This holiday season, it is time to discuss one of the all-time greats: a film that broke records, made and broke careers, and aggressively shoe-horned its way into popular culture for decades to come: Chris Columbus’ 1990 comedy Home Alone.

In the 1990 holiday season, Home Alone was the only film that anybody in America was talking about. Despite a crowded opening weekend, this modestly budgeted family comedy saw off competition from high profile sequels Rocky V, The Rescuers Down Under, Three Men and a Little Lady, and Predator 2. The following week it remained the number one film in America, a feat it achieved again in its third week (besting new release Misery), and its fourth (beating Clint Eastwood vehicle The Rookie), and again in its fifth (above Look Who’s Talking Too and Mermaids). Home Alone ultimately held pole position in American cinemas for 12 weeks. The only films in the history of American cinema to retain number one at the box office for longer are E.T. (16 weeks), Titanic (15), Tootsie, and Beverly Hills Cop (both 14).

At the time of its release, Home Alone was the highest-grossing live-action comedy in history. At the time of writing (2023), it is still ranked 15th – and that is without adjusting for more than 30 years of inflation. The other clear success of Home Alone is in terms of its cultural footprint: it did not just succeed commercially, but it changed American popular culture. Family comedies became big business in its wake.

The film’s success even inspired a new industry term in Hollywood: when a potential hit release struggled because too many people were still going to see another movie? Your movie just got ‘Home Aloned’.

Its popularity extended well beyond the USA too. To this day, more than 10 percent of the public in Poland watch Home Alone on its traditional Christmas Eve broadcast.

While an enormous commercial success, it is fair to say Home Alone was not a critical favourite. It still isn’t. In a Rotten Tomatoes list of the 100 highest-ranked Christmas-themed movies of all time, the film came in at 80th. Roger Ebert, arguably the critic’s voice of mainstream America at the time, once noted ‘the plot is so implausible that it makes it hard for us to really care about the plight of the kid.’^[1] It is honestly due for reappraisal. There is a pantheon of Christmas classics out there, ranging from the iconic (It’s a Wonderful Life) to the absurd (The Muppet Christmas Carol) to the savage (Bad Santa). Home Alone is in that pantheon. It deserves its place on the list. This is the story of how it was made, and why it deserves to be celebrated.

In August 1989 the popular American writer and director John Hughes jotted down a story idea, shortly before travelling with wife Nancy and their two children on a European holiday. Having never taken the whole family overseas before, Hughes wrote down a list of everything to pack so as not to forget. ‘I thought, “Well I’d better not forget my kids.” Then I thought, “What if I left my 10-year-old son at home? What would he do?”’^[2]

Upon his return to the USA, Hughes undertook a fever-speed writing process and completed a first draft screenplay within nine days. A few weeks later the screenplay was picked up by Warner Bros and scheduled for a late 1990 release.

Let us talk about John Hughes. He died in August 2009, the victim of an unexpected heart attack. His career, however, had all-but wrapped up by the mid-1990s. Viewed in total, as a screenwriter, director, and producer, it can be divided fairly easily into three overlapping phases: firstly the broad comedy of Hughes’ National Lampoon films and similar works; secondly, his widely acclaimed series of teen comedies and dramas that remain his most popular; and finally a run of family-oriented fare that not only started with Home Alone but almost certainly peaked with it as well.

It is that second phase of teen films that secured Hughes’ long-term reputation. It started with Sixteen Candles (1984), which was his sixth produced screenplay but his debut as director. It was quickly followed by The Breakfast Club, Weird Science (both 1985), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and Pretty in Pink (1986; Hughes wrote and produced, but did not direct). Together they formed a groundbreaking new style of teen film for America, contemporary in tone, content, and soundtrack.

In an Entertainment Weekly interview, actor Daniel Stern described Hughes’ screenwriting talent. ‘His writing style stands out to me because when you read the scripts, they’re so specifically funny. They’re almost storyboards. They’re shot-by-shot. With the Home Alone scripts, it wasn’t just, “The guys walk in and take a pie in the face.” It was a close-up of the pie. Shot of feet walking. Pan up to see me. Cut back to pie. His writing was brilliant that way. There was nothing left to chance.’^[3]

Despite their cult popularity with a certain generation, Hughes’ teen films are far from perfect. Sixteen Candles in particular is riddled with casual racism and patriarchal attitudes, while his other works of the time – indeed, Hughes’ films in general – show a particular blindness for the non-white experience. While Hughes has been celebrated as a voice of the American teen experience, the claim only really works if the teens in question are white, wealthier than average, and living in 1980s Chicago. There are exceptions; Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club to present working class characters, but to an extent they exist to prove the rule.

Home Alone was Hughes’ second Christmas-themed movie project. He had already written, and was in the middle of producing, the Chevy Chase sequel National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). That film was to be directed by Chris Columbus.

Let us also talk about Chris Columbus. He had broken into Hollywood, like Hughes, as a screenwriter. He debuted in 1984 with two films: the romantic drama Reckless (directed by James Foley) and the horror comedy Gremlins (directed by Joe Dante). The commercial success of the latter saw Columbus employed by Amblin Entertainment to write two more films for them: Young Sherlock Holmes and The Goonies, directed by Barry Levinson and Richard Donner respectively. If he did not shape the house style of Amblin’s family films, he definitely typified it.

