Home Alone and its sequel have become such a staple of the Christmas holiday season that you can say “Merry Christmas, you filthy animal!” and get the reference not seeing it as an insult. The movie was originally just intended to be a silly family-friendly slapstick comedy that might make a few bucks here and there. This was Chris Columbus’ third movie after the lackluster Heartbreak Hotel and the modestly successful Adventures in Babysitting. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern said they played their roles as Harry and Marv so over the top because they felt it was that type of movie. Even John Candy agreed as a favor to friend John Hughes to appear in the movie and be used in the marketing just for a regular scale pay. D. Danny Warhol, who played the Pizza Guy, got paid more.
Home Alone became an international success grossing over $476 million worldwide, becoming of the biggest movies of all time and biggest comedies of all time. (It was the highest grossing comedy at the time, a position it held on to for years.) It turned Macaulay Culkin into an A-lister and a household name overnight. The celebrity status would stick with Mac for years even to this day. Mila Kunis said during the time she was with Mac that people would walk up to him on the street wanting autographs and selfies even though he hadn’t appeared in a movie in years.
But the success would become the beginning of the end of Mac’s childhood and that cherub face innocence he had. And like a lot of child actors, it wasn’t his fault, but the result of his father, Kit, who had become his manager. The Culkins had been living in near poverty by the time Home Alone hit it big. They had been living in a rail apartment. Mac had appeared in movies like Rocket Gilbrator and Uncle Buck, where he met Hughes and Home Alone was born out of a scene between Culkin and actress Amy Madigan.
Macaulay Culkin was a brand name and Kit was ready to milk it for what it’s worth. Mac was everywhere. His supporting role in the coming-of-age comedy-drama My Girl was boosted in the marketing even though the protagonist was played by Anna Chlumsky. He was appearing on award shows, such as presenting at the Emmys, got his own Saturday morning cartoon show Wish Kid, and hosted Saturday Night Live. He would later say Kit would become abusive both verbally and physically. While most hosts used cue cards on SNL, Kit said Mac wouldn’t and neither would the rest of the cast.
Almost immediately, Kit was burning bridges in the entertainment industry. He demanded Mac get paid more for the inevitable Home Alone 2 where his salary was $4.5 million a big boost from the $110,000 he made on the first one. Mac became a spokesperson for Sprite even though he admitted he hardly drank it at the time. Kit also demanded his other son, Kieran, get bigger roles in movies. Kieran had appeared in Home Alone briefly as Fuller, but his role was greatly enlarged for the sequel. Kieran was given way more lines than he was in the first one. Kieran had also appeared as the son of Steve Martin and Diane Keaton in the Father of the Bride movies.
But Kit wasn’t just stopping at two sons. He demanded other children be used in movies. His younger daughter, Quinn, was cast as the sister of Mac’s character in The Good Son. But Mac would tell Marc Maron they weren’t close as father and son. “I’m going around the country, locked in a room with a man who didn’t like me,” Mac said. “He was just a bad dude. A bad abusive man. He was a piece of work.”
The abuse would be directed at any and all family members including their mother, Patricia Brentrup. Kieran would say that at one point, Kit went off for several days and no one at the house missed him nor asked about him much. Kit was doing more damage as he kept Mac from doing press work on the 1993 movie The Nutcracker because he was upset that Mac didn’t have enough close-ups. Arnon Milchan with Regency Enterprises, which produced the movie, had had enough of Kit and said that was just fine and didn’t order reshoots. The movie ended up bombing badly at the box office, but maybe people were tired already of Mac, Kit and the tabloid turmoil.
It’s reported the highly anticipated thriller The Good Son had audiences members cheering and even laughing when Mac’s character falls to his death at the end. Two years earlier, people had cried during his funeral scene. Even hearing, “He can’t see without his glasses” still makes many Gen Xers and Millennials tear up. But if there was one person who was getting sick of Macaulay Culkin, it was Macaulay Culkin himself.
In 1994, he appeared in three movies (The Pagemaster, Getting Even With Dad and Richie Rich). Only one had managed to be a modest success with Rich making $76 million worldwide against a budget of $40 million. The other two movies bombed and got bad reviews. And Mac was tired and ready to leave Hollywood, which he did for almost a decade.
