The Worst Idea Of All Time - DirCom: Home Alone 3

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Director Raja Gosnell and the ghost of screenwriter John Hughes overcome the thwarting of YouTube.com and their repressive live-streaming rules to bring you the Director's Commentary for the Blu-ray of Home Alone 3. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So, here we see Alex's trademark bowl cut and... I wonder if they're dogs unionized. Probably not. We should ask. We should ask. Before we say anything more, I'd like to say to you, Roger. They're not going to stop us now. Cheers once more.

No, they're not going to stop. Yeah, bro, let's get on the rouge. We've been marked as spam. We've been marked as breaching copyright law. And the only thing they'll mark us down for now is being fucking awesome unstoppable legends that's exactly right i just got to check with michael in the control room if um he can uh hear us so if anyone there has the ability to talk to michael in the control room and just are we coming through loud and clear let us know we've had to flick a few things so we don't breach copyright. What a bunch of fucking babies. I know.

Jesus Christ. What is copyright? What does it actually mean? What even is it? Who invented that? And what for? Yeah. Whose ass are they protecting?

What secrets are they hiding? We're asking the right questions now, I think. These are the things we want to know. Have we heard a word from Michael? We haven't heard from Michael yet, but I'm hoping to hear from Michael very soon. And we, in the interest of just making sure the cables are laid correctly,

we've disabled the vision and the audio of the film. We have reason to believe that even though we own the exclusive rights, YouTube perhaps flagged it because we've taken different corporal forms and they don't recognise us as the people we are

so in spite of what our bodies look like Home Alone 3 is our film 9 and we will 8

now deliver 7 6 5 a director's commentary 4 3 2

1 to the people for the people and by the people now this is the way i prefer to do a director's commentary no one else can see the screen so it's a little bit of directors hi my name is raja gosnell and my name is john hughes not the director of this film but a director of films and a collaborator on this film yes you made one of my favorite movies ferris bueller's day off i don't remember a lick of that me and mat Matthew Broderick, every time they would call cut, or I guess I would call cut,

him and I would get on a private jet, we'd fly to Ireland, and we'd go to a different small town and get a rental car. And we would have a lot of laughs. We're not talking about Ferris Bueller's Day Off. We're talking about Home Alone, the third, which I think is the name of this movie. That's what we wanted to call it the studio told us otherwise so while they call it home alone three we continue to call it home

alone the third and one of the biggest challenges i found in writing this movie was finding situations for the protagonist alex to actually be home alone i kept having so much fun with the other characters i wanted them to also be in the house. But as you'll soon see, we figured out a way. So we open in Hong Kong as we ever did and as we always do. If once is good, three times is best, I think. There's a popular saying, saying once, twice, three times a movie. So these fish, actually, funny thing about them them they're all mechanical fish the same engineers we got on to develop the missile chip for the film we also got to develop highly photorealistic fish

they had a lot of downtime once the chip was done we paid for so many hours of their time we anticipated that they would have to work on the chip for two years they told us it would only take a month and that they were right This is one of the rare instances. And we're not too big of men to acknowledge when we were wrong or are wrong. Correct. And we really screwed the pooch on that one, and boy, did the financiers at 20th Century Fox

let us know about it. But as they say in France, when in Rome, spend some money, get a film, we could get Macaulay Culkin. I don't know if anyone here has spent a lot of time in France recently, but there's a very popular sort of mantra circling amongst the French saying they need to reinvest what they have into the Italian economy. I don't know why, but I support it.

Now, this guy here, well, there's only one thing to say about him. He fucks? Absolute fuck machine. Yeah. Now, a lot of different directors and screenwriters, because John and I worked pretty hand and glove on both pre-production, production, and post-production on this film, they take a different flavor, approach, or style

to the casting decisions that are made. Some people, for example, get a casting director, not my personal cup of tea. What John Hughes and myself look for is raw sexual energy we will often employ psychologists and sex therapists to run us through the audition process to figure out what type what who's the biggest tiger on the serengeti we could land this is actually um this is the movie where esther perrell got her start so we hired her away from her

job as a sexual and relationship therapist and we lined up pretty much a hundred different people in front of her and we said to Esther which of these people fuck and she said well from what you know in her funny little accent she said well all of them and so we hired all of them

it was a good impression of her accent yeah yeah perfect I backed down and and she said, well, all of them. And so we hired all of them. It was a good impression of her accent. Yeah, yeah. It was perfect. I backed down. And so that's our cast. 100 people handpicked by ourselves and Esther Perel. Which is what you want in a kids' movie. You want to foster a raw sexual energy on set.

