#257. 'Brats'
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Andrew McCarthy's Hulu documentary Brats, in which he revisits the 1985 New York magazine "Brat Pack" article that he believes shattered his career and psyche, leaves all three hosts howling with secondhand embarrassment: Sonny calls it "the most horrifically awkward thing I've ever seen in my entire life" and diagnoses McCarthy as a man broken by a story that was never really about him, JVL brands him "a dilettante" who "needs help" and singles out Rob Lowe and Leah Thompson as the only interviewees worth their screen time, and Mike admits he sent the others a photo of his TV during the painfully awkward Emilio Estevez scene. The episode's showstopper is JVL and Mike's discovery, after actually reading the original 1985 article, that Andrew McCarthy is named exactly once in it and isn't even listed among the article's official "Brat Pack" (Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn, Matthew Broderick, and Matthew Modine) — a revelation the hosts treat as proof of McCarthy's delusion. Before getting there, the trio opens with Sonny's eight-year-old daughter discovering the intoxicating thrill of being a junior "counselor in training" at camp, JVL raving about finally watching The Beekeeper on a plane (and trashing the Jessica Alba dud Trigger Warning for its "lorem ipsum" prop truck), and a long Mike Warren airport-grievance segment covering a loud roofing contractor, a woman demanding ice in her non-alcoholic beer, a family that shoved past an old lady while deplaning, and pedestrians blocking airport carts — all adjudicated by Sonny into a ranked list of offenders. They also run through the box office (Inside Out 2's huge second weekend, hopes for Twisters and Deadpool & Wolverine) and a nostalgic detour into the 1996 comedy Waiting... before landing on the main event, where Bret Easton Ellis is praised as a surprisingly thoughtful interviewee, Malcolm Gladwell's participation baffles everyone, and JVL delivers a class-analysis reading of the documentary's cast of subjects, from a window-unit-dwelling magazine writer to a Xanadu-dwelling producer.
From the show notes
You'll never guess how many times Andrew McCarthy was mentioned in the original Brat Pack article.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00Why did we take it as an offense as opposed to like that because we were young we're afraid we
Guest00:00:07were brats you know are you in the brat pack i'm brat package that's what i would say i am not in the brat pack
Mike00:00:14welcome to the sub beacon podcast i am your co-host mike warren joining me as always are my two co-hosts who are pretty and pink jonathan v last and sonny bunch join us over at sub beacon dot com where you can become a patron tell your friends and family if they want to hear this show they've got to become a patron and if they don't they're going to have to go to the sub beacon they can only do it at sub beacon dot com join the conversation the comments are always fun and lively and uh you can only do it at sub beacon dot com we're going to be talking about brats later no that's not that's not about dolls from the early 2000s uh we're going to be talking about that show that movie that documentary later in the show but first what is going on sonny bunch what is happening in your neck of the woods
Sonny00:01:14um not a whole lot not all right well let's move on then not a whole lot really uh let's see what's happening and uh it's it's my favorite time of the year uh when we are juggling all the various camps and uh my my eight-year-old has gotten to the point where she doesn't really like to do camps where there are younger kids around except she learned at camp that she's at this week that she can be like kind of in charge of them and so it's like a whole it's a whole new she's like she's like not quite a counselor she's a helping she's helping with the other children counselor and training yeah something like that uh and she she is now very into it she's like oh yeah well i was like what'd you do it was so funny on on monday she was so she was so upset she was like oh this was awful it was you know i was so bored blah blah and then tuesday we we have like a parent friend who's you know kind of running around running parts of the camp and she was like oh yeah no katie could definitely uh do the she can be the you know the she can be a helper or whatever and so after that it was game on it was like yeah i took the i took the little kids out to the play area but i had to make sure they didn't go in the baby area that they couldn't go in the big area either you know and then we did arts and crafts and she's doing all the same things she's just been given the illusion of power over them
JVL00:02:44and it's she sets up her own cult of personality i was gonna say there's it's nice to know uh ezra
Sonny00:02:49ezra miller and when they reveal the name is it yeah that yeah yeah what's their name their name
Mike00:02:56yeah uh it's it's nice when they reveal themselves as budding authoritarians at a young age you know
Sonny00:03:03it's good to know who they are well i had no doubt no doubt about that judging from the way she interacts with with her younger brother but uh no it was very it was just it was very funny it's like night and day it was like the first day she was miserable and like what am i doing here is all these little kids and then you know yesterday and today she's like ah this was we went outside and
JVL00:03:24we went here we didn't go there stalin started stalin was at a at a day camp and he didn't quite like georgia they made him a cit and all of a sudden he was like oh i'm on board that's where
Sonny00:03:38he found barrier he deputized uh barrier to be a cntnt and that was uh you know
Mike00:03:44dictator babies um all right well like muppa babies but yeah that's exactly what i thought
JVL00:03:51so i i uh i had to travel last week yes and i had some plane time and i got to see the beekeeper finally and i just wanted to circle back to this because we didn't do a show on the beekeeper i don't believe yes i believe we just talked about it yeah we did a show about i don't think we did did we not i think we talked about the show without actually doing a show on it and uh it it really is fantastic and it's a it's a perfect airplane movie it's like 90 minutes very tight uh and it has the most hateable in a satisfying way villains i have seen on screen in a very long time and these zennial computer scammers and what you just uh they're like the perfect wrestling heel they're like the honky tonk man they are you just you are dying to see them get uh murdered and then when they are murdered or when they have their uh their fingers chopped off by a drill press um which is you know normally somebody would go with like a lathe or a circ saw but no they went drill press which is a very very deep cut in in the world of power tools and uh i just everything about it was lovely um the elevator when the elevator drops and like you you feel like oh i know what the sequence is and then all of a sudden the elevator drops and the dude gets cut in half by and you're like oh i don't know what this is i haven't seen that before that's awesome uh it just it was it was emotionally satisfying and uh flash also watched it on the plane and he said the same thing to me he was like i just i don't know why it's not a good movie but boy it's i just wanted all of those kids to die but it is but that's why it is a good movie i mean it's it
Sonny00:05:49sets out to do one very specific thing which is be an effective revenge thriller and it doesn't it's like if this is the same reason john wick works i mean it's not as it's not as inventive stylistically in terms of the shootouts and the choreography and all that but it's not bad on that front either i mean it's you know it's a solid the action is solid it's fine but we're really
JVL00:06:14is giving the audience people to hate in such an unbelievably satisfying way yeah nobody likes
