There will always be certain roles that actors or actresses just can’t escape. And for Macaulay Culkin, he will forever be known to us as the adorable Kevin McCallister from Home Alone. Even though that movie came out thirty years ago, he will still often get asked to do the iconic face moment from the movie. Everyone knows exactly which face I’m talking about – the one where he’s wide-eyed with his hands on his cheeks and his mouth wide open.
But it turns out, that face we all know and love, was actually an accident! According to the movie’s director, Chris Columbus, it was not planned. As he shared with Insider, “[Macaulay] wasn’t supposed to do that. If you put something on your face that burns, most people move their hands right away. So my direction to him was when you pat your face, move your hands and scream. And I think it was the first take, he kept his hands on his cheeks. We all started laughing hysterically.”
As Columbus explained, they tried filming the scene a few more times, this time with McCaulay’s hands not touching his face but it just wasn’t right. The first cut was the one that was added to the movie because it was too funny and iconic not to include.
But apparently, that wasn’t the only secret to be revealed by the director. Columbus shared that they experienced some other trials to overcome while filming. Some of these were because of limited technology back in the day. One of these scenes was the BB gun scene, where McCaulay’s character fires the BB gun at Mav through the doggie dog. The director explained, “We paid a guy living in his mother’s basement in Chicago $600 to hand paint that BB going into Marv’s head. So that was an animated effect. A guy with a paintbrush in a basement for six frames hand-painted a BB.”
So, there you have it, some insight into the behind-the-scenes of one of our favorite Christmas movies! What do you think? Let us know!