A lot of the fucking didn't make it onto screen. It certainly was happening behind the scenes, in the trailers, in the trailers in the cars you know the valets we made sure they were all very horny everyone involved in this production from top to bottom knew how to fuck

except for the kids which is good and as it should be we made sure that the kids had their own area because we were shooting for 18 months had to legally construct a school for them which was an interesting challenge that I hadn't encountered in my filmmaking 18 months had to legally construct a school for them which was an interesting challenge that i hadn't encountered in my filmmaking well it was less

of a school and more of what you might call a sham sham steiner institute i mean potato what we did the point is we were no corners we found an old fridge and some of those magnets that have letters on them and we put the word school on the fridge door, and we emptied out the back of the fridge, so the kids would walk into the school, and out the back of that, it was pretty much just a field. Not a lot of lessons, well, I mean, not a lot of academic lessons to be learned in the field,

but a lot of life lessons from the school of hard knocks. Oh, you better believe it. My God, we learned a lot. For example, did you know that a kid can only hold their breath for about a minute and a half? We didn't, but now I think both we and Alex Pruitt. Yeah. Oh, is Pruitt the name of the character in the movie? I used to get this confused and it would drive him up the fucking wall.

Yeah. Who can say? Alex Lins is the actor. Alex Pruitt is the character he portrays on screen. Anyway you slice it, he's a very professional. He's a joy to work with. Oh, now this is a real doozy of a moment in the plot. The part where our criminals figure out that they don't, in fact, have a quite heavy toy remote-controlled car in their bag in a big box,

but it's a loaf of bread. An easy mistake to make. We forgot to get catering on that down set, so what is represented as bread on camera had actually already been eaten, and what was in there was two bricks I'd sellotape together. So that was a heavy bag,

and the actor does a fantastic job of very lightly lifting what is, in fact, two weighty bricks. You would be surprised at how hard that kind of mind work is, but we got Goliath himself in to do a little bit of training with the actor. That's right.

We got a well-known clown what's his first name okay i think it's goliath goliath yes it's quite a common thing for the french to do they have a sort of um upstairs downstairs first name last name yeah it's all it's all and a lot of people try and spell it the french way with a lot of vowels next to each other, but it's actually spelt G-O-L-L-Y hyphen Y-A-Y. Golly yay. Because clowning is something to be celebrated. Great line right here. Chicago.

That's actually the correct way to pronounce Chicago. Not only are we going to Chicago, but we are already in Chicago. Here are the three seagulls. Gil, Gary and Gavin. The gulls. It's hard to think of three names that begin with a

G. Gavin. Was that one of them? Yeah. Give me three new ones. Gareth. Yeah. Grayson. Yeah. Jerry. Yeah, Jerry traditionally with a J. Jerry Rafferty. Yeah. Jerry. Yeah, Jerry traditionally with a J. Yeah, you're right. Jerry Rafferty.

Yep. Jerry Halliwell. It's a soft G. Yeah, yeah. G-R-I. Was it? What's she up to now? You know, she joined the UN for a little bit.

Really? We tried to get her in this movie. Ginger Spice? Yeah. She was, yeah, she was there. What were the five spices? The spices were, as we all know, young. Sporty, scary, posh, baby, and ginger.

Yeah. You know, like on a spice rack. Yeah, yeah. The five essential spices. The five most popular spices. So you got those, and then you add salt, pepper, white pepper, Tabasco, oregano, and cayenne pepper, and that's the KFC

11 herbs and spices. Five of them are the actual Spice Girls. That's where the Spice Girls got it from. The more you know, hey? This actor we got to play the cab driver, as previously mentioned, for those of you who are seeing this or hearing this for the first time though, Stan Lee, creator

of Spider-Man. He was at a loose end. He didn't know what to do. Creator of Spider-Man. He created a lot of things. Yeah, mostly Spider-Man. Yeah, Spider-Man. And so we filled his cab that he was driving with a lot of spiders.

And the funny thing about him is he's actually petrified of the little guys. Can't handle them at all, eh? Funny with hindsight, certainly not on set that day. Just checking in with Michael, making sure that the recording tapes are still on. We're using a reel-to-reel system here, which traditionally isn't what you use for a...