Sonny00:06:23those people all around nobody likes those people all like from the from the from the actual scammers
JVL00:06:30to the like fail son ceo the fail son the fail son who does all of the stuff in the office where he's like the bowl ceremony with the chinese and like and you know he's wearing a scooter in the it was it was just perfectly sketched to make me want i only wish that i could have
Sonny00:06:51murdered these people myself i mean it's very i mean it is it is almost explicitly a for the record we did an episode on this yes i was going to say point of information maybe point of
Mike00:07:01information out that week or i i have i have i have the i have the deets i have the receipts january 19th of this year yeah it was a it was a rare duo yeah jvl you were out that week uh and sunny and i did it and we we soldiered through but we really needed we really
JVL00:07:20you guys were dead on about that yeah it beekeeper great if you have a chance to watch the beekeeper i assume it'll be on netflix if it's not already it's a perfect netflix movie yeah um uh don't
Sonny00:07:33don't pass up the beekeeper it's it's a million times better than the average netflix movie i watch uh i watch there's a new jessica alba revenge thriller movie out on netflix right now
JVL00:07:44called why does she bother making movies she sits at home and lets honest money come at her from her
Sonny00:07:50corporate ownership um hold on the new trigger warrant trigger warning is what it's called trigger warning um and she she uh and it's genuinely the worst movie i've ever seen like like it is i i watched a fair number of not good movies uh but i very rarely watch actively bad ones and this one was terrible it was incredibly generic and lazy to the point where like in the first 40 seconds of the film there's a there's like a there's a shot of jessica alba and she's fleeing in a vehicle um she's fleeing in a in a vehicle and the vehicle in which she is fleeing it's like speeding across the desert you know and she's shooting shots out of it she's trying to hit something it's not it's you know it's it's a it's an action sequence you know that that kind of kicks things off and the camera pans down to the side of the truck and on the side of the truck is like a it's like a red cross style logo with a you know uh i like the medical thing with the two snakes going around the hippocratic staff or whatever the fuck that's called uh and on the side the name of the organ the name of this uh group that she is with whose truck she is in is i swear to god american relief organization american relief organization is the name of this truck and yeah the arrow yeah the arrow right the arrow arrow for short but and 100 what happened was the screenwriter was writing this thing and the opening line of action the low the opening action line is the opening line line of action is jessica alba speeds across the desert in an in a hijacked american relief organization vehicle just like a generic thing you know you fill in the details later. And some producer was like all right we need a truck that says american relief organization on it and then the art department came up with that and made it and put it on the truck and nobody at any point and nobody at any any point in this process was like guys that's just a generic that's like a placeholder cross placeholder it's a placeholder it's the lorem ipsum it's literally the lorem ipsum of trucks that's amazing and that's and that is that's the whole movie the whole movie is like that it's just a it's it's really.
JVL00:10:14But beekeeper is Felicia Rashad in it it's a Felicia Rashad who's great it's got what's his face the scott jeremy irons the scottish guy who does the it's got the kid who plays peter millark in the hunger games right i mean it's got like good actors in it yeah
Sonny00:10:31that's good great it's good it's like it's the perfect generational conflict movie too it's like very explicitly i mean the again the like fail son kid who was like right at the he is right at the millennial. Gen z kind of cut off zone and then you've got jason statham who was like the gen x god and jeremy irons who is boomer you know like straight out of boomer central casting at this point like it's just it's the whole thing is great yeah yeah michael how are you buddy
Mike00:11:02so i have been traveling quite a bit and i feel like every time i treat you well no it's you'll pay for it later but good for you it's it's been i mean the good thing. The weird thing is i've been traveling for work but before i traveled for work we piled the whole family in the van and drove to my in-laws and we everybody is there for the week are they still in hotlanta no no this is in charleston south carolina so they went to the beach they've been fishing they went bowling they've done all kinds of stuff while i've been like. Flying in places to do stuff for work and it's that's been fine but i and i worry that maybe every time i talk about flying and traveling here i complain but you know this is my this is my dudes chatting segment and so i can talk about whatever i want and so i just want to complain about things that i have seen on several planes that i've been on this week uh people doing things that annoy the hell out of me and they're in no particular order there's no you know i'm not ranking any you know the worst behavior but just go through uh a couple of them there is the um well starting in the airport for instance there is the uh the guy at the end of the bar who's been uh you know nursing light beers for like two hours and is talking non-stop uh uh about all the roofs that he's worked on he's with these other guys who are also tradesmen uh and like talking at a at a volume that's like way too loud so that the entire restaurant can hear it's not really a type that's just a very specific complaint this is not okay then these are just people who annoy me people
Sonny00:13:06who annoy me did you get his name a rank of a rank of there's no ranking here there's no yeah i'll tell them all and you write okay um it's i got roofing guy so there's
Mike00:13:19the boomer name is philip sullenberger out of athens georgia there's the boomer couple who sits down at the bar and the very first thing that she asks the bartenders if they have na beer fine you know you don't have to nobody has not everybody's to drink alcohol these things um and then he fumbles around finds a non-alcoholic beer starts to pour it in the glass for which she's requested and about halfway through she goes i'm gonna stop you right there could you please grab some ice cubes and put them in there before you finish filling up the beer uh and he complies and what a sicka uh ice cubes
JVL00:14:03in beer right anyway i've literally never heard of that
Sonny00:14:09i i just want to be clear here this you were just you were mostly just offended by her choice of beverage here it's not she wasn't being like obnoxious about it
Mike00:14:18i was more offended by the fact that i was hearing this all i feel like i was not close enough to be like hearing not only this request but like her entire conversation with her husband which was like at a much louder volume than should be between two people who are sitting next to each other at a crowded loud bar but okay i also found i got a little offended by the let me stop you right there uh attitude that's dick she was imperious oh yes a little bit and a little you know you just you disliked her imperiousness her haughtiness exactly um maybe she's a very nice person bitch you're putting
JVL00:15:01ice into a non-alcoholic beer you are not better than anybody here uh let me let me ask did she
Sonny00:15:08was was the request was it was it like a rude request was it was was she like was she acting like it should be obvious she should have ice no so so to be fair she i think
Mike00:15:20she was being friendly for the most part with the bartender it was just um you know the kids have a or the kids used to i guess you know they have probably a new gen z phrase for it but you know what they used to call extra there's a lot of extraness going on with the entire interaction
