The filmmakers knew early on that casting the role of Jules, the glamorous, hard-partying investment banker whose coke-snorting lifestyle distracts her from a heart broken by a lack of parental love, would be quite challenging. “It is a very complex role,” says Schumacher. “She has to be very sophisticated on one hand, but really a child on the other hand…She has to have a nervous breakdown, and yet also be very funny, and brave, and sexy, and have many qualifications.”
By this point, Demi Moore had appeared only on General Hospital and in a couple of small film roles before costarring opposite Michael Caine in the forgettable comedy Blame It on Rio. But the way she lived her life at that time seemed informed by the desire to be, unlike the roles she’d already had, unforgettable. “In those days,” says Schumacher, Moore “rode a big motorcycle, with this long black hair down to her waist, no helmet. She was a wild child.”
Moore’s upbringing had been a challenging one, to say the least. Born November 11, 1962, in Roswell, New Mexico, Demetria Gene Guynes lived through frequent relocations (at least two dozen by the time she was fourteen), parental alcoholism, and, when she was in high school, the suicide of the man she believed to be her father. This man, it turned out, was her stepfather—her birth father had left before Demi was even born. At age fifteen, she moved to Hollywood with her mother, where she attended Fairfax High School (she dropped out when she was sixteen). Two years later, in 1980, she married rocker Freddie Moore; they divorced in 1984. “Demi had a checkered past,” says Schumacher. “I know there were rough times.” She also went through health challenges as an adolescent: she suffered from a kidney malfunction and underwent surgeries for a wandering eye.
Shuler Donner recalls Moore’s audition warmly. “I think she had gotten there in the nick of time,” Shuler Donner laughs. “She came on her motorcycle, and she had a few tags on her clothes. I thought it was so endearing. It showed me that she made an effort, she got new clothes to come to the audition. And she was Jules. I can’t imagine anybody else in that role but Demi Moore.” Neither could Schumacher, and she won the part.
But as preproduction on the St. Elmo’s shoot began, there were signs of trouble with Moore. One day, she arrived with a friend at a costume fitting drunk and high. Then, Kurlander says, Schumacher pulled her aside. “Joel has been very public about the fact that when he was in his early twenties he had some drug issues and had to clean up, and survived,” Kurlander says, “and so he said to her, ‘Go kill yourself on somebody else’s movie. I’m not gonna let you be on this movie and kill yourself.’” Moore’s behavior may have been partially inspired by a desire to get into the head of the hard-partying character she was playing. “That was why she was doing that,” producer Michelle Manning recalls telling director Schumacher, who, she says, retorted “No, it’s called acting.”
“I’m going to have to watch her, and be careful with her,” McCarthy remembers Schumacher telling him. And indeed, he more than watched her. According to Manning, with Ally Sheedy’s help, Schumacher staged an intervention. “You’ve got ten days to clean yourself up,” Kurlander remembers Schumacher telling her, which finally led Moore to get sober. Shuler Donner recalls, “She checked herself in. She went through the program. She had somebody with her during the filming. She was committed. We always supported her. I think it was kind of like, she knew that if she did it, then she would have a movie and have a career and have a new life. Which she did. She deserves a lot of credit.” As does Schumacher, who helped Moore every day while she was in rehab, and whose actions here Kurlander describes as “heroic.” Says Schumacher, “She certainly, absolutely said good-bye to ‘wild child.’”
With Moore sober, determined, and ready to work, the cast and filmmakers met for their first table read on October 1, 1984, in Burbank. It was the first time many of the actors who would go on to be known as the “Brat Pack” were in a room together. “You had all these people who had careers that were on the rise—people we were watching,” says Kurlander. He remembers the tone in the room being anything but loose. “Everyone was kind of guarded,” he says of the young cast, who were fully aware of what these starring roles could mean to their budding careers. “You have to live up to who you are. There was a kind of a vulnerability, like, ‘How do I size up here? Who will end up with a real career?’ And all these things that were unspoken.”
