Pretty In Pink

by Jonathan Bernstein

  “We take a bad rap,” declared Rob Lowe, addressing a Sacramento rally of screaming teenagers during his brief stint as a political agitator. “We’re the yuppie generation. Man, I hate that, I hate that almost as much as I hate the Brat Pack. Well, I’m here to tell you, I’m no Brat Packer and you’re not yuppies.” He was half right. His audience crossed economic boundaries but their perception of him was as an oversexed, overindulged, irresponsible purveyor of teenage fantasies, a suave swinger who kept movie sets waiting while he cavorted on a waterbed with a bunch of cheerleaders, a taser gun and a cowboy boot full of coke. In other words, a charter member of The Brat Pack. For some young actors who came to prominence in the eighties, inclusion under the Brat umbrella was a heinous example of character assassination.

  Natural selection gradually separated the performers whose potential stood a chance of being realized from the lightweights whose appeal dwindled with every inch they grew. Tom Cruise put a million miles of road between himself and the descending mantle of Brathood by plotting a career curve that savvily aligned him with credible veterans (Newman, Hoffman, Duvall, Scorsese, Stone), a ploy that emphasized his ambition and made his youthful vitality seem like an attribute rather than an affliction. Matt Dillon, an actor so moody he even played a character called Moody (in My Bodyguard), had his intense Irish brooding, his lethal cheekbones and his aura of menace and mystery to sustain him through even the most sluggish and inane of projects. Nicolas Cage, who came ascloseasthis to getting the role of John Bender in The Breakfast Club, had several sleevefulls of tricks. Just when you thought you had him pegged as your favorite Martian, he became the guy next door, then the hero, then the heavy, then the heartbreaker. Sean Penn cultivated a Brawling Poet persona. Robert Downey, Jr. is that enviable but unsatisfying entity, a performer of perpetual potential. The stars of C. Thomas Howell and Ralph Macchio rose and fell in tandem with those of the Brats, but somehow they lack the essential obnoxiousness to make them eligible for inclusion among that number. Demi Moore acted like a star till people believed she was one. Patrick Swayze, whose resume boasts The Outsiders and Red Dawn, was already in his late twenties and Timothy Hutton’s career went off the boil after Taps and Ordinary People (I’m not part of that loony Turk 182! fringe), which leaves …

  The Usual Suspects

  Who we talk about when we talk about The Brat Pack:

  EMILIO ESTEVEZ

  This scion of the Sheen dynasty refused to freeload off the name of his famous father. The proud use of his original family name was a proclamation to the world that he was no spoilt second-generation Hollywood son and heir, coasting through his career on favors and unearned goodwill (his brother Carlos’ decision to change his name to Charlie was another sort of statement). Estevez was the Renaissance Man of the Brats. By the time he turned 25 he had penned a screenplay (an adaptation of S. E Hinton’s That Was Then … This Is Now) and written, directed and starred in a movie, Wisdom. His work ethic and amiability made him the only one of this group to carry on a consistent, if moderately successful screen career into the nineties. What I’m trying to say here is, if the Brats were The Beatles, he would be George.

  ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL

  Has an opening credit ever filled an audience with such shivers of anticipation as Sixteen Candles’ “and Anthony Michael Hall as ‘The Geek’”? His unforgettable turn as Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation had already confirmed the pint-sized, preternaturally confident Hall (whose given name is Michael Anthony Hall) as the perfect conduit for John Hughes’ scattergun dialogue. However, his Geek was an astonishing amalgam of every conceivable irritating adolescent trait and his flawless performance marked Hall out as the premier comedic talent in teen movies. For his role in The Breakfast Club, he made the switch from stupid to serious, the same switch that comic actors the stature of Steve Martin, Billy Crystal and Bill Murray have never managed to pull off. Then the growth hormones kicked in. Weird Science was released only a matter of months after The Breakfast Club but all the schtick that once seemed so adorable was suddenly a whole lot less cute. And what was up with that old-black-man voice he kept lapsing into?

  ROB LOWE

  So pretty, he looked like he was carved out of soap. So clean, he looked like you could eat off him. And, as it turned out, many people did. Reluctant to ruin such flawless features, he rarely allowed any kind of reaction or emotion to cross his face. After the scandal-magnet of the videotape capturing him in flagrante with a youthful admirer, his line-free brow was eternally furrowed.