Sonny00:15:36she wants to be like yeah i feel like i felt like both of these people i've mentioned in the bar
Mike00:15:43the the volume at which they're speaking and the way in which they're talking it is all about attention from people who they are not it's about getting attention from people to whom they are not
JVL00:15:53speaking to for context i need to understand are you at the same bar for both of these yes it was
Mike00:15:58like when i sat down uh my roofing guy you didn't consider getting up and going like the wolfgang puck no it was it was uh yeah what bar was this this was uh oh it was in it was in dfw um it was
Sonny00:16:13i don't go to dfw i would i like unless i absolutely have to i go to love field every time okay well well you are you well you say dfw like oh you should know you should know you should know the all of the terminals at dfw how do you uh papacito what the fuck is a papacitos it's fake
JVL00:16:33fake news sure it's uh it's really authentic text max is my guess okay i'm sorry i'm sorry would you would you like me to continue or is there anything else who are the other people you didn't like i want to keep i'm gonna keep interrupting so you disliked mildred higginbotham you destroyed philip sullenberger uh who are the other people who annoyed you at the airport so here's some reading
Sonny00:16:54of the grievances so there how annoying was the woman's husband was he like just sitting there suffering in silence or was he also flouncy and no he was not flouncy and commanding attention
JVL00:17:08a guy like that is just beaten down and broken right that guy you know i mean if your wife is talking like that to an airport bartender over her non-alcoholic odules that she asked for ice in the middle of like what dignity do you have left he's given up it was there was a there was
Mike00:17:25a lot of that energy jvl there was a lot of that energy so uh look and i'm just an observer of people i picked this stuff up so um okay more people that annoy me the um uh here they are the the the people that showed up to the flight to atlanta and they're trying to get on the plane and not understanding why they're not able to get on the plane until the gate agent points out that they're on the next flight to atlanta leaving this gate that they're here like two hours early um and that they just need to wait for for it
JVL00:18:06look maybe some people are really hillbillies it's like they drove up and out no no no no
Mike00:18:13here's furniture strapped to the roof no and look maybe this is being too harsh it was like a mom with some kids but like they weren't like that young kids and i just thought it was like it was like just once again pay attention like like be like be aware of your surroundings probably don't even have pre-check uh okay so then there is on the plane as you're getting ready to disembark um we've just it's just been announced that we've arrived early where we're going uh to and yes this is an airport where there are a lot of connections uh the atlanta airport um but we've arrived early so if you've got a connection like you're here even earlier than you thought and in the back of the plane as people are starting to get up a family of four with sorry excuse me a family of five where all grown adults and they're all going on vacation together or something i don't know what they're doing together but uh pushes past everybody else who's in front of them to get off the plane first including your foot out and tripping uh well so there was uh there was one guy in front of me in the aisle in front of me who literally tried to like fight his way into the their line of five and this family was like ready to to brawl and they just like the the dad like put his like his his shoulder into it and like burst through and i think the guy in front of me was like so shocked at the audacity of the of like the push through from and like then i i stand up and turn around and see that there's like an old lady who's trying to get out that they've just like stormed by and that may be the worst of what i saw just like the complete disregard that like oh so i'm sorry you're you're you're you're i'm sorry this is clearly the worst
Sonny00:20:19of any of the things you've described so far what you've described is hard-working american man talking about his many difficulties at work and you know some some personal triumphs uh a lady who is health conscious and looking out for what she consumes at the bar just wants just wants to have a nice nice and cold she wants she wants a nice beverage uh that's probably like 12 or something she wants it how she wants it you have a a single mom with children who are running around and she is she has arrived two hours early as instructed to her gate and yet here she is being viciously mocked by the coastal elite uh mike warren i just i just thought this was in my internal thought and then and then finally you have this family of boars i agree that those people are terrible you know knocking down old ladies to get off the airplane these clearly if we're ranking these if we're ranking these clearly the family number one number two mike warren number three everyone everyone else after that all right well uh i was gonna mention that is that i was gonna mention somebody else but i kind of come on come on who's the last person this is the one
Mike00:21:33where i feel like the biggest asshole so maybe i shouldn't mention it no it's the there was this
JVL00:21:38woman in the airport who was having a uh a tram drive her
Mike00:21:43just because she was in a wheelchair can you believe that no this is actually not it was it's the literally the exact opposite it's the people for whom the the the i don't what do you call them the buggies the train the things that yeah you know where the they're trying to get through and people are walking aimlessly like through through the the terminal and like not listening to the multiple like honks and like excuse me you know car coming through and trying to get these you know these poor you know people with with with handicaps or or or hard time walking to their gates and like these like you know morons who are just like looking around at the terminal like they've like they've never been an airport so that's the last the last group i saw
Sonny00:22:31that like several times so yeah those people are the worst i like it's the people on the carts i mean if you can't if you can't walk to your airplane don't the people on the guards are the
Mike00:22:43worst okay anyway all right well it's just you know there's lots of things about modern air travel that are amazing and there's no reason to complain about but at the end of the day people are still people they're selfish they have no uh self-awareness they have no awareness or understanding that other people exist and that they exist in a world in which other people have competing interests and incentives and needs and i would just like for everybody to just be a little more aware that's all speaking elaine bennis once said we live in a society
JVL00:23:19that was george was it jerry that was george was it you i was we're living in a society yeah well
Mike00:23:24he's he is the larry david um anyway all right well let's what what do we move about that box
JVL00:23:31office yeah let's talk about the box office it's uh it's a big week it's like it's like
Sonny00:23:39it's like everything we said a few weeks ago inside out number two is an enormous hit a hundred million dollar second weekend that you know that's the best second weekend ever for an animated film it's the first uh it's the first second weekend over a hundred million dollars since 2019's avengers endgame uh it's uh the first it's it's the biggest second weekend since barbie the inside out two or at least at least as of as of sunday inside out two was i think five or ten million dollars ahead of barbie so this movie is going to make probably six hundred fifty million dollars something like that uh it's already over 350 million yeah it's gonna it's it's a huge big hit big enormous hit i would like a just uh somebody to sit and compute what