Like many film writers, Columbus harboured ambitions to direct. In 1987 he helmed Disney’s teen comedy Adventures in Babysitting (released internationally as A Night on the Town). Written by David Simkins, the film owed a clear debt to John Hughes’ own Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. After a slightly rocky start in American theatres, Adventures in Babysitting became a modest success for Disney’s Touchstone Pictures label, grossing US$35 million and becoming a popular hit on home video.

Columbus’ follow-up Heartbreak Hotel (1988), which he both wrote and directed, failed to receive the same reception. It opened poorly behind Michael Apted’s Gorillas in the Mist, and grossed less than $US6 million domestically. Fearing his directing career would be over almost as soon as it had begun, Columbus was surprised to be approached by John Hughes to come and direct the Chevy Chase sequel National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at Warner Bros. It was an offer Columbus felt compelled to accept.

After working through pre-production, and completing some second-unit work (establishing shots and the like), Columbus quit the new film. With his second chance at directing blown, he assumed he would never work in Hollywood again. Christmas Vacation proceeded without him, under the supervision of Jeremiah S. Chechik (Benny & Joon).

‘It’s common knowledge that I did not get on with Chevy Chase,’ explained Columbus. ‘He’s an impossible human being and I just couldn’t make a picture with him – it’d be like making a film with Donald Trump. So I quit and I think John, in his own way, admired that: the fact I had everything to lose and nothing to lose. Two weeks later, he sent me two scripts – one of which was Home Alone. He’s basically responsible for me continuing to work as a director today.’ (Ironically in 1992 Columbus would direct Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which featured Donald Trump.)^[4]

In one interview Columbus, who had his own experience writing Christmas movies via Gremlins, said: ‘Christmas is a time when people are at their happiest or at their most emotionally low place in their lives, and I thought that this is a great backdrop for a kid who’s left home alone on Christmas.’^[5]

Home Alone focuses on the wealthy McAllisters of Chicago, whose extended family – four adults, 11 kids – plan to travel to Paris for the Christmas holidays. In the rush to reach the airport, one of their children – precocious eight-year-old Kevin – is left behind. Asides from keeping himself fed and clothed, Kevin is forced to defend the two-story mansion when it is targeted by a pair of cat burglars.

Mention of Kevin leads us to the third key figure in the making and subsequent success of Home Alone: child actor Macaulay Culkin. One of eight children to former actor Kit Culkin, he had debuted in local theatre before graduating to film. His screen debut was in 1988’s Rocket Gibraltar, but his first notable success was in John Hughes’ Uncle Buck where he had partially stolen the film from under lead actor John Candy. At the time of filming Home Alone he was nine years old.

In a 2004 interview, a 24-year-old Culkin recalled how his career began. ‘It was just kind of one of these weird things,’ he said, ‘where a friend of ours, a family friend, lived around the corner, she was a stage manager at this small theatre and they were looking for a six-year-old boy. And she had this big family around the corner, because I’m third of seven. And so she figured she’d find someone the right age and the right gender, and then plucked me out. And I remember, at some course during that audition I ended up on the table, doing my lines, standing on the table doing my lines. […] I always enjoyed the attention that came with being on stage.’^[6]

Hughes had written Home Alone with Culkin in mind, but Columbus wanted to at least make sure that he was the best option. Casting director Janet Hirshenson recalled: ‘I quickly looked to see if there was anybody besides Macaulay. It was a quick and limited search. I needed a little boy who would still be believing in Santa Claus. I did a quick sweep of New York and Chicago and nope – there wasn’t anyone better than Macaulay.’^[7]

Columbus workshopped Culkin’s dialogue with the young actor throughout the shoot. Editor Raja Gosnell described the process: ‘Chris worked with him in terms of line reads and how the rhythm of a line might go. Sometimes they were like a ping-pong game: Chris would say the line the way he would hear it and Mac would repeat it. It was a beautiful system that came up with a great performance.’^[8] The production employed two cameras at the same time to provide additional options during editing; it was rare for Culkin and his juvenile co-stars to give the same delivery of a line twice.

Catherine O’Hara was cast as Kevin’s mother Kate, who accidentally leaves Kevin behind when the family travels from Chicago to Paris. O’Hara was a veteran of the Second City comedy group and a star of sketch comedy series SCTV, where she had worked alongside Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Eugene Levy, and John Candy. Since leaving that series she had appeared in multiple features including Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988).

While O’Hara makes a tremendous impression as Kate McAllister, she was in fact second choice for the role. John Hughes had first approached Big star Elizabeth Perkins, only for her to already be booked for another project (going by release dates, it was likely Barry Levinson’s Avalon).

John Heard played the smaller role of Kevin’s father Peter. His casting was somewhat against type, with Heard already being best known for dramas including Cutter’s Way (1981), After Hours (1985), and The Milagro Beanfield War (1988). Heard was reportedly unhappy when the runaway success of Home Alone led to what he considered a minor performance becoming his most famous role.

Kevin’s extended family of siblings and cousins was cast predominantly in Chicago, making use of local talent. ‘You’re not necessarily casting a kid for acting abilities,’ noted Stern,’ you’re going with their energy. It’s their aura and what they can project, and you’ve got to handcraft it. It takes time and patience and love.’^[9] The casting process was particularly challenging as Stern needed to find 10 youths ranging from six-year-olds to teenagers.

Due to tight regulations governing the use of juvenile performers on film shoots, Columbus was limited in the time he had to work with them. For many scenes, individual shots of the child actors were done separately to reverse shots of the adults with whom they were talking. The adult cast would perform their half of the scenes while the children were in on-set school classes. Out-of-shot stand-ins made from camera tripods and tennis balls provided eye-lines for the actors.

