What The Brat Pack Looks Like Today
By Robert King
David Blum, the journalist who penned the original 'Hollywood's Brat Pack' piece, referred to Emilio Estevez as the "unofficial president" of the group, and his theory was backed up by the man who directed the actor in St. Elmo's Fire. According to Joel Schumacher, "if you asked everyone in the cast who their best friend is, they'd all say Emilio. He's that kind of guy." Whether he wanted the moniker or not, Estevez became the face of the Brat Pack, and as a result he felt the weight of its connotations the most.
When the '90s rolled around, Estevez was still best known as the star of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire. 1988's Young Guns was unfairly tarred with the Brat Pack brush, and when the 1990 sequel ended up getting the same treatment, he knew he needed to do something different. That came in the form of Gordon Bombay, the drunk-driving lawyer forced to coach a peewee hockey team as part of his community service in 1992's The Mighty Ducks.
Ducks proved a huge hit for Disney, and the studio quickly set about preparing two sequels in which Estevez reprised his role. However, while he succeeded in shedding his Brat Pack image over the course of the cult trilogy, by the end of the '90s he was doing TV movies. Today, Estevez spends his time behind the camera, with his upcoming feature The Public set to star Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater.