JVL00:24:28are the average box offices by genre over the last five years because it seems to me that basically nobody should be making anything except for budget horror and animated family
Sonny00:24:43well no animated families had a pretty rough stretch actually i mean like um outside of the outside of the minions movie and i think this super mario is gonna is gonna do well super mario did well super mario did well but like you know uh pixar has had a series of real misses disney's had a series of real misses called field movies garbage but i don't like they're the piss and
JVL00:25:08boots movie who did great i i just feel like it's did okay family movies do a lot of stuff
Sonny00:25:13well a lot the family stuff a lot of family stuff has been doing okay but not gangbusters i mean puss and boots did pretty well but that's because it had a multiple of like 15 or something like that because there was nothing there was no animated stuff in also because it's great in movies well fine but like the it's it is good it is good it's it's very good i enjoyed it i like like uh what's it migration you know that movie did okay it did 110 120 million dollars something like that because that movie is dog shit totally garfield garfield's gonna wind up with about right around 100 million probably sonic 2 did
JVL00:25:50sonic 2 did well i look at sonic 2 to grade i'm just saying it's an enormously profitable niche
Sonny00:25:55and i don't it's not a niche these movies are expensive though i mean like they're not cheap to make they're you know uh i i think the i think super mario brothers was the cheapest and it still
Mike00:26:08was like 100 million or something like that but how much of that goes to paying the voice talent because it seems like it seems like animated movies could do so much better if they just just went oh i'm
Sonny00:26:20sorry how do you expect people to show up to a super mario brothers if you don't have chris pratt
Mike00:26:24doing the voice exactly i mean exactly ridiculous um i don't know any other thoughts uh on the on the box office or what we can expect like next when is coming out because this is what what i
JVL00:26:41want is for twisters to make a zillion dollars i don't know why i want that maybe it's because i want glenn powell cemented
Sonny00:26:48as a leading man um that comes out in a couple weeks uh that comes out that comes out the week before um deadpool wolverine i don't know what the tracking is on twisters but i feel as though it should be off the charts i don't know it's interesting i there's there's it there are a lot of mixed thoughts about this movie because you know on the one hand the original twister was a huge hit big hit but it was also you know it was the first real disaster movie that was like pure cgi spectacle and and we've had so much of that for so long now that i don't know that the but maybe it'll maybe it'll still be i don't know i don't know is there a lot of nostalgia for twister is that is that a thing
JVL00:27:32people see i i think there there is pent-up nostalgia that people don't even realize they have and that as a sequel slash reboot with the guy who is the breakout star from top gun maverick which itself was a sequel which itself was a requel uh i i just feel like all the stars are in alignment and that means it'll like i think
Sonny00:27:56there's you think there's some requel magic i think it looks amazing often twister was the
Mike00:28:01second highest grossing film of 1996 beside the behind independence day huge hit big hit john
JVL00:28:08de bont yawn de bont yawn de bont yawn de bont uh that was great
Mike00:28:13all right well uh we'll be on the lookout for that for minions and for what is it deadpool
Sonny00:28:19is it deadpool versus wolverine no i think it's deadpool and wolverine okay i don't think it's deadpool versus wolverine that movie's gonna make a mint that movie's gonna make the highest grossing r-rated movie infinity war that movie that movie is gonna do that movie will do 600 million domestic i mean it's gonna it's gonna again the tracking on this is somewhere between 200 and 250 million opening weekend and like the 200 million if when your low end is 200 million dollars you that's you know people are people are really people love people love deadpool people love wolverine those are the two here if you if you got spider-man in there if it was deadpool wolverine spider-man
JVL00:28:59that's like a 500 million we can do that plus venom right venom's very big in the comic i uh i did dip back into on the flight um i dipped back into the first deadpool that movie is much worse
Mike00:29:13than we remember it's not good it's the novelty right it's like yeah it's like it's like going back to watch borat you know it's like oh like it's not borat is not actually good but that is exactly right but we were all laughing because it was so outrageous well deadpool deadpool did a
Sonny00:29:27couple of interesting and smart things one was that it is it's really a very straightforward origin story movie but they move around the structure of it very slightly so it feels kind of fresh and different uh and it does all the fourth wall stuff and it's you know very self-aware post-modern and whatever uh but i have always i've always been a sucker for ryan reynolds i have liked him uh i have liked him ever since waiting i don't know if you guys ever saw waiting i was just talking about waiting in van wilder i love those movies i've hated him since two guys a girl in a pizza place see i never liked him on that show but i never really watched that show i only watched an episode or two i just if that i hate everything about his screen presence oh see
JVL00:30:08i like this wait oh i hate waiting but waiting is such a great
Mike00:30:13like i love that movie i love that movie i'm i'm like honestly kind of surprised and maybe maybe it
Sonny00:30:19is with a younger generation or uh people who like worked in in restaurants and i don't you know i don't know as many of those people anymore but i feel like waiting should have been a generational comic touchstone in the same way like super troopers or yes uh or i mean not not old school a big hit like i'm trying to think of like wet hot american summer or zooland or something like that like i i feel like that movie should have been an enormous like cult comic classic but
Mike00:30:55well maybe it is i don't know in high school we watched it like four or five times so like it
Sonny00:31:00waiting you watched yes yes we were in high school when waiting came out yes fun fact first date i first proper date i ever went on with my now wife we went to go see waiting no kidding yeah
Mike00:31:13yeah the way they spit on the food is is that's that's romantic the like circle game bit like it
Sonny00:31:20like i it like and there were so many things about that movie that really do like again i work you know i worked at a mcdonald's i didn't work at like a tgi fridays or whatever the equivalent their their restaurant was so it was slightly different from us like the kitchen setup and the yeah dining room and all that but there were there was so much of it that was very similar
Mike00:31:36like the yes it was yes but i was just talking to my wife who was uh i worked in retail she worked in the food industry for a little bit in high school but um she was a hostess wasn't she was a yeah
Sonny00:31:47absolutely she was a hostess and she wasn't she wasn't sullying her hands in the kitchen or
Mike00:31:52no even with the at the tables but but the the i was just saying the the i don't know the actress or the character's name but the basically the bitch waitress um who like screams all the time at the back of the house like every scene with her she's only in like four scenes in the movie it's like it it's gold and it's like amazing that she's not like i don't even know what her name is like i don't know what the actress's name is such like it clearly written by people who knew the restaurant industry back and forth okay but we're not talking we're not going back 20 years on waiting we should do an episode on waiting jbl have you ever seen waiting no you have to do it it's also there's a there's a great there's a great it's like a great moment in time where like dane cook and andy milanakis are in it it's like it's like of a moment where like it's very much like
