There was a most unlikely casualty from the 1980s term Brat Pack: a major movie about the 1960s Woodstock music festival starring Andrew McCarthy and Emilio Estevez.
In McCarthy’s documentary “Brats,” (streaming now on Hulu), the actors discuss the Woodstock movie that was in the works, which the 1980s superstars were stoked to star in. But the project was killed because the ubiquitous Brat Pack term became so pervasive and career-derailing.
Estevez, 62, says in “Brats” that starring in movies with fellow Brat Packers at the time was impossible, since “we were kryptonite to each other.”
“Nobody wanted to be seen in a movie together,” McCarthy, 61, tells USA TODAY, adding that he and the others were too young to get over the Brat Pack term, which they all hated.
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“We perceived it as a limitation. Had we been older and more secure in ourselves, we would have gone, ‘To hell with them. Let’s do this movie together. It will be awesome,’ ” McCarthy says. “But we allowed it to exert power in our lives that it did not need to have.”
Which Andrew McCarthy and Emilio Estevez movie was canceled because of the Brat Pack?
In “Brats,” McCarthy films his first meeting with Estevez since the two actors appeared at the 1985 “St. Elmo’s Fire” premiere. The coming-of-age film − also starring Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson − is a cornerstone of the Brat Pack. The term was coined from a 1985 New York Magazine cover story.
“You and I didn’t do a movie because of it.” Estevez says in “Brats,” calling the Woodstock movie “one of the best scripts I had read in a long time.”
McCarthy confirms that the movie would have been based on the book “Young Men With Unlimited Capital: The Story of Woodstock,” as told by organizers of the famed ’60s music festival, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts (and author Robert Pilpel).
In “Brats,” McCarthy says Estevez pulled out of the movie first. “You were going to do it, and they wanted me to do it too, and then they told me that you didn’t want me to do it. It hurt my feelings a lot,” says McCarthy. “But I just assumed it was simply the Brat Pack fallout.”
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of us,” Estevez explains. “If it were Judd (Nelson), I would have said the same thing.”
In “Brats,” McCarthy comes to terms with the term Brat Pack during heartfelt on camera discussions with members like Lowe, Sheedy and Moore. Speaking to USA TODAY, the clean-cut actor is clear he’s also at peace with missing out on the Woodstock movie that would have been a significant departure.
“Who knows what would have happened?” McCarthy says with a smile. “I could never grow facial hair so that movie probably wasn’t for me.”
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