Some members of the cast had known each other before socially, or had worked together. Sheedy says that she was “really close” with Estevez and Nelson from having just filmed The Breakfast Club. She also had already made a movie with Lowe, Oxford Blues, “so Rob was ‘old home week’ for me, too,” she says. However, having made a movie together earlier didn’t necessarily guarantee instant camaraderie that day. Kurlander remembers of McCarthy, the shy, more reserved actor with the East Coast mentality, that “though he had done Class with Rob, it wasn’t like, ‘Hey, how are ya man?” (As Kurlander points out, “Making a movie with somebody doesn’t automatically bond you with them. Why would it?”) But in the midst of the serious tone at the table read, a T-shirt worn incongruously by MacDowell, the elegant supermodel, lightened the mood. It said, “If you love something, set it free, and if it doesn’t come back to you, hunt it down and kill it.”
Although the group of people gathered at that table read would go on to become one of the most famous “packs” in entertainment history, at that moment they were still just a bunch of relative newbies whose careers were beginning to take shape. “It was so interesting to be at the table,” says Kurlander, “and watch them all come together—this force that ultimately would be called various things, but frankly, it was just a group of the best actors that we could find for these roles out of the hundreds and hundreds of people we had seen.”
The first nine days of the shoot were to be done on location in Washington, D.C.’s, Georgetown neighborhood, before filming moved west to Burbank, where the “St. Elmo’s Bar” and other sets were built. Filmmakers drew inspiration for the look and feel of the pub set from two iconic bars in Georgetown: The Tombs, and The Third Edition. Although the film centers on a group of recent Georgetown University grads, the movie couldn’t film at Georgetown because the Jesuit school forbade it, largely because of the plot’s premarital sex. A decade earlier, the school had permitted filming of the The Exorcist, which Schumacher found a tad hypocritical. Upon being told by a priest that his film could not be shot there, a puzzled Schumacher pithily asked, “Excuse me, Father, but isn’t this the institution where a film was made where a prepubescent child masturbates with a crucifix and says, ‘Your mother sucks cocks in hell?’” Taken aback, but without missing a beat, the priest responded, “Yes, Mr. Schumacher, but in The Exorcist, God wins over the devil, which does not seem to be the case in your movie.” The film’s rejection from Georgetown made waves in the local media, and soon enough, officials at the nearby (and comparably scenic) University of Maryland made their campus available to the filmmakers.
Ultimately, it was a good thing the Jesuits weren’t around on the University of Maryland shoot, because there was plenty of idol worshipping going on, in the form of thousands of screaming fans hoping to catch a glimpse of teen heartthrob Rob Lowe. Many of the scenes filmed at U of M centered on Lowe’s roguish character, a lost soul who still hovers around his alma mater. Poignantly shot, and spotlighting Billy’s growing despair over his misspent youth, these scenes are some of the meatiest of Lowe’s career—but the throngs of crowds were more interested in Lowe as a piece of meat. “Almost every girl in that school was out there,” says Lauren Shuler Donner, who corralled the assistant directors and other crew to spirit Lowe off the set and to safety. “That was when we knew, oh my God, he’s a big star.”
Not that Lowe didn’t bring some of the attention upon himself. “We had thousands of people—huge crowds,” says Schumacher of one memorable day on the shoot. “Rob was in his [trailer] with Emilio, and I guess he was changing out of his costume, and there were all of these screaming yo
ung ladies outside, separated by a barrier. Rob says to Emilio, ‘Watch this,’ and he threw open the door. He was stark naked. And then he immediately slammed the door and locked it.” At which point, Schumacher recalls, “this mass of people moved forward,” knocking the barrier down. They rushed the trailer, says Schumacher, “and I thought the whole thing was going to tip over.”
When they had downtime during the location shoot, the cast found ways to amuse themselves. Judd Nelson checked out the spooky staircase from which a priest falls to his death in The Exorcist: “I scared the crap out of myself,” Nelson remembers. “Emil wouldn’t go there with me.” But for the most part, these were busy days in which Schumacher had to visually capture the emotional tone that would flavor the entire movie—imagery of beautiful young friends in an autumnally hued Georgetown, surrounded by crisp, red leaves and the melancholy light of fall sunshine.
