It's every parent's worst nightmare: You're rushing to get ready for a trip and then once you're finally on your way you realize you forgot something super important. For many, that could be a phone charger or a proper jacket, but in the 1990 movie Home Alone that super-important something was a kid.
Kevin!!!
Twenty-five years later Home Alone is one of the most successful live-action comedies of all time, and a certified classic. But what inspired the story in the first place? Did someone accidentally leave their kid at home while dashing off on vacation -- a kid who, when left on his own, watches gangster movies, orders a lot of cheese pizza and fends off two bumbling house burglars?
Not exactly. According to Home Alone screenwriter John Hughes' son James, the idea for the film was born out of his father's anxiety while preparing for their family's first trip to Europe.
"On August 8, 1989, my father, John Hughes, jotted down in a notebook a movie idea, born of traveler’s anxiety, that occurred to him during the bustle of departing for our first family trip to Europe, and set it aside," Hughes writes in a sprawling oral history on Home Alone for Chicago magazine. "Two weeks later, after returning home, he revisited the premise: What if one of the kids had been accidentally left behind?"
Hughes goes on to say his father finished the first draft of the script in nine days, completing the final 44 pages during an eight-hour session, and then complaining in his journal that he wasn't writing fast enough.
5 Home Alone fun facts from James Hughes' oral history
1. Home Alone director Chris Columbus says he was supposed to direct Christmas Vacation, but couldn't deal with Chevy Chase's attitude on set. He left the film because of Chase and was surprised that Hughes then offered him Home Alone. "I thought, Wow, this guy is really supporting me when no one else in Hollywood was going to. John was my savior," Columbus says.
2. Many of the scenes filmed inside the McCallister house weren't actually shot inside a real house. Instead they were filmed inside a high school, "which was important, because we had so many gags that could never really be rigged in a real house," says associate producer Mark Radcliffe.
3. Originally Home Alone had an after-credits sequence where the two burglars, Harry and Marv, watch the movie-within-a-movie Angels with Filthy Souls while in prison. From the article: "The shooting script originally ended with a short scene, after the credits, in which Harry and Marv watch Angels on TV in prison, surrounded by other offenders.They exchange looks when they recognize the movie dialogue that duped them."
4. The end of the movie was very complex and while many of the stunts were written, they weren't "fully defined," according to stunt coordinator Freddie Hice. "There was a lot of room to invent and play with them. Chris and John allowed us to invent as we went along. The stunts we did on Home Alone, no one had ever done before."
5. On the morning when Kevin's mom (Catherine O'Hara) finally makes it home, all of the snow on the ground was real as Chicago had just experienced one of the biggest snowstorms in years. "Mother Nature really helped us out with that one," says location manager Jacolyn Bucksbaum.
And there's a ton more packed into the article, so celebrate Home Alone's 25th anniversary by checking it all out at Chicago mag.
Want even more Home Alone? Check out this piece of original artwork by artist Kristen Lau, created exclusively for Fandango.