The other two key roles in the film were Harry and Marv, a pair of dimwitted burglars who target Kevin’s house while the family is away. Columbus was keen to cast the parts with particularly strong actors with good chemistry, so as to accentuate the comedic elements of the film. He settled on Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern.

Joe Pesci remains, even today, a bizarre choice to play the villain in a family comedy. He had been performing since 1976, where he played a mafia enforcer in Ralph De Vito’s The Death Collector. His acting in that film impressed both director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, which led to Pesci being cast in their award-winning boxing drama Raging Bull (1980). His subsequent films included Nicolas Roeg’s Eureka (1983), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) – for which he was awarded a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

It is a striking shift in tone and style for Pesci to follow up playing a volatile and murderous gangster with playing broad slapstick comedy. It does not simply show off Pesci’s range, it also gives Harry a slightly threatening edge that seems out of place in something intended in part for children. By all accounts Pesci enjoyed the change. In 2022 he said ‘I remember Macaulay as being a really sweet kid and, even at his age, very professional. I intentionally limited my interactions with him to preserve the dynamic between his character, Kevin, and my character Harry.’^[10]

‘Joe tried really hard not to drop F-bombs in front of us kids,’ recalled actor Senta Moses.  ‘Sometimes he’d slip — and we thought it was hysterical, because, well, we were kids. But Chris gave him an alternate word to use around us. I think it was “fridge.”’^[11]

While not perhaps as famous for playing tough guys and violent mobsters, Daniel Stern came to Home Alone off the back of a fairly prestigious career. His first big break came in Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982), and had performed in both Stardust Memories (1980) and Hannah and her Sisters (1986) for Woody Allen. Home Alone afforded Stern a path into popular comedy, where he starred in films including City Slickers (1991) and its sequel, Bushwhacked (1995), and Celtic Pride (1996).

‘The script struck a chord in me,’ said Stern. ‘I hadn’t gotten a chance to express that kind of physical comedy since I was a kid. I thought, “I can hit a fucking home run with this”. I went to an audition for Chris. I wanted it so bad. When I left, I thought, “I could do that better”. It was the only time in my life I called and said, “Can I come back?”.’^[12]

Warner executives baulked at the expense of casting both Pesci and Stern as the “Wet Bandits”, and for a short period Stern was replaced with Daniel Roebuck (later to co-star in The Fugitive). A lack of perceived chemistry in screen tests with Pesci convinced the studio to reverse their decision and pay the additional money for Stern.

Three weeks before shooting, disagreements over the budget proved intractable and Warner Bros put Home Alone into ‘turnaround’. The studio was not going to produce the film, but a competitor could pick up the rights so long as they reimbursed Warner Bros for development costs to date.

The decision put the entire production into crisis mode. Associate producer Mark Radcliffe said, ‘the question was, “Do we lay everyone off?” John said to just hold tight.’^[13] Unknown to Radcliffe, Hughes’ agent Jack Rapke – who also represented Chris Columbus – had already arranged a meeting with new 20th Century Fox chairman Joe Roth.

Roth: ‘I was having lunch with Jack Rapke, and he told me Home Alone was costing $14.7 million and Warners would only pay $14 million. I said, “What’s the idea?” He told me. I said, “OK, if you can get it out of there, I’ll make it.” Seemed like a no-brainer.  Didn’t cost much. I didn’t have a Thanksgiving movie. I liked the idea. I loved the people involved.’^[14]

Home Alone ceased production at Warner Bros on a Friday. It entered production with Fox the following Tuesday.

Principal photography on Home Alone commenced in February 1990. As was the case with many John Hughes productions, the shoot almost entirely took place in Chicago. Sets were constructed in the unused New Trier High School.

The exterior of the three-story McAllister house was found at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka; the house has previously been considered and rejected for Hughes’ Uncle Buck.  Owner John Abendshien recalled that ‘John Hughes had a real interest in filming in community settings. He, I understand, grew up in the North Shore, and really wanted his sets and backgrounds to have a real world; a true neighbourhood and a true-home-type ambience.’^[15] While the production was present at the site for more than five months, all of the interior scenes were shot on sets at New Trier.

The film’s winter setting led to unwanted additional expense for the tightly-budgeted film. As funds were limited, the decision was made to feature only light snow during exterior scenes. Unfortunately a blizzard during the second day of production covered the Winnetka site in a thick carpet of snow that then needed to be replicated with sprayed ice and potato flakes. So much ice was ultimately dumped in the house’s surrounds that meltwater leaked into the basement.

The film’s director of photography was Argentinian Julio Macat. ‘We thought about every shot,’ said Macat, ‘in terms of the point of view of the kid. Because of that, we used wider angles. The height of the camera was lower than you would normally have. Our ceilings were important, because we were looking up a lot.’^[16] It was a similar technique to the one undertaken by cinematographer Allen Daviau on Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982 – and for an identical purpose: to subtly emulate a child’s perspective for the audience. The film also employs a rich Christmas-themed colour palette, dominated by reds, greens, and warm ambers in the Chicago scenes and cold blues in Paris.

Home Alone begins with the extended McAllister family assembled at the home of Peter McCallister (Heard) and his wife Kate (O’Hara), in advance of travelling to Paris for Christmas. It is a large family, so it is worth taking a pause to map out the family tree.