Soon the cast and crew were back in L.A., for the remainder of the shoot. Kurlander and Schumacher were constantly rewriting the dialogue to make it ring true to the characters as the shoot went on, eliminating long monologues and refining scenes. (Lowe’s character’s trademark phrase, “This is out of hand,” was originally the even worse “This is awesome.”) “I was on the set every day, trying to rewrite every day, to make sure the lines worked,” says Kurlander.
There were some challenges filming the climactic sex scene between Leslie (Sheedy) and Kevin (McCarthy). In one of the movie’s more memorable sequences, after Leslie discovers a box of photos of her that Kevin has kept for years, he, drunk on love and brandy, reveals to her, “You’re all I think about. And I think that the reason I’m not interested in other women, and why I haven’t had sex in so long, is because I am desperately, completely in love with you.” Nervousness overcomes him, and he takes another drink. “We won’t even remember this tomorrow,” Kevin says, to which an enthralled Leslie replies, “Kevin, it is tomorrow.” The filming of the ensuing sex scene was difficult for Sheedy. “I could not wait for that to be over,” says the actress. “I didn’t actually know that Andrew was going to have to be on top of me in a chair, looking as if we were actually having sex. I thought it would be kissing and then a romantic fadeout, and then that’s it.” When the script said “in the shower,” Sheedy recalls, “I thought, kissing. I didn’t know I would have to take my clothes off, I didn’t know any of that until the day of.” Though not actually naked during the scene—“I had a little body suit,” says Sheedy—she felt emotionally exposed. “I was absolutely, out of my mind, horrified.”
McCarthy helped her tremendously. “He was extremely protective of me,” she says, “and I really, really needed it.” McCarthy recalls an element of the shoot that might have added to Sheedy’s feeling a bit rattled: “What I remember about it is Joel being unsatisfied that it wasn’t hot enough, passionate enough. And Joel, in the way only Joel could do, screamed out, ‘You’re FUCKING! Action!’” Then, McCarthy remembers, “Ally burst into tears. And I just stood up, naked, and said, ‘What the fuck is the matter with you?!’ And Joel said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’” Says McCarthy, “I mean, I love Joel. But it was not the appropriate thing to say at that moment for that actress, or for me.” Ultimately, though, the scene turned out rather tastefully, thanks to Schumacher, who “was very careful with how he shot it so he wouldn’t have anything showing,” says Sheedy. (The screenplay’s language guaranteed an R rating, so Schumacher wasn’t constrained by that.) “He knew I felt awkward, and he shot it fast. He didn’t draw it out into this painful exercise at all.”
The resulting scene, featuring lots of moving shots and images of Sheedy’s beautiful back, does not show her face very much. “I am so glad my face wasn’t in it,” she says, “because I was dead. Scared.” The scene’s erotic tension is cut when McCarthy and Sheedy, showering together at the end of the sex montage, happen to push the shower door out of its frame. “That was an accident,” says Sheedy, which Schumacher was wise enough to include in the film. In the ensuing shot of her and McCarthy cracking up, she says, “It was my real laugh there.”
In the calm aftermath of Kevin and Leslie’s consummation, Alec (Nelson) stops by and catches them post-coitus, which sets off an intense contretemps. For Sheedy, it was the moment she most connected to in the entire movie: “That is the only scene that I truly felt I completely inhabited. And the rest of it, I felt like I knew for sure that I was playing somebody. Not that I couldn’t be there and do it, but I felt like I was stepping into somebody else’s shoes in that movie. Except for that one scene.”
In February, Sheedy attended the Breakfast Club premiere, “and it was a big deal,” she recalls. Schumacher also was there, and was beaming with pride at Sheedy’s performance, particularly because of how remarkably different the Allison and Leslie characters were. After the release of The Breakfast Club, Sheedy, Estevez, and Nelson were bigger stars, which was welcome news for Columbia.