Mac spent the rest of the 1990s away from the public eye, occassionally popping up in a news story. The Internet was still in its infancy of public use so there wasn’t much talk of him except as a punchline following the sexual abuse scandal and allegations involving Michael Jackson. He had to take his parents to court to gain control of his trust fund. In 1998, he married actress Rachel Miner, even though they separated two years later. Miner said Mac wanted to have children and start a family, but she wanted to focus more on her career. Miner ended up dating her Bully co-star Brad Renfro.
In 2000, the Culkin family was hit with a family tragedy as their half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of an accidental drug overdose. Eight years later, Dakota Culkin, would be killed at 29 when she was struck by a vehicle while crossing the street in west Los Angeles. Kieran would talk about suffering from grief and depression following her death as he was close to her. As Mac was living life out of the limelight, Kieran’s career had taken off following roles in The Mighty, She’s All That and Igby Goes Down.
On Sept. 17, 2004, Mac would be arrested in Oklahoma City for possession of cannabis and alprazalom and clonazapem. Pictures of a slightly bearded and skinny Mac walking down the street became tabloid fodder. He had to deny that he was a drug addict as tabloids reported he was addicted to heroin. Mac had played Michael Alig, a killer in the movie Party Monster as well as appearing in the religious satire Saved! But he would worked sparingly over the 2000s and 2010s appearing in a few independent movies and working on TV.
Instead, he helped formed The Pizza Underground, a comedy rock band that played parodies of real songs. He would also appear on social media. When Ryan Gosling wore a shirt in public of him as a child, Mac posted a pic of a shirt he had made of the Gosling photo on it. He was scheduled to appear in the 2020 season of American Horror Story which had to be abandoned because of Covid-19. Reports indicate that Mac was supposed to share a sex scene with series regular Kathy Bates. He would later appear in the 2021 season getting rave reviews despite the season not being a favorite. Kieran has become a success as well with his role on the HBO hit series Succession.
Recently, Mac and his wife, Brenda Song, were in L.A. for the ceremony for his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His Home Alone co-star Catherine O’Hara was present as well as his brother, Rory (who is also an actor), and other siblings. In their early 40s, both Mac and Kieran seem to have put the past behind them and moved on. And the general public no longer seems to mock Mac for the troubles of his youth now they know more of what was going on behind the scenes.
But beyond the Culkins, hard times would hit the rest of the cast, most notably Candy, who died from a heart attack on March 4, 1994 while filming Wagons East in Durango City, Mexico. He was only 43, the same age Mac is now, but Candy had a history of health problems as he dealt with obesity and often yo-yo dieted. He reportedly lost weight to appear in Planes, Trains and Automobiles written and directed by Hughes. But Candy also struggled with alcoholism and used cocaine in his earlier days. Candy was also a chronic smoker.
He also suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. In the early 1990s, Candy along with Wayne Gretzky bought minor ownership in the Toronto Argonauts with the Canadian Football League. The team had won the 1991 Grey Cup but hit a slump the following year with a 6-12 record. In 1993, Bruce McNall, who had owned the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League, was convicted of conspiracy and fraud. McNall had been the primary owner of the Argonauts.
Candy had made multiple movies the last five years of his life including notorious flops like Nothing But Trouble, Delirious and Once Upon a Time. He received rave reviews for a small role as real-life New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews Jr. in JFK as well as the movie Only the Lonely which was written and directed by Columbus, produced by Hughes and had Mac and Kieran in supporting roles. However, Cool Runnings was the last box-office hit. Both Wagons East and Canadian Bacon released after his death were flops. He had also made the lackluster TV movie Hostage for a Day which he directed. It got bad reviews and has quickly faded into obscurity.
Candy was given the option for a percentage of points on Home Alone‘s gross but instead opted for scale pay. His scenes were filmed within one day and mostly ad-libbed. Some could say he made all the movies because of his stake in the Argonauts as well as having a wife and children made him concerned about his financial stability. Columbus said there had been some comments made on the set of Lonely about the mere $414 Candy made for his role as Gus Polinski but that had been arranged between Hughes and Candy prior to Columbus coming on board as director.
