SEQUEL TIME

Moss Beach was beautiful. We committed to staying there at least through the school year, and we actually loved it. The planes still made me crazy, and I felt stupid for having not done enough homework on the property before we bought it, but we made the most of it. I signed up to coach Henry’s Little League team. The school seemed nice, and the teachers were good. There was a sweet little tavern just down the hill and Laure and I would go there for drinks on occasion. The neighbors were good people, and it was what we had hoped for living in a small town. Except for one thing—Home Alone. The movie was a worldwide sensation, and I had suddenly become more famous than I ever could have imagined. In the eyes of our neighbors, and especially the kids in school, Marv had moved to Moss Beach. It was a layer of weirdness that made us all feel a little out of place. I could hide as much as I wanted to, but my kids had to deal with it every day. Being the new kids without any old friends, they suddenly had to navigate these uncharted waters, trying to figure out who actually wanted to be their friend and who was just trying to get invited over so they could meet Marv. I still feel bad that they had to go through that confusion. It was weird enough being an adult and dealing with it.

Home Alone was so big that my agent got a call saying they were going to make a sequel to the movie, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and would I be interested in being in it. My answer was simple and to the point—Hell, yes!!! A sequel, are you kidding me? I had never even thought about being in something that would be worthy of a sequel, but this would be fun. And lucrative! Sequel money! It was announced in the Hollywood Reporter that Macaulay Culkin had signed up for the film and was being paid five million dollars and 5 percent of the gross box office. Not bad for a ten-year-old kid. I started fantasizing about what my salary might be, doing the calculus to try to figure out my relative worth. I knew Mac was the star of the show, but Joe and I seemed securely in second place. So I told my agent to just get me whatever Pesci was getting and that would be fair, and he said he would get back to me.

The movie wouldn’t start until the fall, so I tried to take my foot off the gas pedal, career-wise, and keep it simple for a while. I would drive up the coast into San Francisco once a week to record The Wonder Years and fly down to LA to direct a couple of episodes too, crashing at our Highridge Drive house. I was getting good at directing, freer with the camera, the actors and producers trusting me. And I had enough credentials to start making the leap into directing a movie. I interviewed for a couple of films, but my agents didn’t seem to have much of an interest in my directing career because I could make a lot more money as an actor.

But the negotiations for Home Alone 2 were going nowhere. It took months for them to even make me an offer, and when they did, it was for six hundred thousand dollars, double my original salary, but not quite the pot of gold I was hoping for. I asked if that was the same as Joe was getting, and they said it was not. They didn’t know what Joe was getting, but the studio wouldn’t tie my salary to his. It was every man for himself. I asked if I could see the script, and they told me it wasn’t ready yet. I thought it was crazy to ask me to sign up for a film that I hadn’t even read the script for. But I also felt that old feeling—“You almost fucked it up the first time, backing out of Home Alone because of a small amount of money and time. And you also almost walked away from City Slickers because of your pride. So don’t be greedy and fuck this up too! That is more money than you have ever made in your life!” But I did need to see the script to know what they were asking me to do, so I used that to delay closing the deal, which just added to the stress. I was on edge anyway, because by now, Laure and I had come to the decision that we had to get out of that house. Every time a plane flew over my head, my PTSD kicked in, which in turn made Laure feel horrible and helpless to help me.

So when the school year ended, we sold the Moss Beach house to a commercial pilot, who loved the sounds of airplanes taking off and landing. Go figure. We all moved back into the Highridge Drive house, but it still had all the same issues that made us leave in the first place. We spent that summer escaping up to Malibu to visit Cheech and to hang out at Westward Beach—a beautiful, wide, empty beach where the kids would play until the sun went down and we would eat peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches. And one day it dawned on us, “Why don’t we live out here? Instead of commuting out here to be at the beach, why don’t we live at the beach, and I will commute into the city?” We found a house to rent and moved in just before the school year started. Malibu was everything Moss Beach was supposed to be—a small town, a surf town, nature all around, great neighbors. The school was small but smart, and I could drive into town whenever I needed to. And I wasn’t the only famous person in the town. There weren’t that many celebrities out there at the time, but Johnny Carson, Lou Gossett Jr., and Barbra Streisand certainly outshone me by a mile, which was weirdly comforting and let me function like a normal person again. We would live in Malibu for the next twenty-five years.