This is coming out on Blu-ray, right? Yeah. I don't think we're breaking any fucking rules over here. Yeah, I don't think we fucking are this time, Michael. So, you know, come at me, bro. Yeah, straight up. What is this, spam spam you think this is spam this is important this is what the people

need anyway stan lee burton jernigan this is a great down set a personal high for me a lot of people ask me how do you come up with a name like burton jernigan and how did you? Oh, can I take a guess, actually? Yeah. Was it a Ouija board? Well, yes and no. So parts of the name, every second letter was taken by a Ouija board, but I had to change every other letter because, obviously, it is in poor taste to just take the name from someone who's in a different realm and apply it to a living character in a movie. But if you change up half of them, it almost seems like a copyright issue. But it's sort of a, I was going to say interdimensional, but sort of another realm.

The guy's actual name was Bargin Johansson or something along the lines. That pretty much works, I reckon. The first half did, but I didn't have time to figure out the second half. And who would when you're doing as much cocaine and writing as many scripts as the late great john hughes whose ghosts deigned us with his presence yeah that's right commentary you can't keep him not being you can't keep me in purgatory forever now mrs hess i remember so vividly in this scene she kept bringing because this is what we hired is what we got her on set for. Sex therapist by name, sex therapist by nature. Here is a woman whose sole focus is on drawing out the raw sexual energy in everyone around her.

And with putting her in a kid's movie, acting opposite a child, we kept saying, tone it down, tone it down. And she had huge trouble. Eventually, we had to shoot this with two different actors. So that looks like Alex, but that was actually me on my knees you notice they're never in the frame with their faces together because we were told pretty quickly it was illegal to have them working together and rightly so the same reason she was brilliant on camera mainly because of us in the situations we put our vulnerable actors in. Yeah.

I mean, if you look at it, you know, the way that it was made, we're a couple of monsters. But with a product this good, you know, you can separate the art from the artist. I think you can too. Now, let's talk about the shooting we needed to do in suburban Chicago in the middle of winter. Quite a difficult shooting circumstance. Traditionally, you don't like to expose your equipment

to those sorts of temps, and a lot of people told us it was a bad idea. We learned a lot about meteorology on this shoot, didn't we? We said, go fuck yourself. We've got a meteorologist. And they said, that's fine. They're going to be able to predict how cold it is but not change it.

We said, go fuck yourself. Yeah, they were right, though. Meteorologists, while they might know the weather they can't change the weather and that's on us man i know a lot of french there's not room in the brain for everything you know am i supposed to be expected to know every country beginning with s no am i supposed to know uh everything that a meteorologist can and can't do no well i'm sorry, 20th Century Fox. $30 million is a lot of money to spend on equipment destroyed in the cold.

I just want to say this is a great example of Hughes' fish, which is a rarely used and known film device whereby you introduce a fish who does not reappear in the film in spite of a heavy emphasis being placed on them early in the screening. I've just got to... For the control room, they're just making sure that they can reach a... It's called sync.

So I've just got to give them what we were up to in the movie in case they need to re-sync anything. Ah, Michael making a lot of requests of us, and rightly so. Yes. Now, we spent a lot of money on things that weren't makeup. 12 minutes just now if you need to re-sync anything

with your version of the movie you should be seeing the fantastic Harverland someone on the phone right now I wanted to say Williams but that's not it no I think it is I wanted to say Williams too but I resisted anyway she was a delight to work with on set a real pro

she loved that steamer she insisted on sharing as many scenes as possible now we actually ate the food that the dad here was cooking the actor and it made a lot of us very sick yeah kevin is a confident cook but would we say a talented culinary professional no one would we wouldn't least of all him he said you guys shouldn't be eating this this is chicken this is raw chicken and we said well it's been on a fucking

hob what are you telling me that hob's not on he said yeah the hob's not on it breaches health and safety and we said give us the chicken

and yeah so you me and a meteorologist we were basically occupying the bathrooms and tying them up

for the next couple of days. We also peer pressured Alex into having quite a lot of the chicken with us. And that slowed production down by one and a half months. So that's six more weeks of time. Seems irresponsible now that I remember it. Like getting a young child actor to enjoy barely cooked chicken with you and a meteorologist. That's how you boost their immune system. I don't know, man immune system i don't know man i just don't know

hey um i've got to ask you uh now that you're dead john hughes and you're sort of joining us for this um this one off it's i mean first of all i'm honored that you would come back just for this anything for my old mate raja have you sort of popped into any other little events uh just to check on things from the afterlife? I do what I can. It's quite interesting living in the afterlife as I do. You don't have total autonomy over where you get to go. Do you get a bit summonsed?