  ANDREW MCCARTHY

  The passive guy. Helplessly sucked down by the undertow of female desire, his bewildered fragility made him irresistible to Jacqueline Bisset in Class, Mary Stuart Masterson in Heaven Help Us and Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink and Fresh Horses. What inspired such licentious, lubricious behavior? A pair of panicked eyes that bulged out like those of a deer caught in headlights and a mouth stuck in the permanent pucker of a cat’s asshole.

  JUDD NELSON

  Judd’s mother used to be a Democratic representative to the Florida State legislature. His father was an attorney. These are professions that require one to be voluble, articulate and opinionated. It’s fair, I think, to suggest that those qualities rubbed off on young Judd. For those of us whose first experience of him was his force-of-nature, scenery-chomping turn in The Breakfast Club, it came as a shock to realize that he was always like that! Swaggering on screen with one hand full of bluster and the other packed with bombast, his entire career seemed to be an endless hysterical rehearsal for a one-man show titled I, Iconoclast.

  MOLLY RINGWALD

  The eighties were full of Girls On The Verge. Girls virtually vibrating with beauty, brains, personality and pep. There was Jami Gertz (the Teri Hatcher of her day), Virginia Madsen, Kelly Preston, Jenny Wright and many more. What made Molly Ringwald so special? That was the question posed by her movies. “What do you think about Samantha Baker?” asked Sixteen Candles’ lunkhead Jake (Michael Schoeffling) of his chin-up partner. “You really don’t think she’s got something?” enquired Pretty in Pink’s insecure Blane (Andrew McCarthy) of his preppie pal. Even in The Breakfast Club, raging bull John Bender (Judd Nelson) was driven to impossible heights of abuse by the demolition job Ringwald’s princess was doing on his roughneck heart. She was the girl next door but she somehow sort of wasn’t. The red hair was a mitigating factor in infusing Ringwald’s ordinariness with a hint of the exotic. That intangible quality, coupled with her formidable battery of pained reactions, briefly made her America’s eighties Everygirl.

  ALLY SHEEDY

  Ally Sheedy should have had Jennifer Jason Leigh’s career. If this book was a sitcom, I’d be pausing right about now for the laugh track to kick in. Stupid as it is, I stand stubbornly by the statement. Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy just stank of presence: weird, uncomfortable presence, but presence just the same. Obviously, her soaring performance—her Gypsy, her Evita, her Mommie Dearest—was as The Breakfast Club’s dandruff-flecked wacko, but go back to her earlier work and she’s still stinking. Even though she’s not playing more than standard girlfriend roles in Bad Boys, War Games and Oxford Blues, she’s still simmering with untapped sexuality; it’s in the way she raises her pointy chin, the taunt in her eyes and the lazy drawl of her voice. (Or it could be me.) If she hadn’t tidied up her hair, if she hadn’t played a succession of supporting roles, if she’d found a director who saw the weirdness within, maybe she’d have had a glittering career of junkies, hookers and emotional trainwrecks ahead of her. Our loss.

  Bonfire of the Vanities

  Popularity is a pit bull. It can ensure fame and respect come your way or it can turn on you like a … uh … wild dog. The transition of public figures from pinups to punchlines is often brutally swift. For the Brat Pack, the turning point came in the summer of 1985. What was it that caused the world to look on this group with such open derision?

  Was it that sudden fame had made them unbearable? Was it t
he drunken skirmishes outside lurid nightspots? Was it the flaunting of ill-gotten riches? Was it the speeding tickets? Was it that they all started wearing glasses and pretending they knew who the President was? These were all contributing factors but the main reason for the Brats’ collapse can be summed up in three words: St. Elmo’s Fire.