Yet, Columbus and others said there wasn’t much resentment between the two Johns as Columbus said Candy was mad more at 20th Century Fox, the studio behind the movie. Candy and Hughes had collaborated multiple times in a short period and were reported to be the best of friends. Candy did an uncredited cameo in the Hughes-penned Career Opportunities. Those close to Hughes say part of the reason he walked away from Hollywood in the late 1990s was that he didn’t want to write another movie script unless he could with Candy again. “He talked a lot about how much he loved Candy—if Candy had lived longer, I think John would have made more films as a director,” Vince Vaughn, a friend of Hughes, said.
A prolific writer, Hughes continued to write a few screenplays and produced movies for Disney. But he never directed another movie after 1991’s Curly Sue which is mostly famous for being Steve Carrell’s first film role. He received “Story by” credit on Maid in Manhattan and Drillbit Taylor under the pen name Edmund Dantes but lived his later years in the Chicagoland area. On Sept. 15, 2009, he died of a heart attack at the age of 59. His friend and collaborator, Ben Stein, who appeared in PTAA and Ferris Bueller’s Days Off, said he had heard the news when he while working at Fox News and asked to appear on TV to talk about Hughes.
As for Pesci, Home Alone along with his Oscar-winning role in Goodfellas was a double jackpot that made the once-struggling actor/musician into a household name. He was never intended to return to Lethal Weapon 3 as Leo Getz. But he was written into the script and became part of the franchise. He also went on to appear in the legal comedy My Cousin Vinny as well as Home Alone 2.
During this time he was married to Claudia Haro, a model and actress. She would appear in the 1995 crime epic Casino even though her and Pesci didn’t have any scenes together. Mac once said that off-screen, Pesci was completely different from the tough guy roles he played in movies. Haro had married Pesci in 1988 but they divorced in 1992. However, she still appeared in Pesci’s movies Jimmy Hollywood, With Honors and Gone Fishin’.
But in 1998, she would marry Garrett Warren and divorce him in 2000. But on May 20 of that year, he was shot four times (in the check, neck, left hip and right eye) by a gunman who appeared outside his apartment of his Westlake, Calif. apartment. Warren survived the shooting and Haro was arrested in connection in December of 2005. She would eventually plead no contest to two charges of attempted murder and a firearm charge and sentenced to 19 years. She was released in August 2019.
While John Heard may have appeared to be Daddy Dearest as Peter McCallister, but off-screen he was a complete opposite. In between the Home Alone movies in 1991, he was arrested for slapping his former girlfriend, Melissa Leo and charged with third-degree assault. They had a son together in 1987. He was married to his second wife, Sharon, from 1988 to 1996. The following year, Heard was found guilty of trespassing in Leo’s house but acquitted on charges of trespassing at their son’s school.
According to Sharon in an obituary of their son, Maxwell, Heard was mostly estranged from his young son who died at the young age of 22 on Dec. 6, 2016. Heard would die of cardiac arrest due to atherosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease on July 21, 2017, at the age of 71 at a hotel in Palto Alto as he was recovering fom back surgery at Stanford University Hospital. Heard was briefly married to Margo Kidder for six days in 1979 and his third and last marriage lasted only seven months.
He wasn’t the only actor to get into legal troubles. And just like Mac, it happened in Oklahoma of all places. On Dec. 8, 2021, Devin Ratray, who played Kevin’s bullying brother, Buzz, was arrested on charges of domestic assault and battery by strangulation. The incident was the result of an argument at an OKC hotel where he allegedly put one hand over her throat and the other over her mouth and said “This is how you die.”
According to Oklahoma County court documents, the case is set for a jury trial docket on Jan. 22 as of this posting. But his legal troubles don’t end there. Ratray is reportedly under investigation by the New York Police Department on allegations he drugged and sexually assaulted a friend he had known for 15 years. The victim came forth following reports of the OKC charges.
Roberts Blossoms played the Boo Radley-esque Old Man Marley who seems creepy but is actually just a nice old man who keeps to himself. He spent the last years of his life living in a nursing home after retiring from acting in the late 1990s. He died of cerebovascular disease in 2011. A few years later, his son died of cancer.