Sonny00:32:43remember remember mtv in 2007 because we've got we got some mtv in 2000 is bam margera in around can we get bam margera in this movie i'm into it slow week we'll do that yeah but uh we're
Mike00:33:00not going back 20 years we're going back gosh almost almost 40 years this week uh or we're we back 40 years to talk about brats the documentary on what is it on hulu hulu sonny you want to give
Sonny00:33:22us a big boy review of brats brats so brats is the most horrifically awkward thing i've ever seen in my entire life so the basic setup here is andrew mccarthy was a member of the so-called brat pack which was named by a writer for new york magazine it was a you know the title of a big cover story for them and it was about the it was about the actors who were in the backpack you know emilio estevez uh molly ringwald the andrew mccarthy uh judd nelson um etc you know you know who when i say brat pack you know who i'm talking about you know the general age the 1980s teen comedy movies directed by john hughes and the rest of those guys andrew mccarthy one of these one of the key figures in the brat pack movement and and he i want to make a personal confession here andrew mccarthy is the the one of these guys i know the least i'm like least familiar with and i think we come to realize that that's because the the brat pack story destroyed his mind it like it like broke him in a very real way so like the the again the the basic premise here is he is reconnecting with all of his co-brat packers and he is he wants to talk to them about how bad this story was how it destroyed all of their lives and he's driving around in his like honda to to uh demi moore's house and demi's like you gotta let go the past man he goes to like emilio estevez's house and emilio's like i never thought about that story after it came out and like he's he's just going to all these he goes to he talks to malcolm gladwell malcolm gladwell's like yeah that was a great story about you know it really defined an era and like and it's this thing where you come to realize what happened was a very specific thing what happened was a very specific thing andrew mccarthy was set to do a movie with i think
JVL00:35:21was it rob lowe or was it emilio estevez no it was emilio estevez it was okay was a so
Sonny00:35:27he was set to do he was set to make a movie with emilio estevez and then the brad pack story came out and estevez pulled out said i can't be in any of these brad pack movies
JVL00:35:35right now i've got to separate myself he didn't pull out he i think he kicked mccarthy mccarthy
Sonny00:35:43out oh is that oh whatever he like point is andrew mccarthy was not in this movie yeah was not in this movie and uh as a result of that andrew mccarthy got in his head oh my god this thing has destroyed my career and he's been thinking about that ever every time he sees his more famous wealthier co-stars show up in these things while he's kind of slumming it in vod direct-to-video stuff or you know working as a director of tv shows he's done some tv stuff like he's got a career andrew mccarthy has a career it's not like he is falling off the face of the planet he's still like a good looking guy but like i i it the whole thing the whole thing is so tremendously awkward and it is it is the sort of thing that somebody at some point in the process should have pulled him aside and been like you have to stop this you have you have to stop doing this this isn't like it's not it's not that this is a bad documentary it's kind of interesting as a nostalgia thing looking at looking back at this period of time i guess if you were into this i this is before my time it's not my really jbl this is these are your this is my time these are your people uh so i like i watched all of these things well after the fact you know in the 90s in the in the on vhs you know these were not these were not movies i grew up with precisely um except in the sense that they were on tv a lot uh or whatever um uh so this these weren't these weren't foundational formational movies for me uh but i i mean just as a just as the psychological portrait of a man who was broken by something that wasn't his fault it's nobody i don't think anybody would blame andrew mccarthy for the rat pack or the brat pack story uh coming out as it did but like it clearly it just it it it it broke him it broke him and this movie is him working out how it broke him and like thinking still all of these years later that everybody should be on his side for being so like being they everyone should be offended on his behalf that this has happened all the rest of the brat pack should be like yes i rob low really regret this story and it has changed everything for me here in my like 10 million dollar mountainside chalet wherever wherever his his houses i like i just i like it was it was almost painful to watch it was almost painful to watch this uh play out on the screen um and i uh i really i'm glad i guess i'm glad nobody told andrew mccarthy not to do this because i because then we wouldn't have this to talk about but i also felt really bad for him but not for the reasons not for the reasons he thought that we you got you gotta like i'm not a believer in therapy i think therapy culture has done a lot of real problems to this country but he needs to fucking talk to somebody privately off camera about his feelings about this because it is a it's a putting that out there for everyone to see is a disaster just a disaster for him that's my review of brats what a disaster for andrew
JVL00:39:12the fact that molly ringwald and judd nelson who also disappeared refused to participate in any way in this uh suggests that they share his feelings emilio estevez i think i think you're misremembering this sonny emilio estevez also held on to this thing and is aggrieved by it and thinks it hurt his career and didn't take him seriously as an artist and all this shit boy i don't know man i
Sonny00:39:42emilio estevez keeps kind of like awkwardly looking at the camera felt to me like a guy who was trying to empathize with andrew mccarthy and go along with him and just be like yeah yeah no this was not great i certainly you know because originally the story was about emilio estevez and this kind of this kind of comes out it started as like a profile of emilio estevez expanded to the whole brat pack blah blah blah but like it like the sense i got was that he
JVL00:40:12this maybe i'm wrong i don't know so it's you know i think brats works on a bunch of different levels it's a nostalgia trip uh it is a portrait of a narcissist it is also a really interesting study in class because you you really do see the full panoply from the movie critic who wrote one book that sold 4 000 copies on amazon who like is sitting in a tiny little bedroom uh to the in-window ac unit right behind
Sonny00:40:50him right that was very intentionally framed by the way oh yeah uh to the well so that that's
JVL00:40:57the magazine writer right right that so there's a woman who like wrote a book about oh i'm sorry who is like a culture critic uh to malcolm gladwell who is at the top of the heap of house very rustic in ways that are all intentional to uh successful actor like emilio estevez to then wildly successful actors uh like john cryer who has syndicated comedy money for doing that stupid fucking two and a half men or whatever it is uh ten seasons of that demi more who you know had a real film career was a big box office star once upon a time and lauren schuler donner who lives in a house that looks like fucking uh you know xanadu and it again it's just like this is the whole food chain and then then you get to the magazine writer who who is in the in a new york apartment with a window ac unit and i had the exact same thing about that window unit so i was like i saw that i was like yep they put that there right they were like yeah let's sit here right on