  Sanity, restraint and coherence exit via the ejector seat in this multi-storyline smash-up chronicling the floundering of a gaggle of self-satisfied Georgetown grads. The least toilet-trained of this group of big babies is Rob Lowe’s Billy Hixx, a deadbeat dad and itinerant sax honker (when we see him perform in a painfully elongated musical sequence, he’s like an asthmatic Clarence Clemons). Billy’s distaff counterpart is Jules (Demi Moore), a frazzled fast-track party slut whose knuckles drag under the weight of two armsful of bangles and whose nostrils are about to evaporate under the pressure of the buckets of blow she’s vacuuming up. Always on call to rescue Jules from being gang-banged by Arabs or bail Billy out of jail is Alec Newberry (Judd Nelson), the college political firebrand who’s suddenly done a postgraduation volte-face, throwing in his lot with a Republican senator. “We could get a longer sofa,” is his rationale to girlfriend Leslie Hunter (Ally Sheedy, her witchy weirdness diluted by shorn hair, lacy blouses and pearls). Pining away for Leslie is Kevin Dolenz (Andrew McCarthy), a bitter, blocked hack attempting to maintain an air of slit-eyed, nicotine-clouded cynicism while beavering away on an op-ed piece about The Meaning of Life. Sharing Kevin’s unrequited obsessive nature is his roomie Kirby Kager (Emilio Estevez), a law student smitten by a chance encounter with Dale Biberman (Andie MacDowell), a doctor with whom he once had a date. Last, and definitely least, there’s Wendy (Mare Winningham), the frumpy virginal doormat in love with and endlessly tolerant of Billy. The conscience of the group, Wendy disdains their heartless pursuit of materialism, choosing to help the needy by slaving for the Department of Human Resources. “You get yourself some hot clothes and get yourself a man and you won’t be worrying about all this shit,” advises a welfare recipient she attempts to aid.

  How do you even begin to pick a highlight from St. Elmo’s embarrassment of riches? The blatant and strenuous attempt by the movie’s quartet of boy Brats to outdiva one another makes nominating an outstanding performance almost impossible. Emilio Estevez initially seems to be the least impressive of the four. But discount at your peril his stalking of dishy doctor Andie MacDowell, whom he has earlier described as “the only evidence of God that I can find on this entire planet with the exception of the mystical force that removes one of my socks from the dryer every time I do the laundry.” Riding his bike in the pouring rain to a delightful uptown dinner party, he presses his soaked nose to the windowpane, sucking in every inch of her coltish beauty. Unable to restrain himself, he crashes the do, squelches in and approaches MacDowell. She turns and drawls, “How are yew?” His agonized reply: “I’m obsessed, thank you very much.” Figuring she’s the kind of gal who’s turned on by a high roller, he uses the house of the Korean lobbyist for whom he’s working to throw a loud, lurid party in her honor. When she fails to show, he tracks her all the way up to the ski lodge where she’s, of course, weekending with a concerned medic. She tries to let him down gently, saying she’s flattered, whereupon he grabs her and lays a big deep sucking kiss on her. This has the effect of transferring his infatuation. She’s left shivering in the snow, her womanhood awakened. He speeds off whooping and punching the air in triumph. Good going, dude.

  Andrew McCarthy is called upon to participate in one of the most stupefying scenes in contemporary popular culture when he—not the most spontaneous of performers, I think it’s fair to say—has to screech along in an unshackled castrato to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” all the while pounding on a pair of bongos and bouncing around on a bed in a state of electrified abandon. It’s only just compensation that his piece on The Meaning of Life finally sees print. On the front page of The New York Times.

  For Rob Lowe, the movie was a chance to show that he was more than the poreless, porcelain doll of the aggregate. Here, he was the irresponsible, immature, promiscuous bad boy, stunning in skinny tie and shades, the catch phrase “It was out of hand” always dangling from his lips. Though his overpowering pulchritude makes his costars seem like a mound of dog turds (and the guys don’t come off looking too good, either), he only has one scene where he’s fully in the zone. Seeking to revenge herself on the husband who’s treating her like side salad, Billy’s wife Felicia (Jenny Wright, so good in Near Dark), turns up at the bar where he’s wheezing into his axe with a hunk on her arm. “Get your hands off my wife, man,” yells Billy, jumping off the stage and initiating a big brawl that spills out into the street. “… you ever have boys, do me a favor and have them neutered straight away … they knock up some bitch and they’re fucked, FUCKED FOR LIFE!” declares Billy. “I hate you, you little bitch.” Felicia’s date knocks Billy on his ass. She sees the blood, gasps “Billy” and, seconds later, they’re devouring each other.

