Every generation has their cultural icons.

For Gen-X, it was a group of young up and coming actors taking Hollywood by storm.

Over a 5 year span, this rotating group of actors was everywhere. For the first time in history, teens and young adult movies completely dominated the industry. 

These actors quickly became the ‘It Crew’ - hearthrobbing their way through Hollywood, plastered all over magazines and killing it with one box office banger after another.

But then in 1985, a magazine article was published changing the trajectory of their careers seemingly overnight.

ANALOG CLICKBAIT 

In the article, the author coined a sticky label pigeonholeing this dozen or so group of actors into a single identity. 

That label? 

The Brat Pack: A play on words based on the 60's Rat Pack, a close-knit group of Las Vegas entertainers who frequently performed together onstage and in films.

And just like that, their Hollywood stories went from "promising young talent" to "entitled, overexposed, lightweights".

FALLOUT 

In a town where perception outruns reality every day of the week and twice on Sunday, through no fault of theirs, these actors' reputation took a hit.

Once news of the article spread, their phones rang less. Roles that had been actively pursued weeks earlier simply disappeared.

Their agents warned them to stop working together because it was potential career sabotage. Friendships suffered, in some cases, they stopped speaking altogether.

FAST FORWARD

In 2024, one of the main Brat Packers, Andrew McCarthy, made a documentary to try and understand what that label represented to his peers.

He tracks down some of the original members, most of which he hasn't spoken to in over 30 years. Some even declined to participate; his guess being that the wounds from the label were still too raw.

The doc is a series of heart to heart conversations showcasing how each actor dealt with the label and their experiences once the spotlight faded. They even visit the magazine author who maintains, he meant no harm and was just trying to sell magazines. 

STICKER SHOCK

Labels are lazy by nature. They’re low-effort generalizations created without context or compassion.

They’re stickers printed in factories you’ve never been to, by people you’ll never meet, who don’t know a damn thing about you.

Yet modern society swears by them because living without categories makes people uncomfortable.

As dyslexics, by the time we’re old enough to question the labels stuck on us ("lazy," "doesn't apply themselves," "careless," "not living up to potential"), we’re shocked to find we’ve already absorbed them.

The relationship with ourselves gets built on a foundation someone else poured. Our self-esteem, confidence, sense of self take shape without our awareness or consent.

We’re living inside someone else's interpretation of who we are or should be. 

RITE OF PASSAGE 

McCarthy's documentary doesn't pretend the Brat Pack label was harmless. It wasn’t.

Jobs were lost. Relationships fractured. Mental health suffered.

What surprised McCarthy was how emotional and healing the process became.

His biggest shift came through conversations with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, who had both reframed the experience differently.

For years, McCarthy had measured the label by what it cost him.  

But Lowe and Moore helped him see how multiple generations were using Brat Pack films as guides through adolescence. The Brat Pack was coming of age, rite of passage material teaching millions of teens how to navigate friendship, identity and belonging.

McCarthy had been so focused on loss, he had missed how his work impacted generations at the peak of their development.

Nothing about the past changed. The article still happened. The Brat Pack label remained.

What changed was his interpretation of it.

WHAT IF?

• What if the behaviors you've spent decades resenting have an upside you haven't calculated?
  

• What if the traits you've been trained to see as deficits were misread?

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