home alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Director Chris Columbus came close to directing a different Christmas classic.
In this week’s episode hollywood reporterof Awards chatter Podcaster, veteran filmmaker – recently produced a new release Nosferatuwhich was released on Christmas Day – reflects on how a “strange” meeting with Chevy Chase led him to the series in the first place.
Columbus recalled that it all started with a script given to him by fellow Chicagoan John Hughes. national lampoon’s christmas vacationHughes was going to produce the film and asked him to direct. Columbus, desperate for the job after several box office disappointments left his directing prospects hanging in the balance, enthusiastically agreed and began shooting the second sequence over the Christmas period.
Then he sat down with movie star Chevy Chase, and things quickly got very awkward. “I asked him all these questions, but he was dead, disinterested and distracted,” Columbus said. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s weird. For an actor who’s working on this movie, he really doesn’t want to talk about it. And then, 40 minutes into the conversation, he said something about what I’d said before or after the meeting. The most surreal thing I’ve ever heard. He said to me, “Wait a minute, you’re the director? “I said: “Yes. ” He said, “Oh, I thought you were the drummer. “I don’t even know what that really means.
Columbus later described the “surreal” meeting to Hughes, who suggested that the three of them have dinner together to try to put things right. But this time, Columbus said, “it was worse. [Chase] Ignore me. It’s like I wasn’t involved in the movie at all. Every time I brought up the movie, he would change the subject. Columbus concluded that he had no choice but to withdraw from the film, although he didn’t know if he would ever get the chance to direct another film.
Just a week later, Hughes, “being the ultimate man that he is,” sent Columbus another Christmas-related script he had written and intended to produce: home alone. Some 35 years later, Columbus exclaimed, “Talk about dodging a bullet.”
Although Hughes wholeheartedly cast young Macaulay Culkin to play the film’s protagonist, Kevin McCallister, Columbo was unsure at first. “That’s why John Hughes was a great director-producer and I learned a lot from him,” Columbus explained. “He said, ‘Would you consider meeting Macaulay?’ I said, “Yes, I want to meet Macaulay, but I also want to meet other people. “I ended up meeting 300 other kids as well. It was a total waste of time because then I met Macaulay and it was amazing.
As for the rumors that Chris Farley was almost cast home alone? “Farley was just starting out,” Columbus said, and the director invited him to audition on a Saturday morning. “This guy came in at 7 a.m. for our first reading of the guy who plays Santa Claus in the movie. He wasn’t in particularly good shape. He had just come out from a long night in Chicago.” The director continued, “We Having to say, ‘Well, not this time. ‘”I’ve gotten to know Farley very well over the years and we always talk about it. We first met at that audition,” Columbus said.
Columbus also weighed in on one of the internet’s biggest debates: What jobs did McAllister’s parents do to afford that nice house in Chicago?
“At that time, John and I had a conversation about it and we decided what the work would be,” Columbus said. Kate McCallister, played by Catherine O’Hara, “is a very successful fashion designer,” as a mannequin in the family’s basement suggests. As for John Heard’s Peter McCallister, he’s not sure. “From John Hughes’ own experience, the father may have been in advertising, but I don’t remember what he did.” However, he was able to rule out one profession that people speculated online may have attracted criminals in the first place. Leigh (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) arrive at the McAllister home: “It wasn’t organized crime – although there was, at the time, a lot of organized crime in Chicago. “
