Bring me back something French! Home Alone has become a cult-classic holiday movie since its premiere in 1990.
Starring Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, a young boy who gets left home alone on Christmas while the rest of his family is on a trip to Paris, the flick spawned a film franchise with a total of six movies. Decades later, and the flick is still widely viewed every holiday season with fans spouting some of the more iconic lines each year, including “keep the change, ya filthy animals.”
As fans know, that particular line comes from a black-and-white movie Kevin was watching with no parental supervision. When celebrating the movie’s 30th anniversary in December 2020, Home Alone director Chris Columbus told Insider that the flick, titled Angels with Filthy Souls, isn’t actually a real movie.
“This is probably why people think this: Home Alone is one of the last films shot with an old carbon-arc lighting system that was popular back in the 1940s through 1960s for Technicolor films,” the famed director explained. “That means, you have to put a carbon piece of charcoal into each lamp and it creates a warmer and richer light to shoot.”
Chris added, “We also shot the Angels With Filthy Souls scene the same way. So, that richness of black and white made it look like a movie from that era, and I think that’s why some people think it’s a real movie.”
Macaulay, who has since grown up in the spotlight, still gets recognized the most around the holiday season because of his role as Kevin.
“Christmas is my time of year,” he told Us Weekly in November 2019. “I get recognized 10 times more between the months of November and January. I have no idea why.”
The actor also noted that “it’s a beautiful curse/a tricky blessing” having to see himself “on TV every 2 seconds” around the holidays.
Joe Pesci — who played Harry, one of the Wet Bandits alongside Daniel Stern as Marv — has continued to poke fun at his Home Alone role. In a 2019 holiday commercial, the actor teamed up with Macaulay, who returned as Kevin McCallister. In the one-minute-long advertisement, Joe makes his friends at a Christmas party watch the actor as he recreates Home Alone‘s most iconic scenes.
“He’s home alone,” Joe tells the fellow partygoers. “Except, he’s big now.”
At the end of the commercial, The Irishman star can be heard saying his “big line” from the movie: “We better get out of here before somebody sees us.”
Scroll through our gallery to see what the Home Alone stars are up to now!
Love J-14? Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for fun, exclusive videos with your favorite stars.