Sonny00:42:07purpose why don't we just angle this way just a little bit because it it is it and it's it's like again it's like kind of a dick move it is a it's an absolute yeah this is andrew mccarthy's
JVL00:42:17subtle revenge yeah yeah which is funny because that so the magazine writer so this this piece gets written in 1985 i think this guy is 29 when he writes the piece and the three of us understand what that means that means that this guy got his career started at the tail end of the golden years of magazine writing in america so from like 1985 to 2000 that's 15 years where a 29 year old could support himself in new york by being on a 10-piece contract with new york magazine yep which is at this point it's like saying uh a public school teacher on first year salary can afford to live on an oceanfront property at the beach like that that is a thing which does not exist anymore uh and and so this guy was there during the fat years before things went really bad he's like andy ferguson's age yeah and uh and even so even even so having been on that gravy train for like the meat of his career before things went to shit in our industry uh you know not to a great just a magazine runner that when and when he's talking with andrew mccarthy and mccarthy was like you know so what were you thinking and the guy was like you know he was like did it change your life i was like no not in the ways i'd hoped it would i you know i thought did you catch what he said i thought i'd get like invited to tina brown's office yeah i was just like haven't we all thought that we would get invited to tina brown's office um i think i'm the only one on this show who's ever offered a job by tina brown
Sonny00:44:10i have certainly never been offered a job by
JVL00:44:12nor i i was offered a job by talk magazine one of like the the i probably turned down 25 jobs in the 25 years i was at the standard none of them more fortuitous than than talk turn down everyone every single one of them like i i am now and even then at the time was instantly glad i said no to and none more so than that yeah uh but everything the one that she started with weinstein yep with the disney money yep yep yep yeah yeah yep yep yep it lasted a year i think yeah yeah maybe 18 months um tucker wrote for them
Sonny00:44:56yeah that's right well i'm sure writing for them would be great i'm sure they were throwing just shoveling buckets of money oh my gosh you know like three dollars a five i think it was five dollars a word sure why not um maybe people need to understand what the magazine
JVL00:45:11world was like back then again this this dude was a 29 year old nobody who was able to just like be on i'm on a contract with new york magazine and i'm gonna fly to and i'm gonna fly to la and do i end all the money yes oh yeah this is again the economics of this the three of us nobody's listening to this will understand but for us the economics of this is if you are new york magazine that means that this piece cost you something like uh twenty thousand dollars of nineteen eighty five money for just like a disposable cover story that nets you zero income yeah and which today today a wouldn't get greenlit and b if it did it would have to be written by like a big name writer and even then it'd be forgotten in a in in three days it might be like we can give you five grand for this five grand eight hundred dollars yeah that's more like so uh it's anyway i just i wanted to take a bunch of these people and line them up and and shoot them with an anti aircraft cannon like kim jong-un style because um starting with andrew mccarthy so you have to understand andrew mccarthy this is a jersey thing um so he's a from north jersey originally he went to the pingree school which is one of new jersey's very fancy and expensive boarding schools is it like the lawrenceville school uh same same same level got it same same level as elville and uh as as we call it here in the jurors and then went to nyu when was enough well you know he got thrown at nyu because he didn't really work and and then somehow just found his way into hollywood like two years later in in movies and was never i'm sorry was never a great actor i mean he's like an okay presence but he was it wasn't like you're seeing val kilmer right when you saw val kilmer at age 18 you're like oh shit that guy can really act right he's got real please like he was just he was fine and ever since you know so he then blows up his career over this stupid piece giving himself a complex but still is like welcomed into hollywood as you said sonny does a bunch of directing doesn't he went and had a whole other career as a travel writer and and i just like this fucker is a dilettante is what he is he's a dilettante who could not handle his shit and uh i feel that way about all of them with with like two exceptions and uh i mean it wasn't precisely the same feeling i had while watching the beekeeper but it wasn't all that
Sonny00:48:12similar to be quite honest wait who were the two who were the two that you were fine with
JVL00:48:16so the two i was fine with were uh were leah thompson and rob low and rob low okay so leah thompson actually had something interesting to say uh in leah thompson i'm surprised you didn't you didn't cotton on to this sonny leah thompson talked about how important the the arrival of physical home media was to to that world because coincidental with all this was that people were getting videotape like people could watch pretty and pink at home in ways that didn't that wasn't true five years before that and that this created more of a connection like people could just see watch these movies over and over and over and over yeah uh and that part of what has happened now is with the the decline of physical media um you have more access to more movies but the attachment to them is less because you're not touching them and what i thought that was interesting and rob low and rob low is the one guy in this who a really was and is a gifted actor like he's a very gifted comic actor um and he's the one who just like don't you understand how lucky we were yes right rob low is the guy who understands that he got hit in the head with a golden horseshoe and it's just like him too do you remember that time we went to sammy davis jr's house like you go from like he's like that thing was great i can't believe we've been able
Sonny00:49:54to work steadily the whole time like we can get him and rob low had the had the distinction of going through actual traumatic personal stuff yes like the drugs and the sex tape and the and also like the snow white thing the oscars like he had what was his snow white
Mike00:50:12he he was he was in the like uh introductory opening sketch which was like a musical sketch and like what was the 1988 it was the other 88 or 89 uh oscars and i was yelling at the
Sonny00:50:27the screen right now he's like i know exactly what i watched it recently and it's like not
Mike00:50:33as bad as it seems but it was like pillory the next day in the press and like was a running it was he had like a sex tape with underage
JVL00:50:42girls well they were the national convention one year remember this is uh this is oh yeah
Mike00:50:471988 it was it was around the same time so like all happened at the same time uh but
JVL00:50:51also rob lowe is immensely talented yeah and again he's just a very gifted comic actor uh i think people didn't realize soon enough that he's he's a much more gifted comic actor than dramatic actor and uh i mean you know the grinder thank you for smoking he's uh
Mike00:51:09he's great on parks and recreation right in park and he's just he's great
JVL00:51:12and he's the one who i mean he was you know he's like that his conversation was with mccarthy he's like man don't you don't you see how good we had it yeah like don't you you know and so those two yeah great um but the rest of them uh you didn't like to be more i thought she was i thought she was pretty againstness i wrote this down againstness only provokes againstness that's
