Happy 20 Year Birthday Home Alone!

Twenty years ago, a little film titled Home Alone was released into theaters around the world; it soon became the highest grossing live action comedy of all time. November 16th was Home Alone‘s twentieth birthday, and to celebrate we’re going to take a little look at  this classic holiday film.

First, check out the original trailer below; notice a difference in the grocery store scene when compared to way it is in the movie.

Some interesting trivia (via IMDB):

• Joe Pesci‘s (Harry) character, Harry Lime, is named after Orson Welles‘s character from the film The Third Man.
• The classic promotional photograph of Culkin screaming (shown above) is based on the famous painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.
• Although the part was written especially for Macaulay Culkin (Kevin) by John Hughes, several hundred other boys were auditioned by director Chris Columbus just because he wanted to confirm that Culkin was right for the part.
• Daniel Stern (Marv) agreed to have the tarantula put on his face for exactly one take. He had to mime screaming because the noise would have scared the spider, and the scream was dubbed in later.
• John Candy (Gus) filmed his part in only 1 day, albeit an extremely long 23-hour day. The story about having once forgotten his son at a funeral home was entirely improvised.
• The picture Kevin finds of “Buzz’s girlfriend” was a picture of a boy made up to look like a girl because Chris Columbusthought it would be too cruel to make fun of a girl like that.

I found this WONDERFUL ARTICLE that examines the beautiful McCallister home in depth. I never noticed all the red and green before; so wonderful! I would love to live in that home.

For a fantastic look at some of the merchandise which was used to market both Home Alone I and Home Alone II check out this FANTASTIC POST.

Lastly, CLICK HERE to go to an awesome Moviefone article about the current whereabouts of many of the actors from the movie; not just the stars but also many of the minor roles as well.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch Kevin torture Marv and Harry with some booby traps.