What do you think?
Rate this book
Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to '80s Teen Movies
From the fictional towns of Hill Valley, CA, and Shermer, IL, to the beautiful landscapes of the “Goondocks” in Astoria and the “time of your life” dirty dancing resort still alive and well in Lake Lure, NC, '80s teen movies left their mark not just on movie screen and in the hearts of fans, but on the landscape of America itself. Like few other eras in movie history, the '80s teen movies has endured and gotten better with time. In Brat Pack America , Kevin Smokler gives virtual tours of your favorite movies while also picking apart why these locations are so important to these movies.
Including interviews with actors, writers, and directors of the era, and chock full of interesting facts about your favorite '80s movies, Brat Pack America is a must for any fan. Smokler went to Goonies Day in Astoria, OR, took a Lost Boys tour of Santa Cruz, CA, and deeply explored every nook and cranny of the movies we all know and love, and it shows.
Including interviews with actors, writers, and directors of the era, and chock full of interesting facts about your favorite '80s movies, Brat Pack America is a must for any fan. Smokler went to Goonies Day in Astoria, OR, took a Lost Boys tour of Santa Cruz, CA, and deeply explored every nook and cranny of the movies we all know and love, and it shows.
326 pages, Paperback
First published October 11, 2016
About the author
Kevin Smokler
6 books335 followersKevin Smokler is the author of "Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies" (2016) the essay collection "Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books you Haven't Touched Since High School" (Prometheus Books, Feb. 2013) and the editor of "Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times," A San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2005. His essays on pop culture have appeared in the LA Times, Buzzfeed, Salon, Vulture and on National Public Radio.
Kevin Smokler speaks on the future of media and culture at companies (AOL), conferences (SXSW, The Idea Festival) and universities (M.I.T, Stanford, University of Michigan) throughout North America.
Kevin Smokler speaks on the future of media and culture at companies (AOL), conferences (SXSW, The Idea Festival) and universities (M.I.T, Stanford, University of Michigan) throughout North America.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
February 5, 2017
This book is like a master's thesis on 80s teen movies...but interesting! I am a fan of many of the movies Smokler writes about, but I don't think loving (or even having seen) all of the movies is a requirement for enjoying the book. I was unfamiliar with about half of the movies he includes, and was still able to learn something from those chapters and appreciate his descriptions of the movies and their place in history. Smokler's book made me question what it meant to be a fan, how the movies we love fit into history, and how they steer the course of the future. Great book.
November 13, 2016
Okay first and foremost I've got to step my 80s movie game up! Smokler was dropping titles I have yet to watch and need to rectify that.
If you're a fan of 80s movies, this book is for you. It really is a love letter to films made between 1978-1989.
The writing in this book is fun. It is seriously written as though you and Smokler are sitting side by side and he's talking to you.
He focuses on the significance of the location where all of these well known and loved films took place and what that says about the films and those involved in making the films.. films in the 80s that took place in LA showed teens living in a city divided by class and money..how films in NYC showed teens who were proud of where they were from and wanted to show wha their city had to offer before it was exploited..
Again, there are quite a few mentioned in the book that I haven't seen so it was a little difficult to follow at those parts because I haven't seen them but otherwise this was an interesting look at film. These were films that made being a teenager in the present okay instead of those films filmed in the late 70s but took place in the 50s showing nostalgia for a "simpler more innocent" time.
If you're a fan of 80s movies, this book is for you. It really is a love letter to films made between 1978-1989.
The writing in this book is fun. It is seriously written as though you and Smokler are sitting side by side and he's talking to you.
He focuses on the significance of the location where all of these well known and loved films took place and what that says about the films and those involved in making the films.. films in the 80s that took place in LA showed teens living in a city divided by class and money..how films in NYC showed teens who were proud of where they were from and wanted to show wha their city had to offer before it was exploited..
Again, there are quite a few mentioned in the book that I haven't seen so it was a little difficult to follow at those parts because I haven't seen them but otherwise this was an interesting look at film. These were films that made being a teenager in the present okay instead of those films filmed in the late 70s but took place in the 50s showing nostalgia for a "simpler more innocent" time.