I finally got the Home Alone 2 script, and it was so good! John Hughes is a genius. He had written another brilliant comedy and given my character a ton of funny and silly stuff to do. In the first movie, Harry and Marv start off feeling threatening, especially Harry, but by the end, you know what idiots they really are. In the sequel, John wrote them as live-action cartoons from page one. So that meant even more physical comedy challenges. I knew I had to do this movie, no matter what, but I also wanted to get a fair deal. Knowing Mac’s salary was five million plus percentages made my offer look pretty unfair, especially because the sequel would showcase my character just as much as anyone’s. I knew they couldn’t do the movie without me, but I was also insecure, since I almost blew it the first time. I didn’t want to be too greedy when I loved the movie and the part so much, which was why I was an actor to begin with. The studio upped their offer to eight hundred thousand dollars, but I also found out that Joe was getting somewhere between two and three million plus gross percentage of the profits. My agent told me this was the best he could do, that I should take the offer, and we would get a better payday somewhere in the future. So I did what any rational person would do. I fired my agent. It was a prideful thing to do, but I also knew that if this was the best he could do, then he wasn’t very good at his job.

The movie was supposed to start shooting in the winter, so I stayed home, took the kids to their new schools, and tried to deal with the game of chicken the producers were playing. With no agent, I now had to negotiate my own deal. I accepted that Mac was the star attraction. And I accepted that Pesci was a bigger star than me, so he could probably get more money than me. My position was that I wanted one point five million and 2 percent of the same kind of percentage that Joe and Mac were getting, whatever that was. They would not budge, and I would not budge. (I guess they hadn’t heard about my epic battle with the Washington Shakespeare Festival, where I held out for the hundred dollars I was owed.) The film was shooting in New York, and I wouldn’t go until I had a contract. By this point, it was days away from shooting and they were painting themselves into a corner. There was no way they could rewrite the whole script without me, and I wasn’t getting on a plane until it was squared away. I finally got a call from the head of the studio, my old friend Joe Roth. I explained my position and why I felt justified, especially compared to what my fellow actors were getting and the contribution I made to the success of the first one—and the one we were about to do. He was empathetic and said he would personally explain the situation to business affairs people. He said it would take time to resolve it and asked me to start shooting, even though I didn’t have a contract. I trusted Joe completely and agreed to go. Confident it would get resolved somehow, I finally felt the thrill of knowing that I was about to start filming a ridiculously funny film, with a great part, tons of old friends to work with, and making a boatload of money at the same time.

I got to New York and reunited with Chris Columbus, Joe Pesci, and John Hughes. My dearest old friend John Heard was back playing the dad and our insane stunt men, Leon Delaney and Troy Brown, were back too. I hadn’t worked in New York since we moved away, and it was exhilarating to shoot a big movie there. My dad had a meeting in New York and came to the set, one of the only times any of my family have been on one of my movie sets. I was dressed as Marv, with an iron-shaped scar on my head, hiding behind a tree or whatever stupid thing I was doing that particular day, and my dad was there to try to find solutions to homelessness and social justice. But I have a picture of us on that day, and I do see a hint of pride beaming through. He knew this was something extraordinary and was tickled to see his kid being good at what he does.

One of my favorite New York scenes was the one where the bird lady throws bird seed on us and we get attacked by a flock of pigeons. The pigeon wrangler told us the plan—Joe and I would lie down, he would throw food on us, and the flock of pigeons would land and cover us up. And he wasn’t kidding. There were so many fucking pigeons! It felt weird lying under them, having them walk around on us and peck food off us. Joe decided he wasn’t going to do it, so Troy laid down with me instead. I had the idea that when we were attacked, I would rise up out of the pigeons and recreate the scream I used in the first Home Alone when the tarantula crawled on my face. We got in position, the wrangler covered us in bird food, and an enormous flock of pigeons practically drowned us. My eyes were squeezed tight because I didn’t want to get shit or piss in my eyes, or get my eyes scratched out by pigeon claws as I waited for the director to yell “Action.” It seemed to take a very long time for him to give the command, but he finally did. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to emit my trademark howl, only to have my tongue meet the raw belly of a live pigeon! It was a taste and a sensation I will never be able to forget—salty, slimy, warm, goose-fleshed, alive—and instead of a scream, I could only leap to my feet and try to spit that shit out of my mouth, and mind, as fast as I could. We did take after take, 50 percent of which included having more live pigeons in my mouth, but we got the scene the way we wanted it, so I guess it was worth the recurring nightmares I experience.