Mike00:51:42is it is it sunny i thought i thought ali sheedy was fine she was fine i mean she was like somebody who i think she felt very sorry for andrew mccarthy yes and that came through a lot i i view that interview was one of there was a lot of empathy and and kind of like she was kind of
JVL00:52:06almost trying to let him down easy but so like why why is he talking with the woman who wrote the book about the brat pack why is he talking with the black culture critic you need more you need more uh experts you need more experts with breddy's i mean breddy's and ellis was actually quite thoughtful and an interesting interview breddy's and ellis is an underrated film critic his he's
Sonny00:52:29got a a book of that's like half criticism half memoir it's very good wasn't less than zero a
Mike00:52:35brat pack adjacent feel like there were yeah yeah yeah so like he may he makes sense i guess
JVL00:52:41the malcolm gladwell thing is just wild and then gladwell talking like that's it he's like you know and it's a good piece and it was you know it was funny the name rat pack is funny and it works and andrew mccarthy's head he's like he's yeah it's like funny and you could wasn't funny to me yeah not
Sonny00:52:58okay it was a crazy thing because it's like i mean like i well gladwell's looking at it like again like the like a magazine like a magazine writer he's like oh yeah no that's a great title because like it's like the rat pack but also you guys are brats so it you know it works what don't you understand about this andrew mccarthy what aren't you understanding about this one more thing about why i hated andrew mccarthy
JVL00:53:21so when he's talking about the bond of being in a brat pack again i wrote this down he says that you know if there's uh you know the people at the brat pack and like you know he can just 30 days passes and it's like it was yesterday you know and they have so much to connect with and then he says if there was someone else i was in movies with 30 years ago i'd have nothing to say to them fuck you right like you know oh you know he and demi more they've got this soul connection but he would have nothing to say to some other actor or director or grip or screenwriter who he worked with there he would have nothing to say to them it bent dude
Sonny00:54:04i'm sorry andrew mccarthy hanging out with the uh the the cast of the joy luck club fuck you lady get out of here i gotta go see ali sheedy michael where were you on this so i was
Mike00:54:21very confused because i thought a documentary centered around and by andrew mccarthy was going to get a lot of sort of conservative legal takes uh and i was that's a little that's a little vick mattis for you um inside humor there uh so i shared sonny's horror in watching this like the the the cringe as the kids say like oh i couldn't look away from it i i was like i was embarrassed for like all it was the i think i sent you guys a i took a photo of my tv during the uh emilio estevez thing because it was so painful to watch it was clear emilio estevez like from like the moment andrew mccarthy walked into his house he's like why the fuck did i agree to have to have andrew mccarthy coming to this house and have this camera crew and talk and he just looked like every five seconds he was like can we can we finish this the fact that they were standing in the kitchen like that's a move that's like um let's finish this conversation so you can get out of my house as like more quickly yeah if we not like come in to sit down yeah if we sit down this will go longer than i wanted to and longer than it needs to um i uh i as i said i thought ali sheedy was sort of uh empathetic and i felt it was interesting because it's not like ali sheedy is like had some uh you know amazing long you know film career um but she like clearly felt sorry for the guy in a way that i found endearing um i i had the same thoughts about the malcolm gladwell uh interaction um i i found myself really uh taking the side of um of uh mr uh what's his name the uh the author david bloom dave dave of course of course you would we're
Sonny00:56:18all in the same guild yeah exactly it's like this is and this is and this is a thing i actually thought about a little bit right like are all of us are all of us and all of the critics you know kind of shitting all over this documentary instinctively on the the journalist because like we we understand that what he did was he wrote a totally normal piece that had like kind of a and we like we don't want to think about the damage we are doing to the people as we write these things like is that what's going on here are we all just i think it's possible that we are we're all too too close to the subject perhaps but i'll tell you something i went back and read the original article oh look at you doing some extra work here and and i want to share with you
Mike00:57:04a couple of things uh first of all it's uh it's terrific like it's it's a it's a great piece i loved it it was um shorter than i expected it's not very long um and it uh it the reason i thought it was terrific is it left me wanting more which is always a good sign in a magazine article i wanted to hang out with david blum and these other guys longer um i i want to share this this as well with you and you guys are both i can see sitting down for this um do you know how many times andrew dorothy's name appears in the original brat pack article that destroyed his life and career please tell me it's zero it's it's it's once oh it's one time and it's one time because because i will tell you this so i'm reading it and it's what the other thing is interesting is what he who he identifies in the brat pack is not actually Sonny who we think of as the brat pack some of them are but some of them aren't first of all there's no women mentioned uh as being a part of the brat pack it's all it's all the men um so that's so that's this is really more like the pussy posse uh yes it's much more like the pussy posse and the sense of like the the it is like it is the precursor to to the pussy posse so um he actually lists out and gives them all kind of roles um so what's here's this is very interesting he says uh Emilio is the is the unofficial leader unofficial president of the brat pack here are the rest the hottest of them all Tom Cruise so Tom Cruise is in the brat pack according to the origin originator of uh of this uh the most beautiful beautiful face Rob Lowe okay we we consider Rob Lowe part of that the overrated one Judd Nelson uh which i think is kind of interesting um the only one with an Oscar Timothy Hutton Timothy Hutton is in the brat pack interesting um the one least likely to replace Marlon Brando Matt Dillon Matt Dillon in the in the
Sonny00:59:18brat pack um Matt Dillon has bigger case to be angry about this than Andrew McCarthy
Mike00:59:23exactly uh the ethnic chair Nicolas Cage uh and the most gifted of them all Sean Penn uh oh oh two more actually the not quite there the two Matthews Broderick and Modine okay so that's the list of the brat pack you'll notice i did not mention Andrew McCarthy because he's not listed in the brat pack here's where Andrew McCarthy is listed in this article uh not after the first section break not after the second section break uh not after the third it goes on and on and on um there's the whole there's a whole bunch of stuff about how they are kind of like sniping at each other off record or like on background about each other so there's a competitiveness to it that's like a where a lot of the brattiness actually comes from uh in the in the story but here's this is near the bottom second second half of the story for sure near the bottom of the piece um i'll just read you this paragraph and then we can move on and yet that is okay sorry for actors so imbued with the ensemble spirit the brat pack members are out for themselves quote sean is crazy with all of his role preparations becoming the character and in every way um that's uh who is sean sean pen i would assume sean pen yeah sorry yes um uh continue uh one says and of andrew mccarthy one of the new york based actors in saint elmo's fire a co-star says quote he plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity i don't think he'll make it end quote the brat packers save their praise for themselves so even in the story andrew mccarthy is not considered a member of the brat pack now i know that changed and it became a media phenomenon and all the rest but like like this this is i thought he was crazy after finishing the the the the documentary and then i read the piece
