‘He is not engaged. He treats me like S—. I don’t need this’

On December 25, 2024By Littum

“Home Alone” director Chris Columbus chimed in an interview with Vanity Fair that it was ultimately Chevy Chase who opened the door for him to helm the 1990 Christmas comedy classic. That’s because Columbus originally worked with screenwriter John Hughes on 1989’s “Christmas Vacation,” starring Chase. Columbus was hired to direct the comedy and was in the middle of filming another unit when he met Chase for the first time.

“I was signed up…and so I met Chevy Chase. Even given my situation at the time, when I desperately needed to make a movie, I realized I couldn’t work with the guy,” Columbus said. “I was one of the many who could not work with him. And I called John and I said, ‘This is really hard for me, but I can’t do this movie with Chevy Chase.’ We were in the process of shooting second unit. We didn’t start shooting the movie or building sets. But it was December, so I had to go downtown Chicago and shoot all the department stores and all that. I had two meetings with Chevy.”

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“My first meeting with him, I sat down with him. It was just the two of us,” Columbus continued. “He had to know that I directed the film. I talked about how I saw the film, how I wanted to make the film. He didn’t say anything. I spoke for about half an hour. He didn’t say a word. And then he stops and he says—and it makes no sense to any human being on the planet, but I’m telling you. I probably never told this story. Forty minutes into the meeting he says, ‘Wait a minute. Are you the director?’ And I said, ‘Yeah… I’m directing the movie.’ And he said to me the most surreal, bizarre thing. I still haven’t been able to make any sense out of it. He said, ‘Oh, I thought you were a drummer.’ I said, ‘Uh, okay. Let’s start talking about the movie again.’ After about 30 seconds he said, ‘I’m going.’

Columbus was taken aback by Chase’s comment. He eventually met the comedian again for dinner, this time with Hughes in attendance. The director said “I was basically nonexistent” at the table as Chevy and Hughes talked to each other about anything but “Christmas vacation.”

“We spent two hours together and I left the dinner thinking, ‘There’s no way I can make a movie with this guy,'” Columbus told Vanity Fair. “First of all, he’s not engaged. He treats me like crap. I don’t need this. I’d rather not work again. I’d rather write…Who says that to anybody? It makes no sense. So telling that story makes almost no sense, but it actually happened. I was like, is this how we’re going to work together? I’m going to be on set and he’s not listening.”

Columbus called Hughes to tell him he couldn’t work with Chase, which Hughes understood. The director added: “I quit ‘Christmas Vacation’. The next weekend I got another script from John – and it’s ‘Home Alone.’ ‘Home Alone’ to me was even more personal, a better script. And I thought, I can really do something with this and I don’t have to deal with Chevy Chase.”

Black has reached out to Chase representatives for comment.

After Columbus left “Christmas Vacation,” director Jeremiah S. Chechik was brought in as a replacement. The film opened in theaters in 1989 and was the third installment in National Lampoon’s “Vacation” film series. Chase headlined all three films opposite Beverly D’Angelo.

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