May 26, 2018
Thoroughly enjoyable. I grew up on these movies and some of his favorites are my favorites too. It was an interesting perspective looking at these films via the places they were filmed. It was a road trip through America by way of all the beloved 80s teen movies. I learned things about all the films I didn’t know before. A fun read!
May 14, 2017
If you love 80s movies this book is a must read.
If you grew up in the 80s chances are you watched many of these movies on a new VCR; Back to the Future was the first movie I watched on one. It changed how we watched entertainment forever and influenced culture in a variety of ways-lots of them listed in this book.
Besides the movie summaries and how they were platforms for many actors careers, this book also covers the real and sometimes fictional geography of where the stories took place and/or were filmed.
Well researched, narrated, fun and original, I will make my way to the bookstore on my next day off and purchase it.
Highly recommended.
If you grew up in the 80s chances are you watched many of these movies on a new VCR; Back to the Future was the first movie I watched on one. It changed how we watched entertainment forever and influenced culture in a variety of ways-lots of them listed in this book.
Besides the movie summaries and how they were platforms for many actors careers, this book also covers the real and sometimes fictional geography of where the stories took place and/or were filmed.
Well researched, narrated, fun and original, I will make my way to the bookstore on my next day off and purchase it.
Highly recommended.
December 12, 2023
Smokler groups classic films from the 1980s into subjects and then weaves insightful essays about their common threads, the landscapes they inherit, and the social forces that shaped them. I found the section about the convergence of Los Angeles and the Olympics and how that put the City of Angels on a path to the LA riots especially enlightening.
In the category of judging a book by its cover, this went above and beyond packaging the book to look like a VHS tape.
A great Little Free Library find and recommended for anyone looking to expand or review 80s films
In the category of judging a book by its cover, this went above and beyond packaging the book to look like a VHS tape.
A great Little Free Library find and recommended for anyone looking to expand or review 80s films
July 26, 2017
Someone else said this book is like a masters thesis on 80s teen movies. Yeah -- I'll agree with that. Sometimes I felt like I was reading a textbook. I was hoping for more. Perhaps written with a bit more personality. It also felt really repetitive in spots.
Obvs he knows his stuff! I learned a lot and there was some really good content. I just wasn't in love with the text booky writing style.
Obvs he knows his stuff! I learned a lot and there was some really good content. I just wasn't in love with the text booky writing style.
October 14, 2016
A thoughtful, comprehensive examination of the rise of the 80s teen movie in all of its incarnations. Smokler focuses on movies that can be tied to geographic locations (real and imagined) and how those locations informed the movie or vice versa (or perhaps provided weird anachronisms). He also situates the movies within their larger social contexts - America's shift from an industrial economy to a service one, the expansion of teenagers as a population with buying power, the rise of hip-hop, the growing availability of mass culture and mass marketing. A must for anyone who wants to read more about film culture.
If you're over on Letterboxd, I've run a watchlist of the films Smokler examines in the book - http://letterboxd.com/balletbookworm/...
If you're over on Letterboxd, I've run a watchlist of the films Smokler examines in the book - http://letterboxd.com/balletbookworm/...
February 15, 2017
For a movie geek like me, overall this was very enjoyable. Smokler's enthusiasm and knowledge about the movies discussed was a highlight. It also contained some interesting trivia, such as the origin of the name Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder's character in Heathers) being a mashup of the name Betty Finn and Tom Sawyer, among others. I also liked the conversations he had with some of the directors, like Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless).
On the down side, I thought some of the details about where the movies were filmed were a bit superfluous. Also, the book seemed to be poorly edited in some places with misspelled words and movie quotes that aren't exact (yes. I'm that much of a movie geek). I'm also a word geek so this was distracting to me.
On the down side, I thought some of the details about where the movies were filmed were a bit superfluous. Also, the book seemed to be poorly edited in some places with misspelled words and movie quotes that aren't exact (yes. I'm that much of a movie geek). I'm also a word geek so this was distracting to me.
