The “insecure” director Emilio Estevez hated every second of working with: “He was a bully”
The law of averages means that most actors with a long career will encounter at least one director with whom they don’t get along, and since he made his screen debut as a child in Terrence Malick’s Badlands back in 1973, Emilio Estevez has had more than 50 years to find one.
On the plus side, he got them out of the way pretty early, which means he’s got to spend most of his professional life without being directed by someone he can’t stand. The ‘Brat Pack’ alum wasn’t entirely thrilled with the designation, but that doesn’t mean he’s not appreciative of what it did for his status.
Hollywood loves few things more than sticking a label on something, so when Estevez and cohorts like Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Andrew McCarthy, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, and Molly Ringwald continued co-starring and cross-pollinating in a number of projects, the term that was initially coined as a joke began to stick.
He still fucking hates it, though, but it’s something he’ll never be able to escape. The article that coined the phrase cited Taps as the origin point, and the trend continued through The Outsiders, Class, Sixteen Candles, Oxford Blues, and The Breakfast Club, which starred at least two certified ‘Brat Packers’ and ancillary members like C Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, and John Cusack.
Arguably the ‘Brat Packiest’ of the ‘Brat Pack’ movies by far, with The Breakfast Club its only real rival, was St Elmo’s Fire, though, which featured Estevez, McCarthy, Lowe, Moore, Nelson, and Sheedy in the cast. It wasn’t a big hit with critics, and Lowe won a Razzie for ‘Worst Supporting Actor’, but the group’s cultural cache was confirmed when it recouped its budget almost four times over at the box office.
It was also co-writer and director Joel Schumacher’s breakout film, and he’d go on to become a prominent voice in late-1980s and early 1990s mainstream cinema by helming The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Falling Down, Batman Forever, and A Time to Kill. He passed away in 2020, but Estevez clearly had no problem speaking ill of the dead.
Recalling that the worst note he ever received from a director was when he was told to “have a good fucking time” when the filmmaker was “screaming at the top of their lungs,” Estevez compared and contrasted his two 1985 releases by adding a pointed, “Here’s looking at you, Joel Schumacher.”
Estevez shot The Breakfast Club and St Elmo’s Fire basically back-to-back, and they premiered four months apart, but whereas John Hughes was a “collaborative” figure and a person “who was a mentor in many ways, who was calm and listened,” Schumacher was “wildly insecure and was a nightmare on set and a bully.”
It made a lasting impression, too, with the actor-turned-filmmaker vowing that he would “never speak to my actors that way, if I ever got the chance to direct,” adding that it was “the best lesson a young actor who wants to direct could ever get.” He’s helmed six features and a documentary since then, and if he’s a man of his word, hasn’t raised his voice once.