Like a letter from a court and you're like, well, I guess I've got to be here. You tend to be able to exercise most control over life events or people who were involved in your life. For example, at one point I wanted to go and visit, I can't remember her name now, Julie. Who's the voice of Marge Simpson? Oh, I don't know. Julie Kastner.

Anyway, I couldn't do it. I couldn't go and see it. If I want to go check it on Macaulay Culkin, however, that's a freebie. I can do that any time I want. Right. So it's interesting. Is there any particular reason for that?

Has he opened up some sort of portal where it's easy for you? He can't see me. Right. But I can see him. And that's not the case with all people. So you don't get to just go and pick and choose exactly who you're visiting or what you're doing. You can will yourself to a certain amount of control

over where you're going, but there's a certain amount that's still left up to the fates. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's also fucking frustrating. It's a miracle I made it here exactly as I imagined. The introduction of Doris the mouse, one of the great mice on screen, in my humble opinion.

I've made a lot of films in my time, and all of them have featured at least one rodent. That's right. And they don't get any finer than Doris. We campaigned incredibly hard to open up a category for animal actors in the Oscars, what you would know as the Oscars. We call it the Academy Awards and the Biz.

Unfortunately, those backwater hacks won't accept the fact that a non-homo sapien can turn in a performance that will have you captivated. And I just think that's wrong at a fundamental level. I point you to Beethoven. I point you to Air Bud. Babe, Pig in the City, Stuart Little. All instances of animals stealing the show away from people.

of animals stealing the show away from people. Very deserving, all of those performers of a knock. Is that what you call it? An award? A knock? They're deserving of a knock. I don't think that's what you call it. Yeah, they're deserving of a knock. All right, we can call it whatever we want. Now, we are starting to introduce the story as it will actually happen here.

We've got Alex at home with the chicken pox, very inaccurately rendered by our very cheap makeup artists. We've got Harlan Williams who's balancing her work and home life. And we've got the remote control car with the missile chips. We've got three component parts that will eventually reveal the thrust of the movie. We, of course, have alice ribbons leasing or renting a house in the same neighborhood as they try and track down the missile chip which is inside of the remote control car that alex started using so all of the sort of moving parts all the different ingredients in the recipe that does make home alone 3

and now being introduced to the pot they certainly are And once again for the control room, that is at a tasty 16 minutes and 44 seconds in. 45, 46, 47, 48. You should be seeing Alex in a Darth Vader helmet. Yeah. And Mrs. Hess fixing herself a... Actually, subtle difference. That is from the parody Spaceballs. So that's the one that rick mel brooks

yeah i think it's a mel brooks movie rick moranis is it yeah yeah don's the helmet one thing we know is movies fuck do we know movies for example beethoven earbud stewart little babe pig in the city you You remember Baby's Day Out? God, I love that movie. No, what happens in Baby's Day Out? Picture this. You've got a baby, and the baby... Is having a day.

Goes to town, literally. There are some kidnappers who are trying to steal the baby because I believe it's part of a very rich family. And the hijinks that this baby gets up to are outrageous. We're in a construction site. The baby manages to while its way around tiny planks. Up quite high. I would love to see the baby up high.

Absolutely. So high. That is fun. And the criminals cannot master the physicality. Perhaps. It's also the fact that the baby's very light and able to lightly get around it's a real

balancing act fleshing out the backstory of the criminals balancing the competence so that they are a genuine threat to the

protagonist of the film against the ineptitude that inevitably means they won't be able to realise their goals it is one of the

great challenges in script writing and it's something I've found Dustin checks in another fantastic I just got that from the control

room yeah yeah it's another deserving non-human actor Jason Alexander and a chimp writing and it was something i found another fantastic i just got that from the control room yeah yeah it's another deserving non-human alexander and a chimp go to absolute town inside of a hotel looking for that elusive dog sixth star well that dog was a real fuck um yeah that dog doesn't deserve an oscar at all but he does he does deserve some time out yeah sorry those of you who weren't on set won't know this uh so john and myself raja gosnell we had a really hard time with that dog because he started unionizing the actors on set it was infuriating this is an intelligent dog yeah carl marx reading dust capital like give it a fucking rest pooch yeah you're a dog you're meant to want snacks and water and walks to his credit man's best friend over there did manage to get 20 increase on the base and points on the box office performance of the film for most people who

were involved so you know credit where it's due the dog knew how to play ball well great for the performers on set as most dogs infuriating for us of course, the studio execs at 20th Century Fox. I mean, we'd already blown out on that chip design. Sunk a lot of tamales into that. Yeah. And then, fucking, you got union Jews pushing up the price of your human and non-human performers? Woo! Especially in a movie that relies so heavily on non-human performers.

