It`s a familiar Hollywood fable. A modestly budgeted movie makes a box-office killing and the people who worked on it for peanuts make out like bandits with a sequel.
As such cinematic Cinderellas go, ”Home Alone” must be one of the fairest of them all. Produced for a mere $18 million, it became the sleeper success of the 1990 holiday season and thrived well into 1991, selling $285 million worth of tickets to become the third highest grossing film of all time (behind ”E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” and ”Star Wars”).
Now the inevitable sequel is here, along with the equally inevitable presumption that everyone involved in ”Home Alone 2: Christmas in New York” was in it for the money.
Chris Columbus, who directed both films, has been in the business long enough not to take exception to questions about his motivations-and he`s also so down-to-earth and good natured that you believe him when he said he just wanted to make a good movie with a bunch of people he liked.
”There is a franchise feeling about it,” Columbus acknowledged, seated on a couch in the living room of a rented Malibu beach house while rocking his 6-month-old son, Brendan.
”That`s a new word that I`ve heard a lot in Hollywood recently,” he said. ”It`s interesting, because I get offered scripts and they say, `This can be a franchise,` and I`m like, `Wait a second, in the old days it was supposed to be a great film.`
”You know, that`s the reason you got involved in filmmaking. So I never really looked at it in those terms. I really always wanted it to be a great movie first.
”And I was always against sequels, but it really was a labor of love. If we wouldn`t have had such a great time making the first one, there would have been no reason to make a second one.
”And then, the reason I don`t feel it`s this money-making franchise is because I can`t really answer about doing a third, because I don`t know if I`d have the energy or the passion to do the third.
”I knew I could do this one. I knew I could withstand 96 days of shooting and really make this a better picture than the first picture. That was our goal all along.”
Columbus isn`t denying that he got a hefty raise, as did the other repeat players-all of the principals, from producer-writer John Hughes and bad guys Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern to parents John Heard and Catherine O`Hara and all but one of the other kids in the family.
Probably the biggest windfall went to Macaulay Culkin, the cherub-faced star who reportedly made $100,000 for the first movie and is said to be collecting $4.5 million plus a percentage of the gross for the sequel.
”You can`t really pay people scale after the first movie did as well as it did,” Columbus said.
The New York setting was part of the sequel`s appeal for Columbus. A native Midwesterner, he moved to the city 16 years ago to study directing at New York University film school. He now shuttles his family (wife Monica, daughter Eleanor, 3 1/2, and young Brendan) between a West Side apartment and a Chicago-area home.
”It was my chance to do a love letter to New York,” he said.
Columbus himself is something of a Cinderella story. The only child of blue-collar parents, he was born in the small Pennsylvania town of Spangler and grew up in Youngstown, Ohio.
Chris-not Christopher-is his real first name, bestowed by his father who said his grandfather always wanted to name one of his 12 children Christopher or Christine. (Earlier this year, Columbus turned down an invitation from the government of Spain to participate in a celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, dressed as the famed explorer.)
He began making 8-mm films in high school and sold his first script while attending New York University. His first produced screenplay was 1984`s
”Reckless,” starring Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah and directed by James Foley.
That same year he hit box-office gold as screenwritero ”Gremlins,”
followed in quick succession by ”The Goonies” and the Barry Levinson-directed ”Young Sherlock Holmes.” He also worked on the screenplay for
”Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
Columbus made his directorial debut with 1987`s ”Adventures in Babysitting,” which was shot in Chicago-a city he has loved since meeting his wife there several years earlier.
That gave him something in common with Hughes, Chicago`s famed and prolific filmmaker. It was during a visit there that Hughes sent him his screenplay for ”Home Alone.”
Columbus still shakes his head at his good fortune. ”I just sort of kept my mouth shut when I read the first script, because my first inclination was, `John, why don`t you direct this yourself-this is a great movie!`
”But I wouldn`t say that because he may have taken it. He never really was clear about why he didn`t direct the first picture. I mean, he`s a producer and a writer, I think he enjoys that in a way. I think it just sort of shows you that you just cannot predict.
”I mean, it started out as a small movie. We never thought of it as a kids` movie, though. We thought of it just as a small movie about this little kid, through the eyes of a kid, but we really wanted to sort of appeal to everyone.
”We knew people would take their kids to see it, but we didn`t want those parents to be bored out of their skull like they are with so many kids` movies. So we really looked at it in those terms, and we had no idea it was going to be as successful as it was.”
Creatively, Columbus appears to be in the process of transition; having already moved from fantasy to youth-oriented comedy, he made ”Only the Lonely”-a romantic comedy-and is now preparing to direct Robin Williams in
”Mrs. Doubtfire,” which he describes as ”a family comedy-drama.”
Although ”Home Alone 2” has Columbus` name above the title, he recognizes that Hughes as writer and producer still gets the lion`s share of the creative credit.
”It doesn`t bother me, because I seriously look at film as being in it for the long haul,” he said.
”You know, I hope to be directing pictures when I`m in my 60s and 70s, when Hollywood is much younger than me, and then they`ll eventually shut the door on me.”
