The year is 1990, and this podcast is approved by the American Dental Association, and we promise we're going to go easy on the Pepsi.

The movie, Home Alone. Oh, ho, ho, and welcome to unspooled.

I don't know if I was Santa Claus or a vampire in that. But anyway, people, I am Paul Shear,

this is unspooled, and we are looking back at some Christmas classics. That's right,

we're going to be talking today about one of my favorite holiday films, Home Alone.

Now, there's a lot that you might not know about Home Alone. But let's set the stage, okay? John Hughes has been

on a career high. In the last five years, he has been behind such films as Mr. Mom,

16 Candles, Breakfast Club, National Ampoon's Vacation, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, planes, trains,

and automobiles, and that's just to name a few. But here's the thing. He is about to

have his biggest hit yet. Now, the idea for Home Alone sprang from a chaotic start to a family

vacation to Europe in 1989. But he had a twist. What if one of the kids had been accidentally left

behind? So he wrote the entire first draft of Home Alone

in just nine days when he got back from that trip. John Hughes is, it's infuriating. If you've ever

written anything, the fact that he's turned out scripts to some of the best movies of all time

in less than 20 days is mind-boggling.

But anyway, he didn't want to direct it.

He turned to Chris Columbus, who had recently left a John Hughes-produced film,

National Ampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Now, Columbus left that picture because, as he said,

Chevy Chase treated him like dirt.

Okay, so Chris Columbus now doesn't know what to do. He reads a script,

he falls in love, he loves the idea of making a big fun Christmas movie. But John Hughes and

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