Home Alone 9

[Carmina Piette]

HomeAlone is a 1990 American Christmas comedy film directed by Chris Columbus and written and produced by John Hughes. The first film in the Home Alone franchise, the film stars Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard, and Catherine O'Hara. Culkin plays Kevin McCallister, a boy who defends his suburban Chicago home from a home invasion by a pair of robbers after his family accidentally leaves him behind on their Christmas vacation to Paris.

Hughes conceived Home Alone while on vacation, with Warner Bros. being originally intended to finance and distribute the film. However, Warner Bros. shut down the production after it exceeded its assigned budget. 20th Century Fox assumed responsibilities following secret meetings with Hughes. Columbus and Culkin were hired soon afterwards. Filming took place between February and May 1990 on location across Illinois.

The McCallister family is preparing to spend Christmas in Paris, gathering at Kate and Peter's home in a Chicago suburb on the night before their departure. Kate and Peter's youngest son, Kevin, is ridiculed by his siblings and cousins due to his immaturity. Kevin inadvertently ruins the family dinner after a scuffle with his oldest brother Buzz, resulting in Kate sending him up to the attic. Kevin berates his mother for allowing the rest of the family to pick on him and wishes that his family would disappear. During the night, heavy winds create a power outage, disabling the alarm clocks and causing the family to oversleep. In the confusion and rush to get to the airport, Kevin is accidentally left behind.

On Christmas Eve, Harry and Marv finally realize that only Kevin is in the McCallister home, and Kevin overhears them discussing plans to break into the house that night. Kevin starts to miss his family and asks the local Santa Claus impersonator if he could bring them back for Christmas. He goes to church and watches a choir perform, eventually re-encountering Marley, who proves the rumors about him are false. Marley points out his granddaughter in the choir and mentions he has never met her since she is the daughter of his estranged son. Kevin suggests Marley should reconcile with his son.

Kevin returns home and rigs the house with handmade booby traps. Harry and Marv break in, spring the traps, and suffer various injuries. Kevin calls the police and lures the duo into a vacant neighboring house that they had previously broken into. Harry and Marv ambush Kevin and prepare to get their revenge, but Marley intervenes and knocks them out with his snow shovel. The police arrive and arrest Harry and Marv, having identified all the houses that they broke into due to their habit of flooding them.

On Christmas Day, Kevin is initially disappointed to find that his family is still gone, but Kate arrives home, and they reconcile. The rest of the family then returns after waiting in Paris for a direct flight to Chicago. Kevin keeps silent about his encounter with Harry and Marv, although Peter finds Harry's knocked-out gold tooth. Kevin then happily watches Marley reuniting with his son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter.

Writer and producer John Hughes conceived Home Alone while preparing to go on vacation. He said: "I was going away on vacation, and making a list of everything I didn't want 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?'"[8] Hughes wrote eight pages of notes that developed into the screenplay.[8] Imagining that children are naturally most scared of robbers, Hughes also worked that aspect into the plot of the film.[8]

Home Alone was initially set to be financed and distributed by Warner Bros. Hughes promised that he could make the movie for less than $10 million, considerably less than most feature film production budgets of that era. Concerned that the film might exceed that amount, Hughes met secretly with 20th Century Fox before production to see if they would fund the project if Warner proved inflexible. According to executive producer Scott Rosenfelt, a copy of the script was "clandestinely" delivered to Fox, bypassing the legal restrictions that would have otherwise prevented Fox from seeing it until the project was in turnaround.[9] Early in production, the budget grew to $14.7 million. Warner demanded that it be cut by $1.2 million; the producers responded with a memo arguing that the budget could not be cut any further. Unconvinced, Warner shut down production the next day, but it quickly resumed when Fox took up Hughes on his offer. The final budget grew to $18 million.[9]

Hughes had asked Patrick Read Johnson to direct, but he was committed to directing Spaced Invaders (1990).[10] He turned to Chris Columbus, who had left National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) before shooting started because of a personality clash with starring actor Chevy Chase, who Columbus said treated him "like dirt".[11] Hughes gave him the scripts for both Home Alone and Reach the Rock (1998); Columbus chose to direct Home Alone, as he found it funnier and liked the Christmas theme.[12][13] Columbus did an uncredited rewrite of the script; among his contributions was the character of Old Man Marley, which he created to give the story a more serious layer, as well as a more emotional, happier ending.[14]

