I started getting into films in '82/'83 and it was the decade of what was dubbed "The Brat Pack," actors in their twenties who seemed to be in every other movie. Many didn't stand the test of time -- i.e., Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy. Others thrived. Sean Penn is arguably the most talented of the actors who came of age in the 80s's and he had his breakthrough role in FASTIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, a film that was full of actors who went onto to bigger, if not necessarily better, things. That cast included Nicholas Cage, Forrest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh and several other actors that went onto to fame and fortune other than Penn, who was the "stoner" Spicoli.

What are some of your favorites from his era?

I suppose the quintessential "Brat Pack" film would have to be St. Elmo's Fire. It's fun to watch now. Another is The Breakfast Club.

Damn. I remember THE BREAKFAST CLUB. I saw it on original release. Who was in that? There were five or six of the Brat Packers:

Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald & Ally Sheedy. There may have been one more.

Ah, TBC was directed by John Hughes, the quintessential 80s director. TBC didn't put Ringwald or Hall on the map either. That was another Hughes film, 16 CANDLES that featured Ringwald and a very geeky Hall.

I must admit I only caught up with ST. ELMO'S FIRE in recent years. If memory serves me correctly, that one was savaged on original release. That consummate hack, Joel Schumacher, directed that one.

Let's see Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Mare Winningham and one or two others I am omitting were in that turkey.

As a jazz fan, we howled when Lowe at the end of the film gets set to move from Washington, D.C. to New York City via bus and he has his saxophone slung over his back. Not much verisimilitude there.

A couple of other films featuring many Brat Packers were two based on S.E. Hinton's young adult novels, RUMBLE FISH & THE OUTSIDERS. Both were directed by Francis Ford Coppola, of all people, when he was licking his wounds after the whole ONE FROM THE HEART debacle, a critical and commercial disaster that left him bankrupt.

I can't remember everyone who was in those two films, but I know Mickey Rourke was in RF. Tom Cruise, well before he was a star, was in one as well. Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell (remember him?), Ralph Macchio (I think) and several others populated the films.

Those films, particularly the very stylized RF, are real curios given the fact that they were directed by a legend.

Judge Reinhold was my favorite Brat Pack member.