I was working at 20th Century Fox in 1990. The studio had lured Chris Columbus away from Universal and the story goes that within 2 hours of Columbus agreeing to leave Universal, the new studio sent a van and 2 mover to help him pack up. 1989’s “Uncle Buck” a family comedy that showcased John Candy and Macauley Culkin, had done $70 million at the box office, very respectable. John Hughes, who wrote and directed “Uncle Buck” had another film cued up — “Home Alone.”
Chris Columbus was red hot at this point. He wrote and sold “Gremlins” and “The Goonies” before directing “Adventures in Babysitting.” All of these films sold well in VHS in addition to doing very well in theaters. Hughes had used Culkin in “Uncle Buck” and thought Culkin was exactly what would make “Home Alone” work. Chris Columbus, who would eventually direct “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone,” was a good fit as director of yet another film where kids triumph over adults.
I read the script long before I saw the film and I thought it was a bit weak. The first 20 minutes are boring set up — kids saying snarky, mostly unfunny things to each other while the parents scramble to get everyone to the airport. There was no hook, no reason to care about any of these vapid, 2-dimensional people. Then there are scenes of Kevin (Culkin’s character) being at home, alone. Much of it made no sense — why does he shave (leading to the iconic scream)? Do kids in the audience even know that aftershave burns? why would they? Why don’t Kevin’s parents call a neighbor to check on Kevin once they land? etc. Finally Pesci and Daniel Stern come into the story and we get slapstick. Kevin turns out to be some kind of natural McGuyver and can rig any kind of Rube Goldberg trap for them. After injuring them in various ways and triumphing, Kevin becomes a nice person, misses his family, welcomes them home. The end. I was mystified by why they thought this script was good and started to suspect that it was just a deal film — a film that the studio finances in order to get other films from the same writer, director or a film that gets made because some box office draw actor agreed to make it. The only thing that fit there was that Hughes and Columbus were so sought after that Fox had agree to make this turkey.
I went to a pre-release screening on the Lot. The film played a little better on screen than on the page but still seemed very uneven. I saw it in Zanuck with about 20 other studio people. No one was laughing in the first 40 minutes and the last half is this kid burning, shocking, BB-gunning and torturing Joe Pesci. Pesci was the funniest thing in the film. Funny how? Slow burns and great timing.
We were prepping the release and we tried to get The TODAY Show to book Culkin. They declined. Siskel and Ebert gave the film 2 thumbs down. Meanwhile the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm was ramping up into a full blown war. “Home Alone” opened November 16, 1990, a week before Thanksgiving and the film is set at Christmas time so the idea was that it would run for 6 good weeks. President George HW Bush went to Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving and visited the US troops staging there for the counter invasion of Kuwait and Iraq. Months of saber rattling and coalition building was coming to a boiling point.
Universal was giving shit to Fox for luring Columbus over. They faxed the bad reviews of “Home Alone” to Geoff Ammer’s machine, taunting us. They made jokes like ‘Thanks for stealing our Thanksgiving Turkey. Stuff it.’
Fox had done well with “Die Hard 2” that year but everything else seemed to be struggling. “Edward Scissorhands,” another deal film which had been financed to get Tim Burton to Fox, was a flop in theaters. Alan Parker’s “Come See the Paradise” was a love story set in a the US internment camps for Japanese Americans. A difficult film to sell in any environment but theater owners would not even give it a chance in the pre Gulf War environment.
“Home Alone” did respectable in its first week, $18 million. We called TODAY again — “Hey we’ve got this kid, he is really funny and weird, kind of Dennis the Menace meets Robin Williams. You should have him on.” Still not interested.
Word of Mouth
Then somehow it all turned around. Word of mouth sold seats. We had given away tickets in the first week to try to get the fire going for Thanksgiving and it worked. Kids told other kids that film was funny and by the time schools were out for Thanksgiving break the film was starting to sell well. After Thanksgiving break the film really got traction and the studio had to order more prints. Multiplexes were putting it on more screens and just passing the prints they had between projectors. It grossed $100 million more between Thanksgiving and the start of the Christmas break.
The TODAY show called us, “Hey can we get that kid?”
Siskel and Ebert changed their review. Their critique of the film had not stopped it and at some point they decided to CYA and they re-aligned their review with the success of the film. They gave it one thumb up and one down. Not sure they had ever done that before.
Ammer started faxing the box office numbers over our rivals at Universal on a daily basis. Universal’s competing film was “Kindergarten Cop” which did okay but “Home Alone” was stomping it. By New Year’s “Home Alone” had done $152,000,000 and we expected it to wind down. On January 16, 1991 the 42-day blitz of Iraq began. Smart-Bomb footage, nose cameras on bombs, Wolf Blitzer reporting from Baghdad all seemed to give the film a second wind. “Home Alone” was war for kids. For 12 weeks during the competitive holiday season “Home Alone” was the top grossing film.
While CNN raved about how wonderful all the new “Smart” weapons were, kids were going back to see Kevin’s clever defense of his home. Kids who grew up watching the same movie 50 times on VHS were now going to theaters and watching “Home Alone” multiple times. A habit created by the VHS boom was now unexpectedly feeding theaters. Perhaps the internal tension and uncertainty of seeing their first US war drove kids back to the fantasy violence and happy ending of this movie.
Pieces of Culkin
The general consensus in Hollywood was that Culkin was key to the success of this otherwise forgettable film. Pesci showed more the great comedic ability that was only a tease in “Goodfellas” but it was Culkin that this audience wanted to see more of. The mania surrounding this tiny kid got as crazy as anything I have ever seen in the film business. In one crowd a woman ran up and pinched Culkin’s cheek so hard she left a mark. Threatened with arrest, her excuse was “I didn’t think he was real” (?)
We started sneaking Culkin into screenings after the lights went down so that people would not swarm him. I imagine it was very scary to have that much hysteria aimed at you. You’re one kid, not the Beatles, and adults are screaming and demanding that you scream and civility is going out the window. Someone tried to pull out some of his hair.
My boss was in his 70s and had been my age when Shirley Temple was on the Lot. I asked if people were worse now and he said ‘No. It has always been like this. A young woman slit her wrists at the studio gate when they wouldn’t let her in to see Errol Flynn.’
The film ran in theaters until August of 1991. It grossed $534 million, killed on VHS, did 3 sequels and a video game. It is today a touchstone of many childhoods, a happy memory that obscures the uncertainty and carnage of the first Gulf War.
Decades later I saw Mac on the sidewalk on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. He was unshaven, thin and smoking a cigarette while he thumbed through used books outside of Shakespeare and Company. Although I wanted to ask him about his life after 1990, I had seen how fame treated him. I left him alone.