November 25, 2016
To be honest, I mostly skimmed this one. The central conceit of the operation of place in 80s movies-either didn't interest me as much as I thought it would or the author didn't execute it particularly well. I found myself mostly looking for fun facts about the movies that I hadn't read elsewhere. There weren't many. It felt as though the author thought, "I want to write a book about 80s movies, but one just came out-how can I make mine look different?" If you've read other books about 80s movies, you can miss this one.
July 28, 2017
Imagine a one-stop shop for everything you ever wanted to know about the landscape of all your favorite 80s films. Now don't imagine any longer: go out and pick up (or order) a copy of BRAT PACK AMERICA by Kevin Smokler, which acts as your personal tour guide through the movies that shaped your teenaged years. My only criticism is that it wasn't twice as long. Can't recommend it highly enough!
March 7, 2018
A nostalgic look back at 80's teen movies. I don't necessarily buy the authors assertion about location of these movies as being so important but it made for an entertaining read, nonetheless. I haven't seen most of the 80's teen dramas so now I have my work cut out for me.
September 30, 2016
A brilliant love letter to films from the 1980s.
August 15, 2019
Goodreads lists the title of this book as “Brat Pack America: Visiting Cult Movies of the ’80s,” but they’ve got the subtitle wrong. It’s actually “A Love Letter to ’80s Teen Movies,” and I suspect the former might have been a working title that was changed not long before going to press. I thought I was getting the former book, which author Kevin Smokler only somewhat delivers on, but mostly ended up with the latter, which the author also only somewhat delivers on.
This is ostensibly a book about the importance of place in ’80s teen movies. But place doesn’t actually seem to matter in many of the movies Smokler discusses (a point he also discusses), which is where the “love letter” angle of the book comes in. It’s clear Smokler has a real affinity for the movies he writes about, and at its best moments “Brat Pack America” gave me the warm fuzzies about the ones I already love while also making a compelling case for those I’d dismissed, never seen, or, in a few instances, never even heard of.
The problem is that there are problems. Smokler’s writing style is somewhat inconsistent, largely trying to come across as authoritative and academic, but sometimes slipping into fandom-style blogging. The former feels disingenuous and a little too self-serious (this is, after all, a love letter to ’80s movies), the latter much more natural (both for him and the material). I would have preferred the latter. Grammar, punctuation, and typographical errors, while not rampant, crop up just often enough to be distracting. Rather than tackling one movie at a time, Smokler looked for themes around which to cluster them together — the Shermer, Illinois John Hughes movies; the Los Angeles teen movie; the first hip-hop movies; ’80s teen movies set in the ’50s; ’80s sport movies; ’80s teen movies and technology; the black-hearted ’80s teen movies; cities and towns changed by the ’80s teen movies shot there. The conceit sounds great, but the execution is inconsistent. Some chapters were fully-formed and packed with real substance. Others felt thin and padded, Smokler working hard to make something from nothing. Finally, where the fuck is Say Anything? How can you be a serious ’80s teen movie fan (writing what is supposed to be the definitive ’80s teen movie book) and not include one of the greatest ’80s teen romances, especially when the very idea of place (Seattle) is so much a part of the film?
Still, nitpicks and major complaints and one glaring omission aside, this was a fun way to reminisce, discover some films you might have missed out on completely (for me: The Sure Thing, My Science Project, Over the Edge, The Legend of Billie Jean, Running on Empty), learn a fair bit of history and trivia along the way, and find out where or how or even if you can visit the real locations from some of your favorite movies.
This is ostensibly a book about the importance of place in ’80s teen movies. But place doesn’t actually seem to matter in many of the movies Smokler discusses (a point he also discusses), which is where the “love letter” angle of the book comes in. It’s clear Smokler has a real affinity for the movies he writes about, and at its best moments “Brat Pack America” gave me the warm fuzzies about the ones I already love while also making a compelling case for those I’d dismissed, never seen, or, in a few instances, never even heard of.