Peter and Kate McAllister have five children: Megan, Buzz, Jeff, Linnie, and Kevin.

Peter is one of three brothers. His siblings are younger brother Rob – who lives in Paris – and older brother Frank – whose family is travelling to Paris with him. Frank, a notorious cheapskate, is married to Leslie with whom he shares four children: Tracy, Sondra, Brooke, and Fuller. Rob and his wife Georgette have four children, two of whom – Heather and Rod – are still in the USA and joining Peter and Frank’s families on the trip.Their other two children, a pair of twins in France, go unnamed. Much of their scenes were cut in the film’s final edit.

Knowing the names is one thing: identifying each character in the finished film is something else. Frank and Leslie are relatively easy of course. Frank was played by Jerry Bamman, who had previously played small supporting parts in Cocktail (1988) and Desperate Hours (1990). Leslie was played by Terrie Snell; it was her first on-screen role.

Likewise, viewers will not struggle to recognise Buzz or Fuller – who are the two most prominent children in the film after Kevin. Buzz was played by Devin Ratray, who had previously appeared in the 1989 Fred Savage vehicle Little Monsters. Ratray continues to perform as an adult, notably in the excellent independent thriller Blue Ruin (2013).

Fuller was played by Macaulay Culkin’s younger brother Keiran. It was the seven-year-old Keiran’s acting debut. Like Ratray, Keiran Culkin continued to act: notably in the award-winning television drama Succession (2018-23) but also in films including Father of the Bride (1991), The Mighty (1998), Igby Goes Down (2002), and Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010).

Onto the three remaining children of Peter and Kate. Megan is most obvious in Paris, when she chides Buzz for not caring about Kevin enough. She was played by Hillary Wolf. A skilled judoka, Wolf later represented the USA at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games. In 2021 she wrote: ‘Home Alone was filmed in the Chicago area so I got to stay home, sleep in my own bed and only had to drive 30 minutes to set each morning, but to this day, my mom still says that she probably wouldn’t have said yes if it hadn’t been a John Hughes movie.’^[17]

Linnie (‘you’re what the French call les incompetent’) was played by Angela Goethals. She appeared in Rocket Gibraltar in 1988 opposite Macaulay Culkin, and later starred in the 1993 television sitcom Phenom. Unlike most of her co-stars, Goethals did not return for Home Alone 2.

Jeff (‘Kevin, you’re such a disease’) was played by Michael C. Maronna. Home Alone marked his debut, but he immediately followed it with a starring role in the long-running children’s TV series The Adventures of Pete & Pete. About Home Alone, Maronna recalled ‘I remember Chicago and the vast amounts of snow in the winter, eating lots of deep-dish pizza, mostly hanging out with Angela Goethals, and playing video games a bunch.’^[18]

Onto Frank and Leslie’s kids, and Fuller’s older sisters: Tracy, Sondra, and Brooke. Tracy (‘yeah, but they don’t live here’) was played by Senta Moses. A scattered set of small roles before Home Alone were followed by recurring and lead TV roles in My So-Called Life (1994-5), Beakman’s World (1996-7), and General Hospital (2007).

Sondra (she speaks briefly to Harry after Tracy and Heather) was played by Daiana Campeanu. Aside from a role in 1993’s Dennis the Menace, her subsequent performing career appears limited to short films.

Brooke (the little girl with glasses who, with Fuller, stares silently at Harry) was played by Anna Slotky (now Anna Reitano). After a number of guest roles on television, she quit acting to become a lawyer. At the time of writing she works as a public defender in Los Angeles county.

This leaves Rob McAllister’s children. Rob himself was played by Ray Toler, whose own role was essentially lost during the editing process. His eldest daughter Heather, who does the headcount of all 11 children before driving to the airport, was played by Kristin Minter. Home Alone marked her first on-screen role. She later co-starred opposite rapper Vanilla Ice in Cool as Ice (1991), and played the recurring role of Miranda ‘Randi’ Fronczak across more than 70 episodes of ER (1995-2003).

Rod McAllister – who shares an early conversation with Buzz about French women not shaving their armpits – was played by Jedidiah Cohen. He has not performed on-screen since 2000.

The opening 10 minutes of Home Alone could act as a master class in set-up and foreshadowing. It sets up the entire McAllister family, Kevin’s position within it, the layout of the McAllister house, one of the two burglars, Buzz’s pet tarantula, and the creepy neighbour – referred to by Buzz as “Old Man Marley”, an alleged axe-wielding maniac.

Marley (named after Dickens’ A Christmas Carol) was played by Roberts Blossom, a poet and actor previously seen in John Carpenter’s Christine (1983) and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). When Blossom died in 2011, his daughter Deborah Blossom noted his Home Alone performance. “That’s certainly the one he gained the most recognition from, and people still remember him from that. He was very happy with the outcome of that movie and its popularity, and he was very happy to be recognized for it.’^[19]

A falling tree cuts the power overnight, leading the family to sleep in and almost miss their flight. In their rush, they leave Kevin asleep in the attic.

The McAllisters’ frantic run through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, which only took up a few brief moments in the film, actually took days to film. Senta Moses said: ‘There were thousands of extras, all expertly choreographed so none of us would be in danger running at full speed through the American Airlines terminal at O’Hare, and we ran at full speed. Sometimes we’d bump into each other, like a multi-car pileup on the expressway, and just crack up laughing. I can’t speak for anyone else, but as a kid, I loved it. There were so many setups and narrowly missed moments of disaster, but to my knowledge, no one got hurt.’^[20]

The panicked rush at the airport is contrasted with Kevin’s quiet waking and wandering around his deserted house. Having wished his family would disappear the previous night, following an altercation over pizza, Kevin comes to believe his wish has come true.