  But St. Elmo’s’ garlands go to The Juddster. In The Breakfast Club, he was the movie’s unacknowledged center, here he’s openly and often referred to as the group’s leader. It is not a position he takes lightly. When he’s not doing that combination eye-popping, nostril-flaring, hair-flicking thing, he’s striking noble poses like Greta Garbo in Queen Christina. His biggest, maddest, Juddest hit is Alec’s epochal breakup scene with Ally Sheedy’s Leslie. He wants to marry her, but she can’t commit and has an inkling that he can’t keep it in his pants. She calls him on it, he throws her out and she, on the rebound, ends up in bed with Andrew McCarthy’s lovestruck scribbler. Which is, of course, where a contrite Alec finds her. She turns up a couple of days later to remove her belongings from the massive loft where once they happily cohabited. She hoped to find him gone, but in he stomps, thunderous and clutching a pigskin. “You can’t have the Pretenders’ first album. You can have all the Billy Joel, except The Stranger. NO SPRINGSTEEN IS LEAVING THIS HOUSE!! You ran out on this relationship, you take the consequences.” When he accuses her of fucking McCarthy’s Kevin, she rightly retorts “You fucked many.” Astounded, he protests, “Nameless, faceless many.” She goes to another room and he sits alone, wounded, desolate and posing up a storm. Finally, he can take no more. “Wasted Love!” he bellows like he was announcing a song title, then hurls the pigskin across the huge loft. “God, I just wish I could get it back!”

  Small wonder, faced with such an onslaught, that the ladies of St. Elmo’s were trampled underfoot. But it turns out to be Demi Moore’s addled fuck toy Jules, that paradigm of her decade (who blithely rationalized sleeping with her boss with the retort, “This is the eighties. Bop him for a few years, get his job when he gets his hand caught in the vault, become a legend, do a black mink ad, get caught in a massive sex scandal and retire in disgrace, then write a huge best-seller and become a fabulous host of my own talk show”) who gives the movie its big heartfelt climax. Her lush life turns out to have been a lie, her credit line has been cut off, the furniture in her big pink apartment (with its wall-filling mural of Billy Idol) has been repossessed, she is fired from her job. Huddled in a shivering foetal position in her locked apartment with the windows open and the winter wind sending her curtains billowing in the familiar MTV fashion, Moore is a picture of existential emptiness and despair.

  This, the movie tells us, is where the empty-headed pursuit of money, power, sex, drugs and pink furniture gets you. Her friends all attempt to break into the apartment (apart from Alec, who tries to drop Kevin off a fire escape), but it takes fellow fuck-up Billy to talk Jules back from the edge. “This isn’t real.… It’s St. Elmo’s Fire,” he says, not by way of disassociating himself from the calamity in which he’s stranded but in reference to the seafaring legend of fire in the sky. “They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough.” Billy looks away from Jules and straight at us. “We’re all going through this,” he assures th
ose in the audience left catatonic by their canceled credit. “Hey, this is our time on the edge.” Grateful for his unexpected empathy (he’s earlier attempted to put the moves on her), she breathes, “I never thought I’d be so tired at twenty-two.”

  His job done, Billy departs for New York and a new life (but not before tenderly devirginizing Wendy). The remaining members of the group (Alec, Kevin and Leslie have resolved to remain friends till she makes up her mind between them) pause outside St. Elmo’s bar, the scene of so many of their youthful reveries. Should they go in for a brewski? They’ve all got work in the morning and make arrangements to meet for brunch that Sunday. But not at St. Elmo’s. “Why don’t we go to Houlihan’s? It’s not so noisy, not so many kids.”

  For all that it was reviled on its release and for all that it might seem to be an artifact entirely specific to the eighties, St. Elmo’s Fire is, I contend, another movie that’s way ahead of its time. With its affectations, ludicrous plotlines and thudding performances, this film is the cornerstone from which Melrose Place and MTV’s The Real World eventually grew. The tantrums and tirades thrown by these series’ ensembles of posturing, humorless, attention-craving early twenties idiots are distant, tinny echoes of the original inanities delivered by Nelson, Lowe, McCarthy, et al. Totally quotable, endlessly watchable, lovely to look at—writer/director Joel Schumacher delivers innumerable Washington fall and winter tableaux—and gruesome to listen to (David Foster’s saccharine score is smeared obtrusively over every scene), St. Elmo’s met a swift and brutal end at the hands of both critics and ticket buyers, dashing the hopes of many … of several … of me for a thirtysomething-style sequel. In order to distance themselves from the debacle which had the effect of compartmentalizing the Brats as self-infatuated camera-hoggers only comfortable among their own kind, the component parts of the group split into separate entities, venturing forth under their own steam.