However, the studio absolutely hated the title of St. Elmo’s, and kept trying to have it changed. “Nobody will know what St. Elmo’s Fire is,” executives insistently pleaded with the producers, Shuler Donner recalls. The studio sent a thirty-five-page memorandum to the filmmakers outlining their problems with the title and suggesting other names, such as Sparks and The Real World. They even sent staff to the streets asking random people if they would see a movie called “St. Elmo’s Fire.” But Schumacher believed in Kurlander’s title, and fought Columbia to keep it.
Filmmakers also faced some challenges when it came to dressing the apartments of the characters. In Kevin (McCarthy) and Kirby (Estevez)’s apartment, the furniture is cheap, the knickknacks lying around (many of which were Kurlander’s actual possessions) are uninspiring, the place is messy, and completely lacking any kind of decorative style, save, perhaps, a Woody Allen poster or two. In other words, it’s a realistic eighties pad for two twentysomething guys barely out of college. But the other apartments in the movie didn’t go for quite such an accurate look, and the filmmakers received a lot of flak over it.
Jules (Moore)’s apartment could have been straight out of the pages of a magazine spread. It boasted chic, crisp, modern furniture, cotton-candy pink walls, and a floor-to-ceiling painting of Billy Idol’s defiantly sneering face, complete with an electrified, glowing neon earring. The apartment shared by Leslie (Sheedy) and Alec (Nelson) was a bowling-alley-size loft with a California kitchen and an artfully shot, black-and-white Nike ad covering an entire wall. “It’s ridiculously fictitious if you look at the movie in any kind of real terms,” said Ned Tanen. “These kids are living pretty well, in exquisitely furnished apartments.” Kurlander recalls, “I remember fighting with Joel and saying to him, ‘None of my friends can afford these apartments!’” It was something that filled New York–based actor Jon Cryer “with rage,” he says. “I would watch it and go, ‘Oh, c’mon! They’re just out of college. They can’t have apartments like that! What happened to the cinder-block bookshelves? Where are the milk crates? Where’s the futon?’”
But Schumacher’s choice to dress the apartment sets so gorgeously was a deliberate one: “I felt that a lot of youth movies were given a cheap production because, what did it matter? They were just youth movies. And I thought, why not give young people movie stars, with great clothes, and great sets, and great cars? Glamour was very much a concept of mine.” His choice also reflected the materialistic era quite well, “especially since it was such a representation of Reaganomics and the yuppiefication of the time,” recalls Schumacher, “where people were so willing to go into debt just to have image.”
St. Elmo’s Fire and its assorted political conundrums became a cultural touchstone for many civic-minded young people. “When I worked on the [Bill] Clinton campaign,” says the film’s cowriter Carl Kurlander, “George Stephanopoulos came up to me and told me that St. Elmo’s meant something to him. I spoke with people on the campaign who had watched the movie so many times.” The film’s plot introduced many of its youngest viewers to the bas
ics of political ideology: “What the hell is the two-year president of Georgetown’s Young Democrats doing working for a Republican?” Emilio Estevez’s Kirby asks Judd Nelson’s Alec. “Moving up,” Alec explains—he makes more money with the Republicans.“It was a sellout move,” says Nelson. Reagan had swept the ’84 election, winning forty-nine states, and for many young adults of the time, suggests Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative journal National Review, “liberalism, which had been exciting and new in the ’60s, ossified and became out of touch.”
Though she’s a caring friend, St. Elmo’s Fire’s most materialistic character by far is the uber-yuppie Jules, a sexy, glamorous, cocaine-snorting international banker who’s having an affair with her boss. When her pals try to intervene, Jules laughs: “This is the eighties! I’ll boff him for a few years, get his job when he gets his hands caught in the vault, become a legend, do a Black Mink ad, get caught in a sex scandal and retire a massive disgrace, write a huge bestseller and become a fabulous host of my own talk show!” On the other end of the gang’s spectrum of values (and yet a dear friend of Jules) is Wendy (Winningham), a well-born girl who chooses to work in a welfare office, and gives her father back the expensive car he’s bought her because, as she explains, she doesn’t “feel right driving a car like that and then working with people who can’t afford to eat.”
You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation Page 13