With the film’s first act complete, events effectively split into the central storyline and a subplot. In the main story, Kevin goes about his solitary life and gradually matures. At first he is focused on rebellion: jumping on beds, eating junk food, and watching an old gangster film he was previously told not to watch.

That film, Angels with Dirty Faces, was entirely made up for Home Alone. Chris Columbus shot the featured scenes with local Chicago actors on black and white film. The sequence was carefully storyboarded so that only the shots required for each scene would be produced. The end result was a remarkable achievement for such a minor element of the film. The visual texture and rougher sound quality genuinely resemble something made in the 1940s and licensed to the production.

Viewers tend to overlook Home Alone’s middle act, in which Kevin and the “Wet Bandits” Harry and Marv slowly circle one another until they learn he is home alone and he learns of their plans to rob his house. These developments are interspersed with Kevin’s attempts to undertake adult activities – such as doing the laundry and going shopping for groceries without supervision. It is a part of the movie that nicely balances humour and drama, and contains some particularly effective and well-presented scenes.

By the time Kevin overhears that Harry and Marv are planning to break in and rob the house, he has come to regret his earlier wish that his family would disappear. First he goes to see Santa Claus, almost missing the local Santa impersonator – who is smoking a cigarette before driving home. There were brief conversations regarding Saturday Night Live star Chris Farley making a cameo as the Santa performer. At the time Farley was not in the best physical condition and auditioned poorly; the one-scene role ultimately went to Ken Hudson Campbell.

Campbell said: ‘Apparently, he was out all night and had just been dropped off after a night of shenanigans, shall we say. Farley was kinda making catcalls to the girls who worked in the office. I was thinking, “Oh, boy!” The late, great Jay Leggett was also there. Chris went first. It didn’t go very well. He walked in and walked right out. I felt I went in and hit what I wanted to hit. A few weeks later, I got the call.’^[21]

Kevin next goes to church where, while listening to a young choir, encounters Old Man Marley again and discovers he is nothing like Kevin has been told. They share a quiet conversation together. Marley explains his estrangement from his son and how he must come to watch his granddaughter perform in the choir if he wants to see her. Kevin admits his recent experiences have left him changed; for example he no longer finds the basement scary like he used to. He encourages Marley to call his son and try to patch up their relationship. It is an oddly mature scene for what is ostensibly a childrens’ film. The conversation between Kevin and Marley has an emotional truth behind it that genuinely lifts the overall film. It is not just entertaining, it expresses the development that Kevin has undergone while abandoned at home.

The church conversation was Chris Columbus’ favourite element of the whole movie. ‘‘I just thought that was a beautifully written scene, and that scene on film is exactly as John wrote it. I mean, we didn’t change a word of that scene.’^[22]

‘Macaulay was really focused in that scene,’ he also said, ‘and it was because of Roberts. He just commanded Macaulay’s attention. It was a magical moment.’^[23]

As he leaves the church, Kevin notices the time: he must race home and prepare for the coming invasion.

Of course while Kevin’s adventures develop, the film regularly switches over to portray Kate’s near-fruitless attempts to return to Chicago from Paris. Her initial attempts to inform the Chicago police of Kevin’s plight are stymied by a police operator (Kate Johnson) and the listless Officer Balzak (Larry Hankin).

Larry Hankin, like Catherine O’Hara an alumnus of the Second City comedy troupe, maintained a long career of guest appearances in film and television. These days he probably remains best known for his recurring role of cantankerous neighbour Mr Heckles in popular sitcom Friends.

Kate’s scenes in Charles de Gaulle Airport were shot at a slightly redressed O’Hare. Eventually Kate manages to convince an elderly woman to exchange her plane ticket to the USA for an assortment of jewellery and other possessions, but that only gets her as far as Dallas – not Chicago, as she desperately needs. The old couple, named Ed and Irene in Hughes’ screenplay, were played by Billie Bird and Bill Erwin.

The next time audiences see Kate she has flown as far as Scranton, New Jersey, where all flights to Chicago are full. As a last resort she accepts an offer to hitch a ride with Gus Polinski, a self-proclaimed “polka king of the Midwest”, who has hired a van with his band to get to Milwaukee. Polinski was played by John Candy as a favour to John Hughes. He even agreed to be paid ‘scale’: the minimum hourly rate an actor could be paid on a union-certified production. (The Internet claims this amounted to $414, but there is no easy way to confirm this sum.)

Due to scheduling issues, it became clear that Candy did not really have the time to perform the role. Via an unofficial agreement that would never have been formally accepted by the studio or the Actors Guild, Candy recorded his entire role in a single and extended 24-hour shoot. Much of the dialogue between Candy and O’Hara was improvised, including the entirety of Candy’s funeral parlour monologue which was performed spontaneously in one take. ‘That just came out of nowhere,’ recalled Columbus. ‘That was probably on hour 23 of shooting. We were all sort of punch drunk. […] It was toward the end of it and the crew was just bent over laughing.’^[24]

So tight was Candy’s shoot that time actually ran out; no scene of Gus saying goodbye to Kate was ever shot, and was replaced by an exterior of the hired van pulling up outside the McAllister house.