JVL01:01:32and i think he's he like he needs help the man needs help this really is a descent into
Mike01:01:40madness yeah totally so
JVL01:01:42this so brad turns out to be a kafka-esque masterpiece yes absolutely right yeah this is this is the detail that needs so honestly this detail if the movie had closed with a title card which simply said andrew mccarthy's name appears in the brat pack article once that immediately makes it one of the great films of our time yes yes no there's a moment in the documentary it would basically be like pop star yes never
Sonny01:02:19never stop never never stop never stop never except andrew mccarthy or the uh yeah never
Mike01:02:25stop bratton never stop bradding there is a point in the movie where like it does almost feel like the crew or the editors are turning against andrew mccarthy like there's a couple moments where like he's like the camera lingers on his face like in crazy mode after hearing like somebody say like get get over it like it's not that big of
Sonny01:02:47a deal i i can't believe he watched this thing and was like i definitely come off looking good in this well this is the this is the ego right i have made all the white does he said something
JVL01:02:59early he's like you know when i talked about this project my wife she tried to talk me out of it and then said what was it his phrase she said that i should prepare to be humbled or something like yes like and and he's like and i didn't quite know what she meant
Mike01:03:12well and and he says then he says like now i know what she meant because some of the people aren't calling him back like it's like it's like delusional it's
Sonny01:03:21like that's that's not what that's not what she meant this is like when i i remember i texted you guys i was like this is like watching this sequence of him leaving voicemails for all of these people is like i was like i was doing the like brody from uh mall rats i was like putting my hand over my face and like looking away it was just like oh my god he said it was voicemails
JVL01:03:42and not text yes early on i don't know if you guys caught this there's a shot of him with his phone and it's clear that he has like an old person set his appearance mode up on his iphone to like two text sizes up from the default that everything is like 18 point font
Mike01:04:01so the only other thing i'll say about this is the mike you gotta send me a link to the piece please yeah i'll send it to you uh is that the only other interviewee that i thought had something of value to say it was to him was the was the producer richard donner's wife uh uh what's her name uh yeah yes in which she's standing there and she's like it was great she's like it was like it made you into something and and it was great for everybody and this was so good this was so good and she she is like i'm sure is like a you know stone cold hollywood business bitch like like like you don't want to mess with this woman but like she there was this moment where she was kind of like don't you understand that we're all in this to have things like this happen to us and it happened to you and it happened to all of us and isn't it great because we all came here to make movies and make money and have a great time and that's what you did and he's over there going but what about the the art and they didn't appreciate us and the artist it's like you didn't respect us as artists it's like it's get off get off go like it was just so bad i i i'm sorry he's a marginal actor
JVL01:05:32i'm sorry but go go back and watch saint elmas fire and pretty in pink and he is a marginal actor he is not it is not like watching somebody where he's great weekend at bernie's boy that guy pops off the screen there really something
Mike01:05:47um okay any any other thoughts about brats or the brat pack or so coincidentally i am
JVL01:05:58listening to a new book which is a series of conversations between judy dench and an old old acting friend of hers and so it's uh it literally it's just transcripts of their conversations over time largely talking about talking about both shakespeare's women like you know female characters through shakespeare and also uh these two because they've known each other since college uh their time coming up as young actors together right the the difference between their stories as young actors which are all about you know so then i was studying with this guy and he talked about you know breaking down the meter in shakespeare because when shakespeare does this with the meter that's when you know that like he really wants to hammer something home because it's an important point about and then the andrew mccarthy who's like you know and i was in pretty pretty in pink and uh you know i showed up to the mtv awards and i was drunk yeah it's just like the glaring difference between actual actors and this fucking dilettante who got rich and
Mike01:07:11he got what he got yeah that's that's the beauty of america uh all right well uh if that's all we have to say uh that is all the time we are going to give to this episode join us over at subbeacon.com and we will talk to you next time
Sonny01:07:30mike you almost killed me what one one time
Mike01:07:41yeah it's his name is one i couldn't believe i couldn't believe it i like got through the piece and i was like i did a quick like you know control command f like i was like no no i must have missed it it like i like sat down and like back in my chair i was just like it's like the
JVL01:08:00usual explains why judd nelson is uh exactly so it's so sore about this too you know what he is
Sonny01:08:06overrated totally yeah i like judd nelson's fine i and judd nelson's another guy though who has worked constantly he's in like he's in like seven dtv thrillers a year he comes in for like two scenes and gets his hundred thousand dollar check and goes on to the next one like like whatever it's not the dream it's not you know again he doesn't he doesn't have john crier but it is funny to think about john crier is probably the most successful actually of any
JVL01:08:33of them just from a purely financial because he got on one shitty cbs sitcom yeah uh john crier sort of feels like a howie mandel like again a marginal talent who figured out a way to to break the bank in hollywood and figured out that it was entirely about commerce and that everybody else is looking at movies and stuff but really if you can find yourself a gig on a syndicated show
Sonny01:09:03one hit show but it's it's so funny i like i talked to i talked to you know managers and agents out in uh i don't know lay for work and stuff and like all of them are saying like all of my writers want to be on staffed shows that's all they want to do now like they they you know they write their they write their fx dramas and they write their pilots that are you know gonna be on hbo maybe if they're lucky uh but what they all want is a job on a network uh procedural like csi or 9-1-1 where they will then be in syndication that's
JVL01:09:4140 years and for checks for the rest of their lives can i get on a law and order like that's
Sonny01:09:48what that's what they all want right now because that's those are actual jobs that pay and continue
JVL01:09:52to pay for for years to come yeah the residuals on that will last your entire life yeah sure it's fine
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