Home Alone was one of the great movies of our childhood. It's the first movie that made me laugh uncontrollably in the movie theater... and it's still great today. Jess's kids love it. Adult me loves it. This movie totally lives up.
I worked for a year or two as and Art Department Coordinator on (much less popular) films. I saw first hand the tremendous work that goes into building these worlds around the characters. Having had that work experience, here's some of the things that I spotted during my latest viewing of Home Alone:
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| The Home Alone art department was not fiddlin' around |
Clever Signage - the Art Department of any movie is tasked with creating fake company logos, fake newpapers & books, fake everything. They often make up things for their own amusement. If you look closely at the Little Nero's Pizza delivery car and pizza boxes, you will see this fake company's slogan is "No Fiddlin' Around". Very clever, Art Department.
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| The Home Alone plumbing van spells it all out... if you can read it. |
Similarly, the Wet Bandits are driving around in a plumbing and heating van. It's hard to read but on one side of the van it says "Residential Work Is Our Specialty." On the other side, it says "Your Flood Control Experts!"
This might seem a little on the nose, given the Wet Bandits break into houses and then flood them. However, with that barely legible font, the Art Department probably put this in as an easter egg for eagle-eyed viewers who paused the frame and zoomed in. Once again, very clever!
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| Kevin is home alone in a high school gym |
The interior of the McAllister House is a set - while the house in Winnetka, Illinois is real, most of the scenes set inside the house were filmed in a set. Film crews need to be able to move the walls to get the camera in the right place, so shooting inside a real house is not practical.
Outside of Hollywood there aren't big studio soundstages, so film crews find tall open spaces and turn them into sets. I've worked on films that used a former Kmart, a grocery store warehouse, an old police station, and an abandoned textile mill to house their sets.
The Home Alone set was built inside a gymnasium.
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| Art Director's son. Woof. |
Jokes about their Colleagues - Often the props will include inside jokes or references to people on the crew (my own name has been added to a fake wedding order of service, prop bar paraphernalia, a prop tombstone, etc.). In Home Alone, the director said that holding up a photo of a girl to the line "Buzz's girlfriend. Woof!" would be too mean for a child actress to handle...
...So instead they threw a wig and some makeup on the Art Director's son. It's a perfect gag. There's probably more inside jokes in Home Alone, but Buzz's girlfriend is the most obvious one.
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| Ice Cold Christmas Decorations can't stop Uncle Frank from being awful. |
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| Kevin is cozy at home with his green and red decor |
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