It is a lovely small example of how adversity breeds creativity, since the shot of the van in the finished film is a more efficient and emotionally constructive moment than a short scene of Candy could ever have been. It makes the emotional climax of the film that much stronger. We will return to this scene later.

Back to Kevin, and the part of Home Alone that most people remember best: Harry and Marv’s fruitless attempts to break into the McAllister home, in the face of Kevin’s range of improvised traps. John Hughes’ screenplay described each trap and stunt in general terms, and it was up to the stunt team – supervised by Freddie Hice – to fully realise and perform them. A map of the house, marking out each of the key traps, was drawn and used by Macaulay Culkin.

There is no need to go through each individual trap in turn. What is worth noting is that they are all, in essence, almost murderously violent: a nail through the foot, for example, or a blowtorch directed onto someone’s head. Many of Harry and Marv’s injuries could, if real, genuinely kill a person. Even watching stunt artists perform some of the pratfalls gave Chris Columbus pause: ‘Every time the stunt guys did one of those stunts it wasn’t funny. We’d watch it, and I would just pray that the guys were alive.’

‘Even what seems simple, [like] the Joe Pesci character walking up the stairs of the front of the house and doing a backflip. I really thought Troy, our stunt man, had broken his back on that first take.’^[25]

This created a major production headache, since Home Alone was supposed to be a comedy suitable for families. Turn down the sound, and the climactic 20 minutes gets rather disturbing and uncomfortable. The solution? Musical score and sound design. ‘What was happening to those guys,’ said Raja Gosnell, ‘was extremely painful so what we did was mix in enough real sound effects and cartoon sound effects and constructed the music in such a way that it felt cartoony enough that people would laugh instead of going, “Ow!”’^[26]

It is notable that Home Alone’s cinematographer, Julio Macat, was hired based on his work directing the second unit on the 1989 action film Tango & Cash. In essence, rather than hire someone with experience in comedy or family entertainment, the production deliberately appointed someone with experience in action cinema. Macat said: ‘We looked at the Roadrunner cartoons and Wily Coyote — the anvil flying at somebody’s head and how funny that is, and when it’d be fun to just go off into this language that kids understand; the cartoon world.’^[27]

The final touch in softening the impact of the film’s violence was the score. This is the perfect point to discuss the music of Home Alone, and its composer: Hollywood legend John Williams.

There was never a serious expectation on behalf of the production that Williams would agree to compose the score. Indeed, Bruce Broughton (Silverado, Young Sherlock Holmes) had already been hired and credited on the film’s first teaser posters. Columbus again: ‘Bruce Broughton did the score for Young Sherlock Holmes, a movie I wrote, and I always wanted to work with him, so we hired him to do the score. But as we were getting closer to finishing the film we got a call from Bruce saying that he was under a deadline to finish his score for The Rescuers Down Under and he couldn’t do Home Alone.’ Columbus contacted John Williams via Steven Spielberg, and was surprised when the noted composer agreed to take up the assignment. ‘His score took the movie to a different level,’ said Columbus.^[28]

Through the bulk of the film Williams presents one of his warmest and most delightful soundtracks ever, blending his typical Prokovief-inspired style with a range of Christmas carols. It truly lifts the entire film, and arguably does more work than any other element in cementing the innate “Christmassy” tone. For the climax, however, Williams clearly takes inspiration from a very different source: Carl Stalling.

So who is Carl Stalling? Born in 1891, Stalling first made his living conducting music accompaniment for silent films. After a chance meeting with a young Walt Disney, he composed some of the earliest soundtracks to Disney’s Mickey Mouse animations: chiefly Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho. With Disney he co-created the Silly Symphonies range of animated shorts, where the scores would be composed first and then given to the animation team to make the cartoon around them. The Skeleton Dance was the first of these, released in 1929. It is still one of the most important animated films ever made.

In 1936 Stalling was hired by producer Leon Schlesinger to become the house composer for Warner Bros’ own range of comedy cartoons. For 22 years Stalling was the music director for both Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes, and it is there where his most influential work occurred. His scores, which were meticulously timed, enhanced the set-ups and punchlines of jokes, were packed with what Stalling called “musical puns” – brief references to popular songs of the time, and occasionally adapted entire operas to a seven-minute format. It is not an exaggeration to credit Carl Stalling with inventing the aural language of animated comedy. The techniques he developed are broadly still in use today.

Now John Williams has always been something of a magpie in gathering pre-existing musical works and riffing on their compositions for his own purposes, and with the climax of Home Alone he simply steals liberally from the Stalling playbook. It is a kind of music that the audience innately understands. It transforms Harry and Marv from flesh and blood human beings into live-action cartoons, at no greater risk of permanent injury than Wile-E Coyote or Sylvester the Cat.

One specific moment of the climax is worth noting: the moment when Buzz’s runaway tarantula crawls over Marv’s face.

There is a strong argument – and one that I eagerly support – that Marv’s scream of panic is, in fact, the greatest scream in the history of screen entertainment. There has been some debate over whether Daniel Stern actually screamed with the spider on his face, or if he mimed it on set and dubbed the scream during post-production. The argument goes that screaming would be cruel to the spider, which might get startled or deafened. For the record, Stern insists he performed the scream live on set; spiders do not have ears.^[29]

The climax reaches its conclusion when Kevin runs across the road to the neighbouring house, finds its basement flooded – courtesy of Marv earlier in the film – and is cornered by the bandits. Just when Harry is threatening to bite Kevin’s fingers off, both criminals are struck unconscious by Old Man Marley – who has come to the rescue.

