In honor of the thirty fifth anniversary of Home Alone, star Macaulay Culkin and director Chris Columbus sat down for a conversation in regards to the film‘s past, present and future.
By some means marking the very first time they’d discussed the hit movie together, the pair united for a screening on the Academy Museum on Saturday where they began initially, with John Hughes first bringing the script to Columbus. That got here after the filmmaker had quit Hughes’ National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation — with Columbus admitting, “I needed to call John Hughes and say, ‘I don’t get together with Chevy Chase. I don’t think I could make a movie with him’” — and considering he may never direct again.
After all he did, with Home Alone becoming a smash hit and a vacation classic still to this present day, something Columbus credits to “a sense of timelessness in regards to the look of the movie and the texture of the movie.” It’s also in the frilly traps that 8-year-old Kevin McCallister lays for thieves Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) that were done so realistically that “each time [the stuntmen] did a stunt, it was not funny. We’d watch it and we thought they were dead.”
The celebs also got in on the motion. Within the scene where Pesci’s character’s head catches on fire, the actor needed to wear a special cap; Columbus remembered “after we offered it to Joe, he said, ‘There’s no way I’m wearing that fucking thing.’” Producer Mark Radcliffe then “brought out his 9-year-old daughter, put the cap on her and we put the torch on her to really show Joe Pesci, you’re gonna be OK, Joe, that is superb,” which eventually convinced him. And Stern had an actual tarantula crawl on his face, but couldn’t scream since the spider “would then bite and get upset;” he needed to pretend to scream and have his vocals added in post, the filmmaker revealed.
The conversation also touched on possible ways Culkin and Columbus could return to the franchise; they each stopped after 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in Recent York, but the films carried on, with 1997’s Home Alone 3, 2002’s Home Alone 4, 2012’s Home Alone: The Holiday Heist and 2021’s Home Sweet Home Alone.
Columbus got honest about his thoughts on those movies, telling The Hollywood Reporter before the onstage conversation that his problem returning to the franchise is “it’s been revisited with really bad sequels. Sorry to insult anybody, but they’ve completely fucked it up. It began with Home Alone 3 after which it just went downhill from there; Home Alone 3 is form of the perfect of the bunch of the bad movies.” He partially blamed their failure on using wires in motion scenes, which “give a false sense of the stunt,” and as Culkin identified, “also they didn’t have us.”
Despite this, Culkin has recently been speaking publicly a few sequel idea he got here up with, which he elaborated on on the event. “I like the concept that perhaps Kevin’s older, that he’s like a widower or something like that. He’s raising his kid and so they don’t really get along, he’s working on a regular basis. … it’s almost like a Liar, Liar sort of thing,” the actor mused. “There’s considered one of two ways you’ll be able to do it. One, he actually leaves the child behind by mistake; he calls up his mom like, ‘So sorry, I get it now.’ Or I leave him behind on purpose, like, ‘Oh, that made me the person I’m today.’”
Culking continued, “Then he locks me out of the home and he’s organising traps and things like that. And I feel I see them coming because, , I’m the expert. It also explains why I don’t call the police or locksmith because I’m embarrassed my kid is thrashing me and that is my gig. And I feel the home can be sort of a metaphor for getting back into the child’s heart sort of thing.”
Chris Columbus, Macaulay Culkin and Academy Museum director of film programs K.J. Relth-Miller.
Academy Museum Foundation/Andrew Ge
Columbus, though — who said he’s “heard about 600 different ideas” over time of the best way to proceed the story — thinks it might only be price it if Culkin, Pesci and Stern all returned, as Culkin joked, “Joe Pesci is 82; I’m pretty sure he would still take a fall, right?”
The filmmaker elaborated to THR that twenty years ago, he considered an idea where Harry and Marv were getting out of jail after 20 years and “they’re bitter, they’re offended, and so they want revenge. And who do they need revenge on? Macaulay. And at that time, I assumed Macaulay could have a child, form of Kevin’s age, and it might be his own kid coping with these two guys.” Columbus added, though, “I don’t think Joe Pesci would have an interest. I haven’t seen Dan Stern since 1992, I don’t know if he would have an interest. The issue is while you’re doing a movie like this, a variety of it is basically based on solid; a part of it is predicated on the solid at that age, at that exact time, and I don’t think you’ll be able to duplicate that.”
The pair finished out the conversation by answering questions from kids within the audience, as Culkin talked about showing the movie to his own children — who don’t realize that he’s the star.
“They don’t even call it Home Alone, they call it Kevin. They’re like, ‘Wow Kevin’s really funny’; I’m going, ‘He’s also handsome, any person that your mom [Brenda Song] is perhaps into,’” he joked. “I showed my oldest — he desired to see an image of me and my siblings, so I pulled up this old photo; it’s all my siblings and he looks right at me and he goes, ‘Who’s that? That appears like Kevin.’ I’m going, ‘Oh, no, no one, here’s your aunt.’”
Culkin continued, “Their little cousin was over, she’s 5 years old. They told her, ‘We’re gonna watch Kevin tonight.’ And he or she turned to me, she goes, ‘You’re Kevin.’ I said, ‘No you’re Kevin, shut up!’ I’m attempting to keep the magic alive.” He left the stage by giving Home Alone 2‘s signature line, telling the gang, “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.”