TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120991/1209460.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.6 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                SHOW BUSINESS, Page 82

At Home, but Not Alone


Budding 11-year-old megastar Macaulay Culkin -- or his dad -- is
learning to throw his weight around Hollywood

By HOWARD CHUA-EOAN -- Reported by Linda Williams/New York


    Pound for pound, Macaulay Culkin is the biggest star in
Hollywood. Weighing in at a ton less than Arnold Schwarzenegger,
the 11-year-old nevertheless is in possession of one of the
prized titles of the business: Home Alone, the third highest
grossing movie of all time. (Only E.T. and Star Wars have made
more money.) The 1990 film has transformed him from a precocious
if mischievous New York City child actor into a heavyweight pop
icon -- with the negotiating clout to match. And at the moment,
no one dares say no to the kid.

    Who can resist him? Mouth agape, face slapped between his
hands, Culkin's visage is America's home-sweet-home version of
Edvard Munch's The Scream, with the angst pasteurized. In the
just-released My Girl, a story about a motherless, hypochondriac
tomboy and her best friend Thomas J. (Culkin), he does the
unspeakable for a preadolescent (has his first screen kiss) and
the unthinkable for a budding megastar (dies well before the
end). "It was easy," says Mack. "I just pretended I was
sleeping." It could turn out to be the most talked-about movie
death since a hunter shot Bambi's mother.

    Culkin bobs and weaves around the celebrity circuit like
a pro. He opens Michael Jackson's new Black or White video. He
is allowed to stay up past his bedtime not to watch but to host
Saturday Night Live. Culkin, who was paid only $250,000 for Home
Alone, received $1 million for his role in My Girl. Now whatever
Mack wants, Mack gets -- video games, trips to Florida,
multimillion dollar movie and merchandising deals.

    The dealmaking, of course, remains in the hands of
Culkin's agents -- and his father, former actor Kit Culkin. Mack
seems oblivious to his box-office worth, playing pranks on his
teachers and giving his favorite answer to most interview
questions: "Maybe." As for his future, he doesn't give it much
thought. Says he: "I think about, like, tomorrow we get to leave
school early. We leave early on Tuesdays and Fridays." But this
is a little boy whom major studios desperately want in their
futures -- at almost any price.

    To deliver Mack for the sequel to Home Alone, which is now
before the cameras, Kit Culkin reportedly extracted from 20th
Century-Fox a contract worth $5 million, and a guarantee of $2.5
million for a cast-against-type part for his son in a thriller,
The Good Son. Written by Ian McEwan (The Cement Garden, The
Innocent), The Good Son is about good and evil doppelganger
siblings. The money will be paid out whether or not the film,
which has the boy playing the psychotic brother, gets made. Did
the elder Culkin want The Good Son because Mack already has too
many cute-little-boy roles? "If it's different, he seems to
respond to it," says Dad. "You do what you can to keep it all
going for him."

    But there was just one little problem: The Good Son, which
began as a $6 million project four years ago, was just two weeks
away from shooting in Maine. The decision from on high in the
studio spun the production team into chaos. Because Mack was
committed to Home Alone 2 until the spring, The Good Son had to
be pushed back into late next year, forcing the film over budget
-- without even calculating the child actor's salary. But hey,
as Fox chairman Joe Roth told the New York Times, "There are no
11-year-old kids who sell tickets like Macaulay. To get the kid
in a lead part, that's a great asset. Look, if Joe Blow were
cast in a movie and Mel Gibson is suddenly available in nine
months, you wait nine months."

    Sources close to the set of The Good Son describe the
resulting attempts to beat back this encroachment on the movie's
original scheme as the equivalent of trying to punch through a
granite wall with bare fists. A number of emissaries to Kit
Culkin failed to change his mind. At one point John Hughes, who
directed Mack in Home Alone, reportedly tried to intervene,
offering Mack another movie of "Oscar caliber" if the father
would relent. No way. The Good Son's director, Michael Lehmann
(Heathers, Hudson Hawke), quit in exasperation. He had not been
satisfied by Macaulay's readings, allegedly saying, "He cannot
act." Say the sources: "We have heard from other people he has
worked with, from casting directors, that Mack just mimics. He
does single clauses. And that isn't what this movie needs."

    What Mack has, however, is mesmerizing film presence. As
Howard Zieff, his director on My Girl, notes, "When he's doing
the scene live, it seems like a straight reading. So we were
always surprised, when we looked at the dailies, at how much he
was giving. He's one of those lucky actors the camera loves. He
just has his own technique; what comes out of him is straight
Mack." To Mack, taking time out from playing Spider-Man on his
Sega Genesis machine, acting is "simple." He explains: "I just
pretend I'm that person. I like pretending."

    A new director is being sought for The Good Son, and the
script is being rewritten to highlight Mack's charms and star
qualities. Nevertheless, is it possible that between now and the
end of shooting on Home Alone 2, Mack and his father might fancy
still another movie project and drop out of The Good Son,
possibly preventing that movie from ever getting to the screen?
As Mack might say: maybe.