One of the bit players in the movie was Donald Trump. He was a crass and ridiculous New York character at that point, and he had just taken another bite out of the Big Apple when he bought the famed Plaza Hotel which, at the time, was the opposite of crass and ridiculous. Donald ended up doing a cameo, but his real contribution was letting us film there, lending the luster of the Plaza to the movie. The day he was filming, he asked to meet me. He was a “huge” fan of mine and the producers wanted me to chat him up, so I did. He was not a great conversationalist and kind of a nothing personality, but the meeting paid off brilliantly. The Oak Room is the bar inside the Plaza Hotel. One night Leon, Troy, and I were hanging out there drinking, when who should walk through the bar but Donald and Ivana, his wife at the time, waving to the guests and wanting to have his picture taken. (I now recognize that behavior when he crashes people’s weddings at Mar-a-Lago.) Donald spotted us and proclaimed so everyone could hear that he would be picking up the tab at our table. We all raised a glass to him in thanks and he left the bar, feeling like the host-with-the-most. We drank until there was no more booze left in that bar. We stayed until four in the morning, closing time in New York, and bought round after round of drinks for the entire bar. To this day, Leon and I dispute how much the final tab was, but it was at least seven thousand dollars. We still feel really good about that.

The bulk of the movie was shot in Chicago. I had a breathtaking two-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, so Laure and the kids could come visit. I was recording The Wonder Years every week at a great recording studio, and I felt incredibly lucky to be doing those wonderful scripts and picking up that paycheck at the same time. Downtown Chicago has great music, and I went to the Blue Note jazz club as many nights as I could, blown away by the level of talent and creativity. (Side note—speaking of Home Alone and jazz music, you need to listen to Joe Pesci’s music. Joe is an extraordinary jazz singer, and it is not an overstatement to say that his talent is on par with the greats like Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Ella Fitzgerald. He records under the name Joe Doggs, and his voice will blow your mind! He sings in a high tenor and his interpretations of classics like “All or Nothing at All” and “Love for Sale” are so full of insight and love that you will never look at Joe Pesci the same again.) It was great to hang out with my old friends from the first movie—Pesci and Heard and Leon and Troy—and make new friends on this one, notably Mr. John Hughes himself.

John hadn’t been around too much on the first Home Alone. As I would learn, John was a bit of a recluse who devoted himself to his writing. He lived on a stunningly beautiful three-hundredacre farm outside Chicago, with his family and his office and natural beauty, so I can understand why. But for whatever reason, once we got to Chicago, John visited the set on a regular basis. He was deferential and supportive of Chris Columbus as the director, and he was mostly just there to have some laughs and see his creation come to life. He had written so many funny things for my character to do and I wanted nothing more than to make John and Chris laugh in every scene. One of the greatest moments of my acting life was when we shot the scene where Marv comes into the basement, goes over to the sink, which the kid has rigged with electricity, and proceeds to electrocute himself. The first shot of the sequence was a wide master shot, with the camera and crew backed up against the wall so the whole basement and all the action could be seen. I asked Chris if he had any direction or notes before we shot the first take, and he said that I should just try one and see what happens. I had some idea what I was going to do but, having never been electrocuted like this before, it was going to be a new experience, and I was kind of curious as to what I was going to do myself. When Chris called, “Action,” I came into the room, went over to the sink, grabbed the spigots, and just went for it, instinctively channeling the Saturday morning cartoons I loved as a kid, or maybe the Chaplin movies or Jerry Lewis movies that made me laugh so hard. I started shaking and yelling and acting as electrocuted as I could, for as long as I could. I was very into the physicality of the moment, but the moment wouldn’t seem to end. I don’t know a lot about acting, but I do know that it starts when the director says “Action,” and it ends when the director says “Cut.” The electrocution went on a very long time and there was still no call to cut the scene. Having taken more electricity than is healthy for one man, I finally let go of the spigots and reacted to the aftermath of that trauma, dancing around like electricity was still coursing through my system. I thought maybe this would be a fun ending and Chris might be satisfied with the first take and call “Cut!” But there was not a peep. By this point, I was starting to run out of gas, so I incorporated my exhaustion into the scene, the electricity wearing off both for the actor and the character. I dropped to my knees and then to the floor, final spasms jerking my body until I became still, a heap of ash. I had nothing more I could do, and still I didn’t hear “Cut.” What the fuck? As I lay on the floor, I finally broke character and refocused my eyes to reality. I saw the crew and equipment at the end of the room and right next to the camera, rolling on the floor in laughter, I saw Chris Columbus. It turned out he was laughing so hard that he couldn’t say “Cut.” That is still one of the greatest compliments I have ever received as an actor. Such a confidence booster, and a validation that I was on the right track.

Knowing that I was free to be as much of a classic-style physical comedian as I was capable of being opened the door to the silliest side of me and let me pay tribute to all of the physical comedians I had always loved dearly. There is the scene when I pull an entire wall of paint cans onto myself, covering myself in paint and making the floor very slippery. I had a blast doing as much slippery silliness as I could, trying to look as out of control as possible. But if you notice, I do take one beat in the middle of it to do a rather graceful little cha-cha move, trying to feel as much like Dick Van Dyke as I could channel. Doing the scene of getting hit in the face with bricks is about as classic a cartoon moment as one could ever hope to get. What kid wouldn’t want the chance to hop inside a cartoon and do the silly stuff I got to do? I took full advantage of the opportunity, with such realistic-looking props and sets. I remember Chris standing just off camera, laughing his ass off and throwing foam bricks at my head, with me doing a stupider and stupider reaction with each new brick. I think the crew might have taken turns throwing them at me too because it was such a fantasy from all of our cartoon childhoods.

Because the physical comedy in this film was even more exaggerated than in the first film, the danger of the stunts that Leon and Troy had to do was even greater. There is a scene where Marv comes into the house, falls through a hole in the floor, and lands face down and spread eagle on the concrete basement floor. My part of that sequence was to step into the close-up shot and then fall out of frame. Leon’s job was to do the fall itself, and then I popped back in, post-fall, for the reaction shots. It was quite scary to watch Leon do this stunt. He really did fall from the first floor to the basement floor, face-down and spread eagle. The only concession was that instead of an actual concrete floor, he landed on a bunch of cardboard boxes they had covered with a tarp to look like a concrete floor. I was worried and asked Leon if there wasn’t anything better to fall into than cardboard boxes, perhaps foam or an airbag. He said that this is what the generals had decided and he was just a soldier. And he fucking did it! Wile E. Coyote could not have done a better face-plant than Leon did!

Troy had to do a stunt where Harry falls flat on his back onto the top of a car. Again, terrifying to watch. They had a real car and had “scored” it, meaning they had made cuts in the roof structure so that it was barely staying together and would break away when Troy landed on it. Troy was lifted by a crane, lying flat on his back, ten or fifteen feet above the roof of the car, and when Chris yelled “Action,” dropped onto the car. Evidently the roof was not “scored” quite as much as it should have been and therefore did not give way completely upon impact. It looked right out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon—until the shot cut and Troy didn’t move. He was knocked unconscious, but he was a rodeo rider and shook it off pretty quickly. I got a little banged up (strangely, the worst was climbing out of the basement on a tower of tables, TV sets, and other junk, all of which had very sharp edges. My legs were black and blue for a month!), but Leon and Troy took the physicality to a genius level that contributed to the success of those movies as much as anything.

Laure and the kids came to visit, and we had a blast in Chicago, eating at restaurants and going to see Michael Jordan play. Macaulay was staying in a different hotel, but we picked him up and took him to the park with us to play. He was a sweet kid but had lived a very different life than my kids. He didn’t know how to play tag or throw the ball around. He was more of an indoor kid and had a lot of adult pressure on him from show business and parents and such. We realized he had formed a friendship with Michael Jackson, because when we picked him up, his hotel room was stacked, literally from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, with toys. Every conceivable toy, as if someone went through Toys “R” Us, took one of each, and dropped them in his room. All a gift from Michael Jackson. It made all of us feel really bad for Mac. My kids had experienced a taste of the distortions that fame can bring, but seeing what Mac’s life was like put things in a different perspective.

John Hughes and I started spending time together, mostly giggling. He was so smart and experienced, and I loved hearing his thoughts on moviemaking. He gave me some of his unproduced scripts to read, one of which was called The Bee—a pure physical comedy movie about a man who is trying to get his work done in his home office, but becomes completely distracted by his determination to kill a bee that has gotten into the house, eventually destroying his entire home. John had been having problems with the structure of the story, how to keep the tension up and not be repetitive. I loved the script and came up with a couple of solutions, and before I knew it, John asked me to come on board as the director to help develop the script and star in it. (We worked on it for the next couple of years, and I even got to spend time at his farm with him, and it is one of my biggest regrets that we never got to make that film.)

The more film they shot of me, the more I had them over a barrel in terms of my contract, especially because they liked my footage so much. With no agent and no lawyer, I negotiated the contract directly with the head of the studio, my friend, Joe Roth. Joe was truthful, respectful, and fair, and although Mac and Pesci got a lot more than me, I did get more money than I had ever made in my life: one point five million and 1 percent gross point of the film. Of course, I still had to pay my former agent 10 percent, and lawyer 5 percent, and accountant 5 percent, and 35 percent for taxes, so I probably came away with five hundred dollars in fresh cash, which was awesome! Having Joe Roth’s confidence and friendship meant the world to me. Our families loved each other, and we had so many laughs together. I respected him so much as my director in Coupe de Ville and now as my studio boss. But his influence on my life as storyteller was just getting started.