The flooded basement set was constructed inside New Trier High School’s swimming pool, making it an inexpensive option compared to a pre-existing studio space.

During rehearsals Joe Pesci accidentally bit one of Culkin’s fingers for real. Culkin: ‘During rehearsal he actually bit me, and it broke the skin and everything. I’m playing a little nine-year-old boy, and he’s going around biting him.’^[30] The adult Culkin claims to still have a scar.

With that the police take the bandits away, Kevin and Kate are reunited, and the film closes to a heartwarming close. An epilogue scene to the film was written but never shot, in which Harry and Marv watched Angels with Dirty Faces on a television in prison – only for Marv to realise he had heard the dialogue exchange before.

Principal photography on Home Alone concluded on 14 May 1990. The film premiered in Chicago on 10 November, and opened nationally about a week later.

20th Century Fox did not have massive expectations for Home Alone in American cinemas. It was a modestly budgeted family comedy, released on a particularly busy weekend against two high profile sequels. With that in mind, the film was launched on 1,202 screens across the country, less than both Rocky V (2,053) and The Rescuers Down Under (1,253). Despite the smaller release, or arguably because of it, Home Alone topped the weekend’s box office with a US$17 million gross. Demand for the film exceeded the supply of seats, creating packed theatres where the audience’s combined laughter bounced off one another and enhanced their enjoyment. The public response made Home Alone the must-see movie of the season. Sell-out sessions continued into the second week, despite fresh competition from Three Men and a Little Lady and Predator 2 – and an additional 82 screens. ‘The figures we’re getting,’ exclaimed Fox’s marketing head Tom Sherak, ‘from both big towns and small towns, are telephone numbers! They’ve got a lot of digits.’^[31]

By its fifth week Home Alone was approaching US$100 million in domestic box office, well over double Fox’s original expectations. The film had expanded to more than 2,000 screens. By Christmas week its popularity seemed to have peaked, with the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy Kindergarten Cop relegating it to second place. Then by the first week of January something entirely unexpected happened: Home Alone returned to the #1 position. This is despite it having been screening for two months and having already grossed US$168 million.

By the time it exited American cinemas, Home Alone had grossed almost US$286 million. Combined with US$191 million in international receipts it totalled a jaw-dropping US$477 million: the highest gross in history for a comedy film. In 2023 terms, that is the equivalent of more than a billion dollars.

Warner Bros, which had put Home Alone into turnaround three weeks before shooting, likely regretted that decision. Compared to the grosses of Home Alone, Ghost, and Pretty Woman, their most successful film of 1990 was Alan J. Pakula’s legal thriller Presumed Innocent – which earned less than half of Home Alone’s haul worldwide.

It is believed Macaulay Culkin was paid about US$100,000 for Home Alone. He was paid approximately US$4.5 million for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, released just two years later in November 1992. It sparked a short, furiously productive career in which the young actor made eight films in four years including My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), Getting Even with Dad, and Richie Rich (1994).

At that point the 14-year-old abruptly retired from acting, and did not appear in another film until 2003’s Party Monster. ‘It started feeling like a chore,’ Culkin explained. ‘I started vocalising that and not being heard: I was saying, “I wanna go to school – I haven’t done a full year of school since first grade.”’^[32]

Even when Culkin re-commenced his acting career, he deliberately avoided high-profile, commercial projects. ‘I don’t want to do what I did before. Before it was, you know, it was like people’s livelihoods were on the line… they, like, built an industry out of me. It was just this really odd dynamic that I think made me uncomfortable for a lot of my young life.’^[33]

For Chris Columbus, Home Alone meant gaining an enormous commercial profile and the ability to select much larger, coveted directing roles. While his 1991 follow-up Only the Lonely underperformed, Home Alone 2 grossed US$359 million and Mrs Doubtfire $441 million. In 2001 and 2002 he directed the first two films in the Harry Potter franchise, which grossed US$1.93 billion between them. Between 2006 and 2014, Columbus also produced the popular Night at the Museum trilogy (combined cross US$1.4 billion).

For John Hughes, however, Home Alone essentially locked him inside a prison of his own making. The enormous success of the film reshaped what Hollywood expected of him. Prior to Home Alone Hughes’ greatest commercial success was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which grossed almost US$71 million at the American box office in 1986. Home Alone grossed four times as much. For a studio looking for a popular family hit, John Hughes immediately became the ‘go-to’ guy; hiring him to write, direct, or produce any other genre was clearly poor business practice.

John Hughes projects that failed to be produced in the years following Home Alone included the comedies Bartholemew v Neff (to star Sylvester Stallone and John Candy), The Nanny, The Bugster, Ball’n’Chain, and the new teen film Tickets. Films that did see release included children’s films Curly Sue (1991), Beethoven (1992), Dennis the Menace (1993), Baby’s Day Out (1993), 101 Dalmatians (1996), and Flubber (1997).

Unable to find studio backing outside of his newfound, and increasingly anodyne, niche, John Hughes simply retired from the business. Anything released following the troubled Reach the Rock (1998), which was the second script he has sent to Chris Columbus in 1989, was the result of long-gestating projects finally reaching production (including 2002’s Maid in Manhattan and 2008’s Drillbit Taylor, both based on Hughes storylines under the pseudonym Edmond Dantes).

