‘Home Alone’: How an accidental plot and Warner’s mistake earned us a cult Christmas comedy

‘Home Alone’: How an accidental plot and Warner’s mistake earned us a cult Christmas comedy

Are you ready to feel old? The endless Christmas comedy “Home Alone” that we watched as a kid and will probably watch on our own one day came out exactly 32 years ago. Audiences immediately fell in love with it, and “Home Alone” overnight became the highest-grossing Christmas movie of all time in North America and the highest-grossing comedy in US movie history (the photo held the lead until 2011. “The Hangover in Vegas” part of it). It’s also been on the New Year’s and Christmas must-see list, making 10-year-old aspiring actor Macaulay Culkin a rising star. However, this touching and funny story could not come true easily: the idea of ​​​​creating a movie came to producer and screenwriter John Hughes by chance, and the movie studios refused to put it into circulation, but a series of happy accidents did not help. not only Kevin McCallister, but also its authors.

“Home alone”

The plot basis – the story of a boy protecting the house from robbers – John Hughes spied on the set of the movie “Uncle Buck” (1989), where one of the characters looked after the children of his older brother. There he met Macaulay Culkin in the role, but very convincingly interrogated a stranger before driving him home. “Home Alone” was born just then, but it was still far from being on the screen: John Hughes was afraid to go into production because of a genre he was unfamiliar with, so he invited director Chris Columbus to the chair. And for the latter, it was a redemption: The box office failure of Heartbreak Hotel (1988) made him undesirable in Hollywood to everyone but John Hughes. Apparently, the author’s duet was supported by Macaulay Culkin, who did not blindly obey the script, but brought something of his own: he was the one who came up with that famous scene where Kevin McCallister screams heartbreakingly. liquid after shaving stings cheeks, but does not take hands from them

“Home alone”

But such a creative idyll existed only on the site, and apart from that, the fate of the “One House” was in the balance. Warner, who owns the rights, didn’t take the good comedy seriously: after all, there were no stars there, which meant there wasn’t much to see. Therefore, when the creators faced a financial problem (Chris Columbus demanded a $ 10 million increase in the budget to be enough for all the traps invented), the movie studio rejected them. We don’t know what the movie would have looked like without the money, but the 20th Century project saved it, and at the director’s request, he bought the movie with Edward Scissorhands and increased its budget by 8 million. Warner must have bit his elbows later: both films that didn’t promise gained cult status after their premiere, despite mixed reviews from critics. In general, perhaps if there was a Home Alone cartoon, this would be an ideal solution for Warner: the film is made in the best traditions of children’s cartoons, where the characters occasionally trap themselves. But it was a family movie, with no adult themes: the comic with the old man in the church who had a long argument with his son, and of course the story about relationships with the parents.

“Home alone”

By all standards of a good Christmas project, Home Alone was an unusual film, but it was just what the audience needed: a gentle story about a boy left alone on the eve of the holidays and sucking the whole house in. its big playground. Chris Columbus and John Hughes combined adult cinema with childlike spontaneity, and even Kevin McCallister’s trap plan was drawn by one of the film’s artists, specifically left-handed, right-handed, so the drawing looked more like a child’s. And even though critics once said that “these are the same traps that any eight-year-old kid could invent on his own with a budget of tens of thousands of dollars and a crew dealing with special effects in movies,” Hollywood took it lightly. He. After all, this is perhaps the biggest Christmas trap you don’t want to get out of every year.

Source: People Talk

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