The problem is that there are problems. Smokler’s writing style is somewhat inconsistent, largely trying to come across as authoritative and academic, but sometimes slipping into fandom-style blogging. The former feels disingenuous and a little too self-serious (this is, after all, a love letter to ’80s movies), the latter much more natural (both for him and the material). I would have preferred the latter. Grammar, punctuation, and typographical errors, while not rampant, crop up just often enough to be distracting. Rather than tackling one movie at a time, Smokler looked for themes around which to cluster them together — the Shermer, Illinois John Hughes movies; the Los Angeles teen movie; the first hip-hop movies; ’80s teen movies set in the ’50s; ’80s sport movies; ’80s teen movies and technology; the black-hearted ’80s teen movies; cities and towns changed by the ’80s teen movies shot there. The conceit sounds great, but the execution is inconsistent. Some chapters were fully-formed and packed with real substance. Others felt thin and padded, Smokler working hard to make something from nothing. Finally, where the fuck is Say Anything? How can you be a serious ’80s teen movie fan (writing what is supposed to be the definitive ’80s teen movie book) and not include one of the greatest ’80s teen romances, especially when the very idea of place (Seattle) is so much a part of the film?
Still, nitpicks and major complaints and one glaring omission aside, this was a fun way to reminisce, discover some films you might have missed out on completely (for me: The Sure Thing, My Science Project, Over the Edge, The Legend of Billie Jean, Running on Empty), learn a fair bit of history and trivia along the way, and find out where or how or even if you can visit the real locations from some of your favorite movies.
October 2, 2017
I'm glad I found this book after seeing it recommended from a website. It is filled with great facts and information about your favorite 80s teen movies. I have a long list of movies to watch! However, the book was riddled with actual spelling and grammatical errors that sometimes it was off putting. As a proofreader, it's something that I notice and take into account when reading a book.
June 24, 2024
Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to ‘80s Teen Movies has on its cover a reversed silhouette of John Bender, played by Judd Nelson, from the movie The Breakfast Club. I thought between the combination of the cover and the title that this book would just contain brat pack movies. There were many references to things that either I didn’t see or saw and didn’t want to read info on.
December 17, 2017
Enjoyed remembering and re-watching some of these great movies.
June 11, 2017
Fantastic book, thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish. I thought I'd seen a lot of 80s movies but now I've got a long list of ones I've missed that I am officially dying to see!
April 11, 2017
I thought I'd seen almost all the '80s movies, but ended up writing a list of almost 25 that I want to watch and even more that I want to rewatch.
November 22, 2017
I liked parts of this book very much. It was interesting to learn about the people involved in the films, how locations were chosen, what has survived. I didn’t care for the philosophical opinions of racism, classism. Wish we could just have a book that omits this. The country evolves, people evolve. . Let everyone think for themselves. Otherwise, well researched book.
June 30, 2017
I just finished Brat Pack America, and it was great! It consumed my thoughts and I devoured the entire thing in just two days, made for a GREAT beach read. Loved the way it made me reconsider movies I loved, root hard for some that weren't on "the map", and sparked conversations with friends who loved the '80s. Brat Pack America had a lot of life even after the last page was turned, and it was engaging, fun, educational and thoroughly enjoyable.
February 28, 2017
A well-researched and insightful journey through some of my favorite old movies. Smokler is an excellent guide -- he follows-through and finds details and connections that were not obvious on first viewing. Thoroughly enjoyed this book.
January 2, 2017
I loved this book. It was so much fun. The author REALLY knows his stuff. He basically takes a long look at the 80s teenage movies as a genre. He delineates the rules and tropes of the movies in this genres. he defines sub-genres and sections of the genre and defines how each of them differ slightly from one another.
I love some of the connections he made. I never thought of how much, for instance, Fast Times or Breaking Away depend on their location to define the movie. However, teenage movies in the 90s largely moved away from this storytelling device. I never realized that John Hughes' movies all took place in the same fictional suburb of Chicago. I never realized that some of the great symbology, like the proverbial "struggling town vs the big dogs" scenario that comes up in so many movies of that time.
