In honor of the 35th anniversary of Home Alone, star Macaulay Culkin and director Chris Columbus sat down for a conversation about the film‘s past, present and future.
Somehow marking the very first time they’d discussed the hit movie together, the pair united for a screening at the Academy Museum on Saturday where they began at the beginning, with John Hughes first bringing the script to Columbus. That came after the filmmaker had quit Hughes’ National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation — with Columbus admitting, “I had to call John Hughes and say, ‘I don’t get along with Chevy Chase. I don’t think I can make a movie with him’” — and thinking he may never direct again.
Of course he did, with Home Alone becoming a smash hit and a holiday classic still to this day, something Columbus credits to “a feeling of timelessness about the look of the movie and the feel of the movie.” It’s also in the elaborate traps that 8-year-old Kevin McCallister lays for thieves Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) that were done so realistically that “every time [the stuntmen] did a stunt, it was not funny. We’d watch it and we thought they were dead.”
The stars also got in on the action. In the scene where Pesci’s character’s head catches on fire, the actor had to wear a special cap; Columbus remembered “when 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 actually show Joe Pesci, you’re gonna be OK, Joe, this is fine,” which eventually convinced him. And Stern had a real tarantula crawl on his face, but couldn’t scream because the spider “would then bite and get upset;” he had 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 both stopped after 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but the movies 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 films, 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 started with Home Alone 3 and then it just went downhill from there; Home Alone 3 is sort of the best of the bunch of the bad movies.” He partially blamed their failure on using wires in action scenes, which “give a false sense of the stunt,” and as Culkin pointed out, “also they didn’t have us.”
Despite this, Culkin has recently been speaking publicly about a sequel idea he came up with, which he elaborated on at the event. “I like the idea that maybe Kevin’s older, that he’s like a widower or something like that. He’s raising his kid and they don’t really get along, he’s working all the time. … it’s almost like a Liar, Liar kind of thing,” the actor mused. “There’s one of two ways you can do it. One, he actually leaves the kid 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 man I am today.’”
Culking continued, “Then he locks me out of the house and he’s setting up traps and things like that. And I think I see them coming because, you know, I’m the expert. It also explains why I don’t call the police or locksmith because I’m embarrassed my kid is beating me and this is my gig. And I think the house would be kind of a metaphor for getting back into the kid’s heart kind of thing.”
Columbus, though — who said he’s “heard about 600 different ideas” over the years of how to continue the story — thinks it would only be worth 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 two decades ago, he considered an idea where Harry and Marv were getting out of jail after 20 years and “they’re bitter, they’re angry, and they want revenge. And who do they want revenge on? Macaulay. And at that point, I thought Macaulay could have a kid, sort of Kevin’s age, and it would be his own kid dealing with these two guys.” Columbus added, though, “I don’t think Joe Pesci would be interested. I haven’t seen Dan Stern since 1992, I don’t know if he would be interested. The problem is when you’re doing a film like this, a lot of it is really based on cast; part of it is based on the cast at that age, at that particular time, and I don’t think you can duplicate that.”
The pair finished out the conversation by answering questions from kids in 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 go, ‘He’s also handsome, somebody that your mom [Brenda Song] might be into,’” he joked. “I showed my oldest — he wanted to see a picture 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 looks like Kevin.’ I go, ‘Oh, no, nobody, 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 she turned to me, she goes, ‘You’re Kevin.’ I said, ‘No you’re Kevin, shut up!’ I’m trying to keep the magic alive.” He left the stage by giving Home Alone 2‘s signature line, telling the crowd, “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.”
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