How the Brat Pack label ruined a movie that would've starred Andrew McCarthy and Emilio Estevez

The "St. Elmo's Fire" costars look back — and forward — in McCarthy's Hulu documentary "Brats."

Andrew McCarthy reunited with his St. Elmo's Fire costar Emilio Estevez for the first time in nearly four decades for his Hulu documentary Brats. In it, the two revealed that the fallout from the Brat Pack label of the 1980s led to the demise of a future onscreen collaboration.

An insightful exploration of the label coined by New York Magazine reporter David Blum in his 1985 profile of a young Estevez, Brats dissects the deep discomfort felt by the young stars at the center of the label, including Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, and Demi Moore. "The fallout," McCarthy recalled of the article, "was immediate and big."

"You and I didn't do a movie because of it: Young Men With Unlimited Capital, which was one of the best scripts I had read in a long time," Estevez revealed.

"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," McCarthy recalled. "It hurt my feelings. I just assumed at the time it was the Brat Pack fallout."

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Andrew McCarthy and Emilio Estevez on set of 'St. Elmo's Fire'

Estevez admitted that he “didn’t want anything to do" with the other members of the so-called pack, adding, “If it were Judd, I would have said the same thing. To be seen again in another film would ultimately and could potentially have a negative impact. Working together just almost felt like we were kryptonite to each other."

"It's my understanding," McCarthy noted, "you were not interested in talking about the Brat Pack for years and years."

Estevez confirmed as much, sharing that he's asked to do retrospectives "all the time" but always turned everything down. When McCarthy asked, "How come you're talking to me?" Estevez replied matter of factly, "Because you called me," adding, "I also thought it was time that we sort of cleared the air on a couple of things. And Young Men With Unlimited Capital was something that I'm glad we were able to talk through."

The former costars, who played college graduate pals navigating the trials of adulthood in Joel Schumacher’s 1985 coming-of-age drama St. Elmo’s Fire, appeared to be referencing a film adaptation of Woodstock co-creators Joel Roseman and John Roberts' book of the same name. Published in 1974, it told the inside story of the creation of the famed music festival that transformed popular culture.

ABC/Michael Le Brecht II Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, and Jon Cryer at the New York premiere of 'Brats'

McCarthy said he was also happy they were able to talk about their movie that never was “because I feel chills right now. One of the reasons I started to want to make this movie... it’s very touching. It only happened to a handful of us and it really affected my life.”

“Which is probably why I’m not interested in revisiting [it]," Estevez added. "It's why I'm not interested in dredging up the past. I think if you’re too busy looking in your rearview mirror, you're going to stumble trying to move forward."

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Still, McCarthy pressed Estevez on why he was so trusting of Blum, asking bluntly, "What the f— were you thinking?"

"Well, I wasn't," Estevez conceded. "I had some experience and had done some press, but nothing to the extent of a real sort of profile, which made me uncomfortable. It was naive of me to think that this journalist would, in fact, be my friend. I think what was most upsetting about it was I had already seen a different path for myself and I felt derailed."

McCarthy also met with Blum himself about the profile. In the doc, the reporter said he did not intend any harm with the piece, noting that he liked Estevez despite some of the harsher adjectives he used to describe him and his peers.

Elsewhere, Estevez was introspective when asked by his former costar, "If you could have the Brat Pack name not exist, would you?" He offered the response, "I think that's a difficult question to answer because you can only know the known. Was it something we benefited from? Maybe. But in the long run, I think we did not. I think there was more damage done by it than good.”

“I perceived it to be very harmful,” McCarthy said. "Marty Scorsese, Steven Spielberg's not going to call up somebody who's in the Brat Pack.”

Estevez said, “You're not wrong. I think it created the perception that we were lightweights, that we didn’t take it seriously.”

“That's what that article was about,” added McCarthy. “It’s just a name. What's it matter? But it did matter. And it did affect how I was perceived in the business, certainly; how I was perceived in the world, and how I perceived myself for many years.”

Brats is streaming on Hulu.

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