Recently, Home Alone’s director Chris Columbus told a telling tale about how an incident with Chevy Chase led to his work on the legendary 1990 film. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Columbus disclosed that he had been signed to direct National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in 1989. Screenwriter John Hughes had agreed to work on the film with him. However, meetings with Chase during production proved so difficult that he could not help but walk out of the project.
Columbus remembered two awkward meetings with Chase, in which the actor seemed disinterested in the film and made bizarre comments, such as confusing Columbus with a drummer. “I realized I couldn’t work with the guy,” Columbus said, explaining that despite needing the job, he felt the working relationship would be unmanageable. After his uncomfortable interactions with Chase, Columbus called Hughes to explain his decision to quit the film.
Hughes, realizing Columbus’s stance, immediately sent him a new script-this time on Home Alone. Columbus was enthralled by the script, which he believed would bring a project he could relate to. “It was a better script,” he noted, describing it as very personal and fulfilling as it was in Christmas Vacation. Columbus left the film Vacation, which inadvertently took him to Home Alone, which became a phenomenon worldwide and a holiday classic.
In the end, Christmas Vacation was directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik and was released in 1989. Meanwhile, Home Alone would become one of the highest-grossing Christmas films ever made, and this would cement Columbus’s place in the history of holiday films.
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