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Andrew McCarthy was barely mentioned in the original New York magazine article that coined the term “the Brat Pack.” But in the public consciousness, the star of “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Pretty in Pink” was still lumped in with the group of red-hot young actors that included Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson. After getting sober and realizing how conflicted he felt about Hollywood stardom, McCarthy went on to direct for TV and write for magazines. As audiences continue to be fascinated with the movies, music and fashions of the 1980s, McCarthy has finally embraced the snarky label with his new memoir “Brat: An ’80s Story” from Grand Central Publishing.

Why did you call your book “Brat” after fighting that description?

I had to own it, in all its complications and ironies. But I wasn’t ready for a number of years.

I was asked over the years if...

Joel Schumaker got a lot of grief for being the guy that put nipples on Batman (much of which came from this column), but the late director had an impressively varied career outside of the Dark Knight, including his early film… D.C. Cab (1983) Director: Joel Schumacher Stars: Adam Baldwin, Mr. T, Gary Busey The misadventures of a motley crew of taxi drivers in the Nation's capital.…...

I’ll never forget the one time I got to talk to Joel Schumacher, the fluky, baroquely skilled, stylishly protean Hollywood filmmaker who died Monday at 80. It was June 1985, and I was one of the journalists attending the New York press junket for “St. Elmo’s Fire,” the post-teenage soap opera that already felt like a reunion of “The Breakfast Club.” The junket was buzzier than anyone had anticipated, because it coincided with the arrival of the latest issue of New York magazine, with its famous cover headline that christened the film’s stars “the Brat Pack.”

At the time, I was still in the demo for “St. Elmo’s Fire,” and had a real soft spot for it. In hindsight, it’s a quintessential Schumacher movie: a little smart, a little sappy, more than a little in love with its glamorously questing and angst-ridden twentysomething characters. In its glossy ’80s-youth-market way,...

Joel Schumacher, who directed some two dozen films including Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Brat Pack pics St. Elmo’s Fire and The Lost Boys along with Falling Down and John Grisham adaptations The Client and A Time to Kill, died today. He was 80.

His publicists at ID PR said he had a yearlong battle with cancer.

Schumacher was revered as one of Hollywood’s great storytellers. He had enormous charm and wit and could walk onto a tense set and instantly change everyone’s mood. It was magic chemistry.

His credits also include the 1980s pics D.C. Cab and The Incredible Shrinking Woman. He also helmed The Phantom of the Opera, Flatliners, Flawless, 8Mm Phone Booth, Trespass and most recently two 2013 episodes of Netflix’s House of Cards.

Notable Hollywood & Entertainment Industry Deaths In 2020: Photo Gallery

The native New Yorker also wrote the 1976 low-budget comedy Car Wash and the...

Of all the here’s-a-cool-way-to-make-a-pop-biopic! ideas floating around in “Rocketman” that work better in theory than they do onscreen, one of the most pivotal was the decision to have Taron Egerton do his own singing. That almost never happens in music biopics. Media voices have cooed over Egerton’s vocalizing as if they were the proud parents of a kid vying for championship of a karaoke competition. “Look, he‘s really doing it! And he sounds just like Elton John!”

Except that he doesn’t. In the ’70s, the fluky flavor (and power) of Elton John’s voice was connected to the contrast between the way he spoke — incredibly posh and rounded English tones — and the bluesy down-home American idiom that he infused into nearly every sung syllable. What you hear, in almost every line of his phrasing, is the ebullient theatrical muscle it took to make that reach. Taron Egerton can sing,...

by Tami Katzoff (@tvtamijo)

Adam Baldwin has had many iconic film and television roles. The ones he lists as his personal career milestones include Ricky Linderman in “My Bodyguard,” Animal Mother in “Full Metal Jacket,” John Casey on “Chuck,” and Albert Hockenberry in “D.C. Cab” (“I was a little overwhelmed,” Baldwin says of his time playing young Albert. “I was just a kid in a candy store of giant comedian crazy people.”).

And then, of course, there’s “Firefly” and the man they call Jayne: the brawler who loves weapons, women, and the orange hat his mom made. Jayne Cobb, “the mercenary with a heart of gold” and the Hero of Canton, is one of the most beloved characters in the Whedonverse and beyond.

It’s been a decade since “Firefly” and seven years since its big-screen follow-up, “Serenity,” but the series is still sorely missed by its cast. “We...

