35 Fascinating Things You Never Knew About 'Home Alone'

The movie's writer, the venerable John Hughes, was on his way to Europe for the first time with his family and just happened to think, "What if one of the kids were left behind?" As his son James Hughes recounts, he jotted it down, and wrote the first draft of the movie's script in just nine days (!) after he got back home.

The producers wanted him to play Harry, one of the bumbling burglars, but he turned it down. Joe Pesci, Robert's Goodfellas co-star, accepted the gig in the end.

Joe Pesci was actually the third actor to be offered the role of Harry. After Robert De Niro didn't accept the part, it was offered to Jon Lovitz. "I didn't want to play second fiddle to some kid," Jon told HuffPost. "Then it became the biggest comedy of all time. Oops."

We think the Saturday Night Live legend would have made a good fit, but apparently his audition wasn't up to snuff.

The role of Uncle Frank was written for the Frasier star, but he turned it down. Gerry Bamman eventually got the job as the wily uncle.

The producers really couldn't afford it, but after snow covered the entire set on the second day of shooting, they had no choice but to call in the snow machines for the remainder of the film's production.

Another prop used to imitate snow? Mashed potato flakes. They can be spotted at the very end, when it starts snowing outside Kevin's house.

The actor apparently wanted to ensure Macaulay was actually afraid of him (and, consequently, Harry).

The Beetlejuice and Schitt's Creek star didn't always deliver her dialogue to Macaulay, due to restrictions on the working hours of child actors. "We'd shoot a scene with one of the kids; then, as late as one in the morning, we'd shoot my close-ups," she recalled. "They'd have a tennis ball on a stand, the height of the kid's head, and the script supervisor would read the children's lines."

Around 2012, the costars accidentally ran into each other for the first time in many years. "He went, 'Mommy!' and I was like, 'Baby!'" the actress told Andy Cohen. "And my husband, who usually is cool about these things, said, 'OK, get together. I'm getting a picture!'"

Chris Columbus told Entertainment Weekly the aftershave scene was conceived differently in the script. "But on the first take, he slapped his face and kept his hands glued to his face as if he had just put superglue on his face, and his hands stayed completely still as he screamed like the Edvard Munch painting," he said. "That's why he was such an interesting kid: No one else would have done that."

Succession's Kieran Culkin made his acting debut as Kevin's cousin, Fuller. They starred together again in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

The magic of props saved his feet from a whole lotta pain.

As Joe was used to more adult scripts (and costars), the actor had to catch himself using curse words around set. Director Chris Columbus even advised him to say "fridge" instead of, well, you know what.

It's hard for him to watch it from an outside point of view. "When I'm watching it, I'm seeing like — I'm remembering that day on set," the actor told Ellen DeGeneres in 2018. "You know, like, how I was hiding my Pepsi behind the couch. I can't watch it the same way other people can."

To keep the child actor from seeing actual nudity, the crew taped the magazine completely shut.

The McAllister home is a real house located outside of Chicago in Winnetka, Illinois. What's more, the real owners continued to live there (mostly confined to the house's primary suite) for the five months of filming.

John Hughes originally wanted Columbus to direct National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but things went south after a meeting with actor Chevy Chase. "I called John and said, 'There's no way I can do this movie. I know I need to work, but I can't do it with this guy,'" he told Chicago magazine. Shortly after, he was sent the script for Home Alone instead.