Actor Macaulay Culkin reflects on ‘Home Alone’ legacy

Sarah Hepola, Tribune News Service

One of the happier narrative arcs in Hollywood belongs to Macaulay Culkin, who shot to superstardom as a kid in the 1990 smash Home Alone. It’s hard to endure the fame machine at only 10 years old, but Culkin turned out OK. These days, he lives in Los Angeles with his partner, Brenda Song, another former child star (Disney’s The Suite Life of Zack & Cody), and their two little boys.

After years of distancing himself from Home Alone’s Kevin McCallister, the precocious boy left behind on a family Christmas trip to Paris, Culkin has learned to accept his fate as the (screaming) face of a generation. On Nov. 30, he brings “Home Alone: A Nostalgic Night With Macaulay Culkin” to the Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie. The evening includes an onstage interview with the star and a screening of the comedy, which has become a holiday classic, the millennial version of It’s a Wonderful Life.

I spoke with Culkin by phone on Nov. 17, a day after Home Alone’s 35th anniversary. When I mentioned this, there was a beat of silence as he checked the date. “What do you know? I missed it!” He laughed. “Thank you for reminding me.” He’d spent the previous day with Song at a Los Angeles Rams game that the team won by two points. “Man, that was a nailbiter,” he said.

Everyone has to deal with growing older, but you’re like a mirror held up to the rest of the world. As you grow older, we grow older, too. Exactly. I am the opposite of Dorian Gray. This movie being 35 years old doesn’t just age me, it ages everyone else. Someone at the grocery store will ask how old I am, and I’ll say, aw, man, you don’t want to know. I’m 45, and sometimes, it’s a little punch in the gut.

You pushed away from Home Alone for a long time. What convinced you to come back? I’ve been embracing it a lot over the last few years, because I have kids of my own (Dakota, 4, and Carson, 2). I show it to them, and my kids don’t even know it’s me. I’m taller now, I’m bearded, so they don’t quite put it together. My oldest thinks he’s Kevin. I’ll ask him if he remembers sliding down the stairs on the sled, and he’s like, sure do. What a liar! (Laughs.)

But the movie has taken on a different meaning for me. It’s fun getting people together to see this movie in a theater. Laughter is infectious. I did the tour last year, and I was touched by the reception. People want to share it with their kids the way I want to share it with my kids. It’s a different experience watching it as an adult. There are a number of jokes that go past the kids’ heads. And slapstick is funny. Watching people get smashed in the face and fall on floor — who doesn’t love that?

I’m curious if you have any memories attached to Dallas. Dallas was the first city I flew on a plane to visit. I went there to work on Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. I was cast in that movie, and they cut my part out. I’ve never seen the scene in any DVD extras, so Lord knows it’s probably lost to time.

No way! What was your role? I was probably just “boy in the crowd No. 1.” It was the third movie I’d done, so this would have been like 1988. I think Tom Cruise was in a parade or something, and my line was, “Mom, when I grow up I wanna be just like him,” and the mother turns to me and says, “No you don’t.” OK, rank these things: Dallas Cowboys, Dallas the TV show and the Von Erich wrestling family.