My favorite parts of this book were the anecdotes about the creation of each movie, like how Fast Times had so little budget that it had to shoot in LA because the stars all went home at night. There was SO much love and admiration in this book, but also a deep respect for storytelling and movie knowledge. He doesn't put the movies on a pedestal, but shows his love by also pointing out their strengths (both real and imagined) and weaknesses. A large part of his writing focuses on the power of nostalgia to cloud our judgment of both the present and the past, and how it applies to our viewing of these movies both then and now.
The only reason i dinged in a star is because there were too many grammatical errors. While they certainly weren't endemic, there were enough of them for it to be distracting. It seems that a spell-checker was used, but that no one actually read the script all the way through. I KNOW that isn't the case, and i'm not THAT big a grammar snob, but it was sufficient to dock a point (I thought long and hard about whether or not to do it, but i felt it needed to be said)
One more positive thing i'll say about the book is that I hated how some of my favorite movies, i felt, got short-shrift. I wanted him to go on talking about them for entire chapters. This is a positive. His writing is engaging, loving without being deferential or 'fanboyish', and cogent. Had he gone into the length and detail I wanted this would be a six-volume series. I feel Mr. Smokler would be game... maybe someday!?
thank you Mr. Smokler for giving me a reason to go back and re-watch the 40-50 movies you covered in this book. I would definitely read anything else you put out on 80s movies/pop culture.
I love some of the connections he made. I never thought of how much, for instance, Fast Times or Breaking Away depend on their location to define the movie. However, teenage movies in the 90s largely moved away from this storytelling device. I never realized that John Hughes' movies all took place in the same fictional suburb of Chicago. I never realized that some of the great symbology, like the proverbial "struggling town vs the big dogs" scenario that comes up in so many movies of that time.
My favorite parts of this book were the anecdotes about the creation of each movie, like how Fast Times had so little budget that it had to shoot in LA because the stars all went home at night. There was SO much love and admiration in this book, but also a deep respect for storytelling and movie knowledge. He doesn't put the movies on a pedestal, but shows his love by also pointing out their strengths (both real and imagined) and weaknesses. A large part of his writing focuses on the power of nostalgia to cloud our judgment of both the present and the past, and how it applies to our viewing of these movies both then and now.
The only reason i dinged in a star is because there were too many grammatical errors. While they certainly weren't endemic, there were enough of them for it to be distracting. It seems that a spell-checker was used, but that no one actually read the script all the way through. I KNOW that isn't the case, and i'm not THAT big a grammar snob, but it was sufficient to dock a point (I thought long and hard about whether or not to do it, but i felt it needed to be said)
One more positive thing i'll say about the book is that I hated how some of my favorite movies, i felt, got short-shrift. I wanted him to go on talking about them for entire chapters. This is a positive. His writing is engaging, loving without being deferential or 'fanboyish', and cogent. Had he gone into the length and detail I wanted this would be a six-volume series. I feel Mr. Smokler would be game... maybe someday!?
thank you Mr. Smokler for giving me a reason to go back and re-watch the 40-50 movies you covered in this book. I would definitely read anything else you put out on 80s movies/pop culture.
April 30, 2018
Covered many of my favorites, and some I have never seen. Biggest bibliography of any book I have read in recent memory.
Read
September 27, 2018Plenty of Breakfast Club, which I care about, and Back to the Future and Ferris Bueller, which I do not but which are necessary to the book. Smokler apologizes for omitting Red Dawn but doesn’t apologize for not mentioning Say Anything at all, even when discussing Seattle for War Games. That is, he doesn’t in the sections I read; I skipped several sections and there is no index.
April 20, 2018
Whether you are watching these movies for the first or the 51st time, "Brat Pack America" provides an illuminating guide to the high schools, Deloreans, gremlins and Goonies that populate the films we think of when we think of the 80s.
November 4, 2016
This is, as the cover attests, "A love letter to '80s teen movies."
But it is NOT a solo, one-dimensional, self-serving exploration of movie locations in '80s teen movies. Instead, Kevin Smokler's love letter is the beginning of a great and thought-provoking correspondence. He offers no shortage of facts and insights into the cinematic world, but he never dares to suggest these 326 pages are the be-all and end-all of the topic.
