Chris Columbus, the king of Christmas movies, has now packed a nightmare gift with ‘Nosferatu’

Okay.

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 the most surreal thing. I still couldn’t make sense of it. He said, “Oh, I thought you were one drummer.” (Shaking his head) I said, “Um, okay. Let’s start talking about the movie again.” After about 30 seconds, he said, “I have to go.”

Did he just go out? (UPDATE: Readers have suggested that Chase was probably making a joking reference to the jazz percussionist who was also named Chris Columbus.)

He went off and met with John Hughes and said we should meet again. Then we had a dinner where John Hughes was present and I was pretty much non-existent. It was Chevy and Hughes, and they talked about everything but Christmas holiday. We spent two hours together and I left dinner thinking, I can’t make a movie with this guy. First of all, he is not engaged. He treats me like shit. I don’t need this. I would rather not work again. I’d rather write.

Do you think he was confusing you, just asserting dominance?

I don’t know, maybe it is. I guess that sense of humor was funny in the early 70s. It’s so surreal…Who says something like that to anyone? It makes no sense. So telling that story makes almost no sense, but it actually happened. I thought, is this how we are supposed to work together? I’m going on set and he’s not listening. (Representatives for Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

So what did you do?

I called John and said, “I can’t do this. John, I desperately need this job, but I know I’m not going to make a good movie with this guy, and I’m going to let you down.” And he said, “I understand. Completely understand.”

So you walked away?

I resigned Christmas holiday. The next weekend I got another script from John – and that’s it Alone at home. home alone, for me it 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. That was it. John and I started working together and we had the same sensibility. The only difference between the two of us was that John liked to stay up all night and I work during the day. When I shot home alone, I would shoot during the day and John would have script meetings at night at his house until four in the morning. I got about two hours of sleep. I had a newborn!