At. Elmo’s Fire, 1985
Another personal one. I didn’t see this one until a few years after it came out, but it quickly became a favorite. I’ve probably seen it over 50 times. Here’s an IMDB synopsis:
It’s been four months since irresponsible saxophone player, Billy; young Republican, Alec; his girlfriend, Leslie; struggling journalist, Kevin; drama queen, Jules; lovesick waiter, Kirby, and Wendy, a social worker with a heart of gold, graduated from Georgetown University, and they are still reluctant to let go of college life. However, as the ugly side of truth is closing in on the young pipe-dreamers, the complexities of adulthood, and the struggle of maturity, are starting to put their sacred friendship and fragile relationships to the test. In the end, what does it take to find your place in the real world?
IMDB
This is a film about friendship and finding yourself. And it’s the perfect Brat Pack movie. In the 80s, there was the Brat Pack, a play on Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack. Andrew McCarthy is making a documentary about them now. The Brat Pack consisted of several actors who mainly were in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire. Andrew McCarthy, Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, and sometimes Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey, Jr. were written in magazine articles as members, but they were really in a separate categories. Downey was only in Less Than Zero with McCarthy and Ringwald was too young to really be a part of the group.
So, that’s the Brat Pack. At. Elmo’s also has great quotes:
Wendy (Mare Winninghan): “No diet works. The only way to lose weight in the thighs is amputation.”
Jules (Moore): “Don’t you enjoy anything anymore… like girls?
Kevin (McCarthy): I enjoy being afraid of Russia. It’s a harmless fear, but it makes America feel better, Russia gets an inflated sense of national worth from our paranoia. How’s that?”
Wendy: That doesn’t leave much.
Jules: I thought you were taking steps to phase out everything that wasn’t working in your life.
Kevin (McCarthy): “You know there are more people in law school right now than there are lawyers on the entire planet? Think about that.” — to Kirby, who is in law school
Billy (Lowe): “Jules, y’know, honey… this isn’t real. You know what it is? It’s St. Elmo’s Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them… there was no fire. There wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you’re making up all of this. We’re all going through this. It’s our time at the edge.”
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