The "what about ___," problem -- which many nonfiction writers face when they try to balance expertise and limitation -- is easily sidestepped because Brat Pack America feels like a book that encourages you to ask, respond, and expand upon the information within. This is the engaging teacher rather than the repetitive, droning bore. Rather than being a "forgettable noisemaker" like some movies he talks about that are forgotten, the book lingers because it has made us active spectators of the films, and participants of the conversation.
This approach allows BPA to thrive beyond the limitations of his experience, and be a jumping off point not only for the importance of location in film, but how the films' locations he mentions (and omits) interact in different ways.
Never before has a book made me want to write addendum chapters, which I consider a great feat.
But it is NOT a solo, one-dimensional, self-serving exploration of movie locations in '80s teen movies. Instead, Kevin Smokler's love letter is the beginning of a great and thought-provoking correspondence. He offers no shortage of facts and insights into the cinematic world, but he never dares to suggest these 326 pages are the be-all and end-all of the topic.
The "what about ___," problem -- which many nonfiction writers face when they try to balance expertise and limitation -- is easily sidestepped because Brat Pack America feels like a book that encourages you to ask, respond, and expand upon the information within. This is the engaging teacher rather than the repetitive, droning bore. Rather than being a "forgettable noisemaker" like some movies he talks about that are forgotten, the book lingers because it has made us active spectators of the films, and participants of the conversation.
This approach allows BPA to thrive beyond the limitations of his experience, and be a jumping off point not only for the importance of location in film, but how the films' locations he mentions (and omits) interact in different ways.
Never before has a book made me want to write addendum chapters, which I consider a great feat.
November 15, 2016
Movies centering on teenagers blossomed in the 1980s. Smokler (Practical Classics) takes us on a tour of these films emphasizing the importance of their locations to show how vital the settings were to the stories. John Hughes's fictional Shermer, IL, is a safe suburb from which Ferris Bueller can take a day trip into Chicago. We see the birth of hip-hop on the streets of Manhattan. Dying factory towns provide the backdrop for sports movies. Smokler's road trip includes stops at Astoria, OR, for Goonies Day, the house of Back to the Future's Doc Brown in Pasadena, CA, and explains why people in Mystic, CT, don't eat at Mystic Pizza. The solid research backed by interviews, DVD commentaries, and firsthand experience, combined with the author's thoughtful appraisal, gives readers a new appreciation for movies they may have seen dozens of times. VERDICT While the topic may seem a bit narrow, Smokler's enthusiasm for movies shines through, making this an absolute delight for movie buffs. [Library Journal 11/15/2016]
February 5, 2017
This is a fun and educational, even at time insightful, look at 80s movies. The "America" and "Visiting" in the title comes from the ostensible theme of actual film locations. Except for lengthy discourses on Mystic, Connecticut; Astoria, Oregon (The Goonies); and Santa Cruz (The Lost Boys), actual sites are often unrelated to the film for uninteresting reasons divulged here. What makes the book worth reading is Smokler's joy and a fan of the period genre and his synopses and reviews of each film.
Smokler includes some interviews with writers and directors.
Also, kudos to book designer "STARLING" for making the pbk. look like a worn VHS.
(I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.)
Smokler includes some interviews with writers and directors.
Also, kudos to book designer "STARLING" for making the pbk. look like a worn VHS.
(I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.)
February 12, 2023
If you are an 80s kid or just love the 80s then this book is for you!! The author takes you through all the 80s movies you loved, come to love, or just plain forgot about and gives insight and background into the movies, locations, actors, and directors. You can definitely feel the authors love of 80s movies through his writing and the research he has put into the book. While I was reading the book I was taken back into my teen years and began a list of movies to watch again and the ones that I somehow missed during the 80s. Gonna have a lot of movie nights in my future!
March 3, 2017
If you love 80's movies and would like to reminisce about what made them great this is a fantastic collection of essays and interviews. It brought me back to my childhood and makes me long for a 80's movie marathon this weekend. I read this in preparation for an upcoming author visit at my college and I can't wait to hear what he has to say.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews