December 30, 2025 • 9 mins
Home Alone, on a budget of just $18 million dollars, was the highest grossing film of 1990 in the U.S. It has become a holiday classic. But it almost didn’t get made. This is all about the skill and luck of bringing Home Alone to life and the amazing contributions of its 10 year old star.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you with me on this? Watching some classic holiday
movies with family and friends is one of the best
ways to fill the lull between Christmas and New Year's.
All right, let's set the scene. It's Christmas time in
a snowy town. There's a big, beautiful house covered with
twinkly lights. The Christmas tree looks perfect, but inside total chaos. Kids, screaming,
(00:21):
parents counting passports. There are ten pizza boxes and of course,
spilled drinks. Then cut to onboard the plane taking the
whole extended family to Paris for Christmas. Suddenly the mom
does a head count. She panics. At that moment, the
most famous sentence in a holiday movie isn't ho ho ho,
It's cavan And just like that, home alone stole our hearts.
(00:45):
I'm Patty Steele. The chaotic and magical recipe for a
Christmas classic. That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back.
We're in that comfortable lull right now between Christmas and
New Year's and if your household is anything like mine,
you've been watching some of the holiday classics on TV.
(01:08):
For some of us, it's movies like White Christmas, It's
a Wonderful Life, or even die Hard. Yeah, there are
those types that consider that a Christmas movie whatever. But
another huge favorite, at least in my house, is Home Alone.
So what is it that makes that flick so much
fun and yet so meaningful? Well, it turned a simple
(01:29):
Christmas movie into a full contact sport, equally warm and fuzzy,
along with paint can to the face lapstick, and that
changed everything. Home Alone knit together an unlikely chain of travel, anxiety,
studio drama, and kind of a child star lightning strike
that created a new blueprint for Christmas movies. And where
(01:52):
did the idea for the flick originate? The idea for
Home Alone actually was born from the kind of stress
that only parents understand, the chaos of getting everybody out
the door for a family trip. John Hughes, who wrote
and produced Home Alone, was a pop culture hit maker.
Turns out, he jotted down the premise of the movie
(02:15):
during the insanity of preparing to take his own family
to Europe. His thought, what if one of the kids
got accidentally left behind? It's funny, it's outrageous, but under
the circumstances, it's also a little weirdly believable. Because anybody
who has ever tried to get an extended family out
the door on time knows the truth. It's not a vacation,
(02:38):
it's an evacuation. Hughes turned what could have been just
a gag into a story engine, a story that involves
the excitement as well as the stress and even guilt
that wanting the holidays to be perfect can ignite. According
to John Hughes's son James, his dad returned home, revisited
(02:59):
that thought, and then wrote the first draft in nine days,
including an all out eight hour sprint to the finish line.
Just nine days. But it wasn't just a kid yets
left behind comedy. It was a holiday fantasy with a
different edge. A little boy alone in charge in a
world where adults are suddenly the ones who can't handle
(03:21):
basic survival tasks. Now here's a little peak behind the scenes.
Home Alone almost didn't happen, It seems a During pre
production there was a budget dispute with the suits at
Warner Brothers, the studio that was originally going to make
the movie. Warner put the flick in turnaround, and that's
Hollywood speak for we're not paying for this, somebody else can.
(03:43):
That's when Joe Roth, then chairman of twentieth Century Fox
got a lunchtime pitch about the project. He liked it.
It was simple, strong, and very christmasy Roth basically said,
get it out a Warner and I'll make it. So
Fox took over, but it wasn't an easy sell to
the money guys. A lot of Christmas movies are ensemble
(04:05):
pieces with parents, kids, neighbors, maybe a magical outsider, and
maybe a talking snowman home alone. Well, the premise was
based on asking an audience to fall in love with
a kid who spends most of the movie alone. They
knew the movie lived or died on that kid, a
character Kevin McAllister. Hughes had a strong feeling about then
(04:28):
nine year old McCauley Culkin for the part. He'd just
worked with him on the flick Uncle Buck, and he
remembered a scene where McCauley's character was on guard duty,
watching for intruders. He loved what he saw. Still, Director
Chris Columbus auditioned about two hundred kids, but when McCauley
read for the part, it was obvious he was Kevin.
(04:51):
They had a kid who could be adorable, annoying, clever, braddy,
vulnerable and brave sometimes in the same scene. That was
essential because Home Alone constantly walks a tightrope between sweetness
and menace. And you know, one of the most famous
scenes where McCauley slaps on the aftershave and screams, that
(05:13):
ten year old actor improvised the scene. He decided to
leave his hands on his face as he screamed, which
made the scene ten times funnier and made it the
movie poster too. As for the location, the movie was
shot in the Chicago area, mostly on the North Shore,
giving it a crisp Midwest suburban vibe, and the McAllister
(05:34):
House in Winnetka, Illinois was perfect. In fact, it just
sold earlier this year to a family that apparently doesn't
mind living in a tourist attraction because people still constantly
do drive bys of it. The sets for most of
Home Alone's action scenes were actually built and filmed in
a nearby high school. Then there's something you have to
(05:55):
listen for in Home Alone. The movie is no doubt
very funny, but it doesn't actually sound like a comedy.
It sounds like Christmas, and that's not an accident. The
original composer for the musical score had to leave the
production due to a conflict, and that's when the legendary
John Williams came on board. John Williams, who did the
(06:17):
music for Jaws, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Dark, Et,
Star Wars, Harry Potter, and so many, many, many more.
John Williams had actually seen an early screen cut, and
he told them he wanted to score it. Hughes and
Columbus were stunned. This was supposed to be a fairly
small movie they'd hoped would do well, not become a legend,
(06:38):
certainly not on an eighteen million dollar budget. Hughes said,
Williams built musical glue that held together the film's competing
identities cartoon violence and warm holiday heart, and he did
it with a score that seems timeless. It gives the
movie permission to be sincere without getting corny, and to
be wildly slapstick without feeling mean. Home Alone opened in
(07:02):
theaters on November sixteenth, nineteen ninety, and it just wouldn't leave.
In the US, it topped the box office that year
with about two hundred and eighty six million dollars, and
worldwide it hit almost four hundred and seventy seven million.
Huge numbers for a family comedy that only cost eighteen
million dollars to make, and the film didn't just do
(07:24):
big business, it has lasted. So yes, Kevin wasn't just
left Home alone. He dominated the box office. The result,
Christmas movies got permission to be weirder, darker, more chaotic,
while still ending in Carol's and reconciliation. The movie has
real emotion loneliness, regret, the ache of being misunderstood in
(07:47):
your own family. It recognizes that painful maternal sense of guilt,
and it also gives Kevin someone else to focus on,
a lonely, elderly neighbor with a story that is softer
and than the main plot's craziness. So Home Alone is
really about a core holiday truth. Christmas is supposed to
(08:08):
be about family, which makes it the perfect time to
feel abandoned, even when you're surrounded by people. Kevin starts
out mad at everybody, feeling unseen, wishing they'd disappear, and
then he gets what he thinks he wants, just long
enough for it to stop being fun. Finally, it turns
back to what Christmas movies are best at, reunion, repair
(08:31):
and a tiny miracle of somebody coming Home. I hope
your holiday season was really peaceful. I hope you like
The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I'd
love it if you'd subscribe or follow for free to
get new episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm
me if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
(08:51):
On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
I'm Patty Steele. The back Stories a production of iHeartMedia,
Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.
Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We
(09:12):
have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to
reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions
on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at
Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the back Story with
Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't know you
needed to know.
Are you with me on this? Watching some classic holiday
movies with family and friends is one of the best
ways to fill the lull between Christmas and New Year's.
All right, let's set the scene. It's Christmas time in
a snowy town. There's a big, beautiful house covered with
twinkly lights. The Christmas tree looks perfect, but inside total chaos. Kids, screaming,
(00:21):
parents counting passports. There are ten pizza boxes and of course,
spilled drinks. Then cut to onboard the plane taking the
whole extended family to Paris for Christmas. Suddenly the mom
does a head count. She panics. At that moment, the
most famous sentence in a holiday movie isn't ho ho ho,
It's cavan And just like that, home alone stole our hearts.
(00:45):
I'm Patty Steele. The chaotic and magical recipe for a
Christmas classic. That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back.
We're in that comfortable lull right now between Christmas and
New Year's and if your household is anything like mine,
you've been watching some of the holiday classics on TV.
(01:08):
For some of us, it's movies like White Christmas, It's
a Wonderful Life, or even die Hard. Yeah, there are
those types that consider that a Christmas movie whatever. But
another huge favorite, at least in my house, is Home Alone.
So what is it that makes that flick so much
fun and yet so meaningful? Well, it turned a simple
(01:29):
Christmas movie into a full contact sport, equally warm and fuzzy,
along with paint can to the face lapstick, and that
changed everything. Home Alone knit together an unlikely chain of travel, anxiety,
studio drama, and kind of a child star lightning strike
that created a new blueprint for Christmas movies. And where
(01:52):
did the idea for the flick originate? The idea for
Home Alone actually was born from the kind of stress
that only parents understand, the chaos of getting everybody out
the door for a family trip. John Hughes, who wrote
and produced Home Alone, was a pop culture hit maker.
Turns out, he jotted down the premise of the movie
(02:15):
during the insanity of preparing to take his own family
to Europe. His thought, what if one of the kids
got accidentally left behind? It's funny, it's outrageous, but under
the circumstances, it's also a little weirdly believable. Because anybody
who has ever tried to get an extended family out
the door on time knows the truth. It's not a vacation,
(02:38):
it's an evacuation. Hughes turned what could have been just
a gag into a story engine, a story that involves
the excitement as well as the stress and even guilt
that wanting the holidays to be perfect can ignite. According
to John Hughes's son James, his dad returned home, revisited
(02:59):
that thought, and then wrote the first draft in nine days,
including an all out eight hour sprint to the finish line.
Just nine days. But it wasn't just a kid yets
left behind comedy. It was a holiday fantasy with a
different edge. A little boy alone in charge in a
world where adults are suddenly the ones who can't handle
(03:21):
basic survival tasks. Now here's a little peak behind the scenes.
Home Alone almost didn't happen, It seems a During pre
production there was a budget dispute with the suits at
Warner Brothers, the studio that was originally going to make
the movie. Warner put the flick in turnaround, and that's
Hollywood speak for we're not paying for this, somebody else can.
(03:43):
That's when Joe Roth, then chairman of twentieth Century Fox
got a lunchtime pitch about the project. He liked it.
It was simple, strong, and very christmasy Roth basically said,
get it out a Warner and I'll make it. So
Fox took over, but it wasn't an easy sell to
the money guys. A lot of Christmas movies are ensemble
(04:05):
pieces with parents, kids, neighbors, maybe a magical outsider, and
maybe a talking snowman home alone. Well, the premise was
based on asking an audience to fall in love with
a kid who spends most of the movie alone. They
knew the movie lived or died on that kid, a
character Kevin McAllister. Hughes had a strong feeling about then
(04:28):
nine year old McCauley Culkin for the part. He'd just
worked with him on the flick Uncle Buck, and he
remembered a scene where McCauley's character was on guard duty,
watching for intruders. He loved what he saw. Still, Director
Chris Columbus auditioned about two hundred kids, but when McCauley
read for the part, it was obvious he was Kevin.
(04:51):
They had a kid who could be adorable, annoying, clever, braddy,
vulnerable and brave sometimes in the same scene. That was
essential because Home Alone constantly walks a tightrope between sweetness
and menace. And you know, one of the most famous
scenes where McCauley slaps on the aftershave and screams, that
(05:13):
ten year old actor improvised the scene. He decided to
leave his hands on his face as he screamed, which
made the scene ten times funnier and made it the
movie poster too. As for the location, the movie was
shot in the Chicago area, mostly on the North Shore,
giving it a crisp Midwest suburban vibe, and the McAllister
(05:34):
House in Winnetka, Illinois was perfect. In fact, it just
sold earlier this year to a family that apparently doesn't
mind living in a tourist attraction because people still constantly
do drive bys of it. The sets for most of
Home Alone's action scenes were actually built and filmed in
a nearby high school. Then there's something you have to
(05:55):
listen for in Home Alone. The movie is no doubt
very funny, but it doesn't actually sound like a comedy.
It sounds like Christmas, and that's not an accident. The
original composer for the musical score had to leave the
production due to a conflict, and that's when the legendary
John Williams came on board. John Williams, who did the
(06:17):
music for Jaws, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Dark, Et,
Star Wars, Harry Potter, and so many, many, many more.
John Williams had actually seen an early screen cut, and
he told them he wanted to score it. Hughes and
Columbus were stunned. This was supposed to be a fairly
small movie they'd hoped would do well, not become a legend,
(06:38):
certainly not on an eighteen million dollar budget. Hughes said,
Williams built musical glue that held together the film's competing
identities cartoon violence and warm holiday heart, and he did
it with a score that seems timeless. It gives the
movie permission to be sincere without getting corny, and to
be wildly slapstick without feeling mean. Home Alone opened in
(07:02):
theaters on November sixteenth, nineteen ninety, and it just wouldn't leave.
In the US, it topped the box office that year
with about two hundred and eighty six million dollars, and
worldwide it hit almost four hundred and seventy seven million.
Huge numbers for a family comedy that only cost eighteen
million dollars to make, and the film didn't just do
(07:24):
big business, it has lasted. So yes, Kevin wasn't just
left Home alone. He dominated the box office. The result,
Christmas movies got permission to be weirder, darker, more chaotic,
while still ending in Carol's and reconciliation. The movie has
real emotion loneliness, regret, the ache of being misunderstood in
(07:47):
your own family. It recognizes that painful maternal sense of guilt,
and it also gives Kevin someone else to focus on,
a lonely, elderly neighbor with a story that is softer
and than the main plot's craziness. So Home Alone is
really about a core holiday truth. Christmas is supposed to
(08:08):
be about family, which makes it the perfect time to
feel abandoned, even when you're surrounded by people. Kevin starts
out mad at everybody, feeling unseen, wishing they'd disappear, and
then he gets what he thinks he wants, just long
enough for it to stop being fun. Finally, it turns
back to what Christmas movies are best at, reunion, repair
(08:31):
and a tiny miracle of somebody coming Home. I hope
your holiday season was really peaceful. I hope you like
The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I'd
love it if you'd subscribe or follow for free to
get new episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm
me if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
(08:51):
On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
I'm Patty Steele. The back Stories a production of iHeartMedia,
Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.
Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We
(09:12):
have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to
reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions
on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at
Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the back Story with
Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't know you
needed to know.
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