Hughes suggested to Columbus that they cast Macaulay Culkin as Kevin, because of his experience while shooting Uncle Buck (1989). Columbus met with 200 other actors for the part, as he felt it was his "directorial responsibility".[13][15] John Mulaney was asked to audition for the role of Kevin after being scouted in a children's sketch comedy group, but his parents refused the opportunity.[16] Columbus finally met with Culkin and agreed he was the right choice.[13]

After Robert De Niro and Jon Lovitz turned down the role of Harry, Joe Pesci accepted it.[17] The role of Uncle Frank was written for Kelsey Grammer, but was given to Gerry Bamman when Grammer was unavailable.[18][19]

Daniel Stern was cast as Marv, but before shooting started, he was told that the production schedule had been extended from six weeks to eight. He dropped out after as he would not be paid more for the extended schedule. Daniel Roebuck was hired to replace him, but after two days of rehearsal, Columbus felt he was lacking chemistry with Pesci and brought back Stern.[9] Roebuck later said that, although he was upset to be fired from the production, he now believed the experience was "a little blip of unimportance".[20] Chris Farley auditioned for the role of the Santa Claus impersonator, but he failed to impress Columbus.[21]

John Candy was available for only one day to film his scenes, which took 23 hours to shoot. He was paid only $414, since he did the film as a favor to Hughes. In return, he was the only actor Hughes allowed to go off-script; according to Columbus, all his dialogue was improvised.[9]

Principal photography took place from February 14, 1990, to May 8, 1990, over a course of 83 days on an $18.3 million budget.[22][23][24] The house exterior scenes were filmed on location at a three-story single-family house located at 671 Lincoln Avenue[25] in the North Shore village of Winnetka, Illinois, where many of Hughes' previous films had also been shot,[26] but at different houses. The only interiors of the house used for filming that made it to the finished film were the main staircase, basement, attic and most of the first floor landing,[27] while all the other interiors of the house (including the aforementioned rooms) were duplicated on a sound stage to allow more room for equipment and crew. These sets were built in the then-disused gym of New Trier High School's west campus, previously used by Hughes for Uncle Buck and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where the production company had already set up its offices.[9] 671 Lincoln Avenue later became a tourist attraction.[28] The tree house in the back yard was built specifically for the film and dismantled after filming ended.[17]

Kevin runs away from his third encounter with Marley in Hubbard Woods Park in Winnetka.[29] In addition, the scene where Kevin wades in his neighbor's flooded basement was shot at the empty swimming pool of the aforementioned campus of New Trier High School, with the American Airlines DC-10 first class cabin interiors done on the basketball courts. The church exteriors were shot at Trinity United Methodist Church in Wilmette, Illinois, while the interiors were shot at Grace Episcopal Church in Oak Park, Illinois.[30] Filming also took place over four sixteen-hour days at O'Hare International Airport, which served for both itself and Orly Airport in Paris. John Candy filmed his cameo appearance for the film over the course of one day at Meigs Field.[22]

For the film within a film, Angels with Filthy Souls (the title of which parodies the 1938 crime film Angels with Dirty Faces), shooting took only one day, on the final "test day" prior to the official start of principal photography. To create the illusion that the film was an authentic 1940s gangster film, the scene was filmed on black-and-white negative film, and Johnny's office featured props from that era. Like much of the film, most of the sequence was shot with low, wide angles that, according to journalist Darryn King, "capture the action as if a child were perceiving it".[31] Originally, Ralph Foody was to play Snakes and Michael Guido was to play Johnny, but since Foody had recently undergone knee replacement surgery, he was unable to do the death scene where Snakes drops to his knees, leading to the roles being switched.[32]

Cinematographer Julio Macat recalled that Pesci was more difficult to work with than Culkin. The older actor believed some of the dialogue was not of a quality commensurate with his acting ability. He also resented the early unit calls, since they prevented him from starting his day with nine holes of golf as he preferred to do.[9] After he took the assistant director by the collar one day to complain about this, daily call times were moved back from 7 to 9 a.m. to accommodate his rounds.[33] On the other end of the schedule, the crew had limited time to film the many nighttime scenes, since Culkin could not work any later than 10 p.m. due to his age.[13]

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