Hillary Wolf had a supporting role as Kevin and Buzz’s sister, Megan, in both movies, even though her role was diminished a lot in the second one. It’s probably why she left acting altogether. But if you had a VHS copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, you probably saw a trailer for Wolf appearing in a movie called Stepkids. But there was no movie called Stepkids which had a nice marquee title ever released. No, some genius thought the movie should be retitled to Big Girls Don’t Cry…They Get Even. Well, they thought Back to the Future should be titled Space Man From Pluto. It shows you what some studio executives really think.
Anyway, this might be a little bit of a stretch of a curse, but apparently, people even associated with the cast of Home Alone have suffered tragedy. Margaret Whitton who plays Wolf’s mother in Big Girls would be famous for her roles in the Major League movies and The Secret of My Success. Sadly, she would die of cancer in 2016. But the worst fate fell on her co-star, Adrienne Shelly, who would go on to make the movie, Waitress. But she was murdered in a NYC apartment that she used as an office. Police initially suspected she had committed suicide but Diego Pillco, a construction worker from Ecuador, later admitted to attacking her, killing her and staging her body that it appeared to be a suicide.
As for the second Home Alone, Tim Curry played Mr. Hector, the concierge of the New York Plaza. The legendary actor has become iconic in his roles in movies such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Clue, Legend and as Pennywise the Clown on the miniseries IT. In 2012, he suffered a massive stroke that has left him in a wheelchair and he’s had to shift his acting to mostly voice acting, even though it’s apparent the stroke has affected his speech and caused facial drooping.
Rob Schneider, who played the weasely bellboy, Cedric, would burst on the scene in the 1990s on Saturday Night Live. He began to work with comics like Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock and Chris Farley. Sadly, on Dec. 18, 1997, Farley would die of an accidental overdose of a “speedball” which is a mixture of cocaine and morphine. Phil Hartman, his SNL co-star, would be killed by his wife, Brynn, on May 28, 1998.
While Schneider and Hartman may have worked together, they didn’t really get along. Spade, who oftened beefed with Schneider early during their SNL days, said Schneider had upset Hartman one day when Schneider got an intern, who was a family friend of Hartman’s, fired from Weekend Update. Spade said it was because Schneider was dating a girlfriend who got jealous.
In an odd twist of irony, Spade told Howard Stern that Hartman burst into the writer’s room fuming and grabbed Schneider and threw him up against the wall, screaming, “I’ll put a bullet in your head!” Brynn would fatally shoot Hartman right between the eyes as he sleep and then in his neck and chest with a .38 caliber pistol. Schneider, along with Hartman and Farley had been cast members when Mac hosted.
In a controversial move, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation removed a scene from Home Alone 2 where Kevin stops Donald Trump to ask him where the front desk is. The scene was intended as a joke but Trump reportedly only allowed the filmmakers to film in and outside the Plaza’s front if they gave him a cameo. At the time of filming, he had ownership in the hotel but by the time it hit theaters, he was in the process of selling it at a loss.
Whether or not you consider Trump’s rise in politics a sign of a curse depends on your politics, but the creepiest part of the second movie might be a scene where Kevin visits the World Trade Center and goes to the observation deck on top of the South Tower. The North Tower was hit first at 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, by an American Airlines plane. American Airlines is featured prominent twice in both movies.
It really makes you wonder if it’s all a lot of coincidences. The WTC were in a lot of movies such as the 1976 remake of King Kong and Trading Places. Trump had appeared in many movies and TV shows before he announces his intentions to run for president. Of all the cast and crew members of both movies, a lot of them haven’t had run-ins with the law nor suffered massive health issues.
Horror movies like The Exorcist, The Omen and Poltergeist have reported curses but one can see that since they are horror movies, not family movies. However, a fan theory has suffered that Kevin is actually John Kramer from the Saw movies. I’ve even posted how the second Home Alone is actually a horror movie. There’s even a theory that Billy Bob Thornton has a curse following him where just about every co-star of his dies shortly after working with him. But Thornton is one of those actors who’s been in a lot of movies and appeared alongside numerous other famous actors.
I, myself, went to school with four people who murdered people and are spending the rest of their lives in prison. I’ve also been in relationships with women who suffer major health problems. Am I cursed? Or is it just a coincidence? Like many conspiracy theories, if you go fishing long enough, you can find the catch of the day.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 