Then, on 6 August 2009, John Hughes left his Manhattan hotel for a walk, suffered a heart attack, and died. The following year the Academy Awards paid lavish tribute to him, including appearances by Molly Ringwald, Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, and a 28-year-old Macaulay Culkin. It was an ironic gesture, given he had never been nominated for an Oscar. ‘The world has lost not only a quintessential film-maker whose influence will be felt for generations, but a great and decent man,’ said Culkin.^[34]

Despite past and future successes, pretty much anyone involved in making Home Alone remains well remembered for that film. ‘Anywhere I go,’ Daniel Stern once commented, ‘I’m the Home Alone dude.’^[35]

Even its star, decades after he purposefully exited the business, keeps a low profile every Christmas. ‘I definitely don’t (go out),” Culkin told talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. “It’s my season. It’s Macaulay season. I try to go out less and less around that time of year.’^[36]

In December 2023, the Nation Film Registry nominated Home Alone to its annual preservation list, ensuring a copy of the film would be stored for perpetuity in the Library of Congress. It is the third of Hughes’ productions to be inducted, following The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Between the three of them, they showcase the very best elements of an immense talent: his gifts for character, sensitivity, humour, story, and most of all his recognising and fostering talent. Home Alone has never been critically praised like his other most famous works. I honestly think that is a situation that deserves to change.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Who knows? All I can say for sure is that for me, watching Home Alone has become an annual tradition, and I like it more and more with every passing year.

Merry Christmas.

This production essay owes a particular debt to John Hughes’ son James, who wrote a superb oral history of his father’s film for Chicago magazine. You can find that piece online here; it is well worth checking out.

---

^[1] Roger Ebert, “Home Alone”, Chicago Sun-Times, 16 November 1990.

^[2] Gerald Clarke, “Home Alone breaks away”, Time, 10 December 1990.

^[3] Quoted in “John Hughes Remembered: Daniel Stern (burglar in Home Alone)”, Entertainment Weekly, 13 August 2009.

^[4] Simon Bland, “‘Macaulay Culkin would try to make me laugh during takes’: An oral history of Home Alone”, The Independent, 20 November 2020.

^[5] Amy Wilkinson, “Home Alone turns 25: A deep dive with director Chris Columbus”, Entertainment Weekly, 6 November 2015.

^[6] Interviewed by Larry King, Larry King Live, CNN, 27 May 2004.

^[7] Simon Bland, “‘Macaulay Culkin would try to make me laugh during takes’: An oral history of Home Alone”, The Independent, 20 November 2020.

^[8] Simon Bland, “‘Macaulay Culkin would try to make me laugh during takes’: An oral history of Home Alone”, The Independent, 20 November 2020.

^[9] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[10] Tommy McArdle, “Joe Pesci Reflects on Making ‘Home Alone 2’ as Movie Turns 30: ‘I Did Sustain Serious Burns’”, People, 29 November 2022.

^[11] Ryan Parker, “‘Home Alone at 30: Actress Recalls Disgusting Pizza, Sprinting Through O’Hare and Pesci’s Annoying Gold Tooth”, Variety, November 16 2020.

^[12] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[13] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[14] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[15] Regine Schlesinger, “’Home Alone’ House In Winnetka Up For Sale”, CBS News, 5 May 2011.

^[16] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[17] Hillary Wolf Saba, “I Was in Home Alone 1 and 2, Then I Became an Olympian”, Newsweek, 25 December 2021.

^[18] Jesse Striewski, “Interview with Michael C. Maronna”, Rewind It, 23 December 2020.

^[19] Dennis McLennan, “Roberts Blossom dies at 87; character played neighbor in Home Alone”, Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2011.

^[20] Ryan Parker, “‘Home Alone at 30: Actress Recalls Disgusting Pizza, Sprinting Through O’Hare and Pesci’s Annoying Gold Tooth”, Variety, November 16 2020.

^[21] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[22] Amy Wilkinson, “Home Alone turns 25: A deep dive with director Chris Columbus”, Entertainment Weekly, 6 November 2015.

^[23] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[24] Amy Wilkinson, “Home Alone turns 25: A deep dive with director Chris Columbus”, Entertainment Weekly, 6 November 2015.

^[25] Christopher Hooton, “Home Alone director on doing those stunts: ‘It wasn’t funny, we’d just pray the guys were alive”, The Independent, 30 December 2016.

^[26] Simon Bland, “‘Macaulay Culkin would try to make me laugh during takes’: An oral history of Home Alone”, The Independent, 20 November 2020.

^[27] Tara Jenkins, “Home Alone: Filming a Christmas Miracle”, American Cinematographer, 21 December 2021.

^[28] Amy Wilkinson, “Home Alone turns 25: A deep dive with director Chris Columbus”, Entertainment Weekly, 6 November 2015.

^[29] Noted by Stern on his personal Facebook account, 25 December 2015.

^[30] Interviewed on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, NBC, 20 May 2004.

^[31] Gerald Clarke, “Home Alone breaks away”, Time, 10 December 1990.

^[32] Ryan D’Agostino, “Macaulay Culkin is not like you”, Esquire, 11 February 2020.

^[33] Interviewed by Barbara Walters, 20/20, 5 September 2003.

^[34] Ben Child, “Steve Martin, Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick lead tributes to director John Hughes”, The Guardian, 7 August 2009.

^[35] James Hughes, “Holy Cow, Home Alone is 25!”, Chicago, 10 November 2015.

^[36] Scott Stump, “Macaulay Culkin still knows his lines from ‘Home Alone’”, Today, 30 November 2018.