How the ‘Home Alone’ Parents Were Able to Afford That House (Exclusive)

Alone at home and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York director Chris Columbus was almost at the helm of a different Christmas classic.

On this week’s episode of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Prices Chat podcast, the veteran filmmaker – who most recently produced the new version of Nosferatuthat hits theaters on Christmas Day — reflected on how a “bizarre” meeting with Chevy Chase led him to the franchise in the first place.

It all started, Columbus recalled, when fellow Chicagoan John Hughes sent him the script National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacationwhich Hughes was to produce and asked him to direct it. Columbus, in dire need of the gig after a couple of box office disappointments left his future prospects in limbo, enthusiastically agreed and began recording second unit footage over Christmas.

Then he sat down with the film’s star, Chevy Chase, and things quickly got very awkward. “I’m asking him all these questions and he was just dead and uninterested and distracted,” Columbus said. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s weird.’ For an actor who commits to this film, he really doesn’t want to talk about it.’ Then, 40 minutes into the conversation, he says the most surreal thing I’ve ever heard in a meeting, ever. He said to me, ‘Wait a minute, you’re the director?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I thought you were a drummer.’ I don’t even know what the hell that meant.”

Afterwards, Columbus described the “surreal” encounter to Hughes, who suggested the three have dinner together to try to patch things up. But this time, Columbus says, “It was even worse. (Chase) ignored me. It was like I wasn’t even involved in the movie. Every time I brought up the movie, he changed the subject.” Columbus concluded that he had no choice but to bow out of the film, although he had no idea if he would get the opportunity to direct someone else.

Just a week later, Hughes, “being the ultimate mensch,” sent Columbus another Christmas-related script he had written and intended to produce: Alone at home. “Talk about dodging a bullet,” Columbus marveled some 35 years later.

While Hughes was all-in on casting young Macaulay Culkin to play the film’s protagonist, Kevin McCallister, Columbus wasn’t sure at first. “That’s why John Hughes was a great producer for a director, and I learned a lot from him,” Columbus explained: “He said, ‘Do you want to take a look at the meeting with Macaulay?’ I said, ‘Yes, I want to meet Macaulay, but I also want to meet everyone else.’ I also ended up meeting 300 other kids. Total colossal waste of time, because then I met Macaulay again, and it was magical.”

As for the rumor that Chris Farley was almost cast Alone at home? “Farley was just starting out at the time,” Columbus said, and the director invited him to an audition Saturday morning. “This guy came in at 7 o’clock in the morning for our first reading for him who played Santa Claus in the movie. He wasn’t in very good shape. He had just come from being in Chicago all night. The director continued, “We had to say, ‘Well, not this time’. And so over the years I got to know Farley really well, and we always talked about that.” The first time we met was at that audition,” Columbus said.

Columbus also weighed in on one of the internet’s biggest debates: what did the McCallister parents do to work to afford the beautiful Chicago house?

“Then John and I had a conversation about it and we decided what the jobs were,” Columbus said. Catherine O’Hara’s Kate McCallister “was a very successful fashion designer,” as suggested by the mannequins in the family basement. As for John Heard’s Peter McCallister, he can’t say for sure. “The father, based on John Hughes’ own experiences, could have worked in advertising, but I don’t remember what the father did.” However, he was able to rule out one profession that people online speculated might have drawn criminals Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) to the McCallister home in the first place: “Not organized crime — even though it was time, a lot of organized crime in Chicago.”