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; we caught a bad case of Mr. T-Virus after watching D.C. Cab. You’ve shambled your way into the Internet’s most desolate landscape. We have survived the apocalypse of taste and logic and what remains are ravenous hordes of slack-jawed goons hellbent on consuming as much garbage as inhumanly possible. These monsters tear apart the tasty flesh of bad movies, devouring the flaws with growls of snark. But then, out of nowhere and completely scoffing at the laws of physics, the flaxen haired heroine of irrepressible adoration somersaults through the air and puts a bullet in the heads of all those undead jabs. Once the horde has been beaten back, we will celebrate with a themed snack food that will do to our stomachs what Alice does to the infected. You may have noticed references in that previous paragraph to the Resident Evil franchise. Well...

Birthday shoutouts go to Jc Chasez and Drew Lachey (above) , who are both 36, and Dustin Hoffman is 75. Randy Travis has officially entered the Mugshot Hall Of Fame.Gay Riders Medal Over Romney's Horse on Team USA. The August 13th episode of House Hunters International will feature a gay couple forced to leave the U.S. because their marriage isn't federally recognized. "Ivan and Devin built a life together in DC: they worked jobs they loved, shared their home with their beloved dog and exchanged wedding vows. But when Ivan's work visa expired, he had no other choice but to head back to his native Bogota, Colombia with his American husband, Devin, and their dog, Danger."Our thoughts go out to Oscar-nominated actor Bob Hoskins, who has announced his retirement after being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.Lindsay Lohan will allegedly star in the first video from Lady Gaga's upcoming album.

Some were huge in their day, with hit records, popular movies and roles on top TV shows. But we haven’t seen them much lately — or for years. Here’s what they’ve been up to recently.

Sam Jones

The onetime Playgirl centerfold and star of Flash Gordon (1980) went on to star in 1986’s My Chauffer and the 1987-88 TV series The Highwayman. While starring roles were hard to come by, Jones occasionally appeared in minor TV and movie roles up until 2007. He is reportedly now the CEO of a security company providing protection for high-profile clients all over the world.

Charo

For those too young to know of her, think Shakira’s dance moves and Sofia Vergara’s sexy comic timing — in one person. Known for her trademark “Cuchi-Cuchi” and her frequent Love Boat and Tonight Show appearances in the ’70s and ’80s, Charo, whose full name is Maria...

Bill Maher might be 0-for-26 at the Emmys, but he continues to dish it out with his ninth season of HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher" and is about to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Hollywood Reporter's Randee Dawn caught up with the foul-mouthed funnyman and political commentator to discuss evolution, atheism and trees.

The Hollywood Reporter: What's the biggest challenge of "Real Time"?

Bill Maher: Every week you have a whole new set of stories to make comedic fodder out of and analyze. The charm of shows like "Politically Incorrect" is they're, "Throw something on the wall and see what sticks." When you do a weekly show, you want to get it as right as you can, so I slave over it.

THR: Why can't you catch a break at the Emmys?

Maher: A panel of like 10 people watches one tape. If half of those people are religious,...

The most common complaint about movies adapted from novels is that they're not faithful enough to their source material. Joel Schumacher's "Twelve" is so weirdly and destructively faithful that it seems like it an experimental film designed to show people why excessively dutiful adaptations are a bad idea. Schumacher took author Nick McDonell's heavily stylized narration (which you can get a taste of here) and recreated it exactly in the film. So while we see Chace Crawford walking the streets of New York City as drug dealer White Mike we hear narrator Kiefer Sutherland say things like "White Mike has never smoked a cigarette in his life," or "White Mike loves rooftops."

The idea that film is a visual medium is one of the fundamental principles of cinema. Students learn on the first day of film school that their work should show, not tell. Schumacher's structure throws that out the window.

I and the lion's share of the MTV News team have set up base camp here in lovely Los Angeles for the week. In case you haven't noticed from the insane amount of coverage on this site, the splenderific MTV Movie Awards are Sunday night and we're all over it like (insert cliche here). Last night I was able to escape to Mann's Chinese for the very loud premiere of "The A-Team." By the way I'm not just talking about the decibel level of the crowds at the premiere. This is one cacophonous flick. I don't think director Joe Carnahan will argue with me when I say this is what we're talking about when we say "now that is a big, dumb, summer movie." That's certainly what it aspires to be.

But what about the cameos, right? Well I have some news for the spoiler-minded. Did the old A-Teamers make the cut?...

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? Blood Creek Trailer I don’t even know where to begin. Look, I may have loved D.C. Cab, The Wiz, and Car Wash, maybe I...