated it when it happened. And then everyone adapted to it differently over time,” McCarthy says. “But we never talked about it because the moment it happened, those relationships broke down and those ensemble movies stopped. Nobody wanted to be in a movie together. So naming the Brat Pack in a way marked the end of the Brat Pack.”

Are Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson starring in “Brats”?

John Hughes’ 1985 film “The Breakfast Club” is a cornerstone of the Brat Pack library. The cast includes Estevez, Sheedy, Nelson and Molly Ringwald. The latter two stars ultimately did not sit for “Brats” interviews.

“We asked Judd, we asked Molly,” says McCarthy. “It didn’t work out.”

There is a recurring “Brats” theme in which McCarthy wrestles with Nelson – talking to him on the phone, leaving messages, and traveling to Los Angeles, where he finds that Nelson is out of town.

“Then (Nelson) finally said, ‘You know what? I don’t feel like doing this.’ Which is fine,” says McCarthy, who points out that Nelson and Ringwald appear in “Brats” through “really insightful” archival interviews.

It is painful to see the old recordings in which the actors are asked about the derived term in interviews.

“For the first two months, the Brat Pack is mentioned constantly. And we react to it, often wincing and cringing,” McCarthy says. “Every press secretary, of course, said, ‘No Brat Pack questions.’ So everyone asks about it without using those two words. It’s really embarrassing because that was obviously forbidden. But that didn’t work either.”

Through the “Brats” interviews, which also feature pop culture social scientist Malcolm Gladwell, McCarthy deepens his assessment of why fans looked up to these stars during the Brat Pack-led explosion of youth films.

“The public very quickly understood, ‘This is great. These guys represent us,'” McCarthy says. “So they understood something we didn’t understand at the beginning.”

Thirty-nine years after the article, people still talk about the Brat Pack and share memories with McCarthy on the streets of New York City, where he lives. He welcomes these conversations with gratitude.

“In this film, we’re all thinking from ‘What the hell was that?’ to ‘Wow, that was a beautiful thing.’ We’re the avatars of the youth of a generation. I wouldn’t give that up for anything in the world. But if you had told me that 30 years ago, I would have said you were crazy.”

Like Estevez, McCarthy is convinced that the Brat Pack will follow him even after death.

“If there’s an obituary, it’s in the first sentence. Fair play. The nice thing is that I’m OK with it now. It’s like I’m accepting it.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Andrew McCarthy got a handle on the Brat Pack for the ‘Brats’ documentary