You've not just got the dog, you've got the parrot, you've got Doris the mouse. We had some of the most expensive animals you can hire in Hollywood or in this instance, Chicago, Illinois. Control Room just got a text message from New York City sending love. Do you want to message them back? We received love from New York City. Tell Michael, just tell Michael. We received love from New York City I'd like to send an absolute Tell Michael, just tell Michael Michael, I'd love to send an absolute fucking mountain of love

Back to the good people in New York City And thank you so much There's a place where you'll see the Home Alone movie I'm talking Home Alone 2 Fuck, how good was that? We've got all the essential elements Ice skating rink A toy shop that a kid gets to go into Donald Trump It's just got all the essential elements as ice skating rink um a toy shop that a kid gets to go into donald trump

it's just got all the essential elements of the fight i no longer regard home alone 2 as canon for reasons that i can't be bothered articulating right now but rest assured i'm very happy to be revisiting home alone 3 oh but can i remind you of uh uh one tim. A delicious cheese pizza. I mean, my God, we're talking Oscar bait? That's it right there. Tim Curry's led a rich and varied career, and he doesn't always get his dues, but the guy's a fantastic performer. Every time he shows up, he brings it.

A lot of baggers will come and collect a paycheck while turning in a mediocre performance, but not Tim Curry. Do you realize that he was it? You know what you've just done there? The movie, Stephen King, the original It. Pretty sure that it was Tim Curry. Yeah, it was.

Fuck, you were good, mate. He was a meme. I tell you what, John Hughes, you still got it. Before he was a meme, he was Pennywise. You know what is a good car? A station wagon. A lot of room for stuff in the back. I tell you what, if you need to transport people or goods

you want a station wagon they're often overlooked in this day and age but back in the 90s people always worried about the heyday for john and raja mainly because you were alive at the time we were fucking all about them people are all about parking now but what's the point getting a good park if you haven't got stuff to transport in and out of the car station wagon provides that option now mr bepray in this scene broke into an actual home this is a home we did not have permission to shoot in we had to rush through these scenes we initially allowed for about three hours because we figured i mean a lot of the stuff you're seeing in the movie is stuff we believe in real life. You know, if people, families, they leave their house, they go to school, they go to work,

that means we've essentially got an eight-hour workday within which we can fit our own workday. Now, in this instance, it was a half day at the school. We didn't know that. And so the kids were coming home. We were racing. Which school are we talking about? Our fridge school or the actual school? The actual school with the actual people who are in the actual house lived in.

So it lent a real touch of method performance to this because while we had the rights to shoot in this house, the one that Mr. Bopraz is in right now was actually under duress. Real cops showed up. It saved us a lot of money. We just filmed the real cops as they were. I tell you what, if there's one set of people that i am good friends with it's gotta be the cops raja really absolutely not this dog's a good actor that's a different dog

it's playing the same character but we had to get a separate dog in because we tied the first one out it's probably all yeah negotiating yeah yeah honest now that i think about it i tell you what he he won the the battle but that exhausted dog could not win the war he won a lot of rights for a lot of different people on set but the the dog never had the same fire in his eyes after that yeah big shout out to michael for getting the stream back up i just received another text message from the studio there. Good on you, Michael. Here's to you, buddy. One of the great things about Alex D. Lins is... His name's Alex D. Lins?

I was calling him Dlins the whole time. Fuck. He's fucking cute. Yeah. He's not Macaulay Culkin. He's a different kid. And, you know, it'll get pissed off

if you compare him to him. He's grown into quite a handsome young man, actually. And while I wouldn't have said it or forecast it while we were on set, kid knows what he's up to in the bedroom. As an adult. Cool.

Dicey terrain. I haven't had anything to do with them, I assume, in your non-corporal form. I'm almost tempted to rewind. Did you see a guy dressed in purple in the back seat there for three frames? I wasn't looking. Okay.

But I did put a... I tried to sell a lot of advertising space to McDonald's in this film, and so we couldn't get the rights to the actual Grimace costume. Instead, we went to an op shop, we bought several different purple items, we put them on an extra, and we slammed them get the rights to the actual grimace costume instead we went to an op shop we bought several different purple items we put them on an extra and we slammed them in the back of the car uh if it did come off we were going to cgi the rest of grimace's body

onto the actor but of course he didn't so that's a what what you know uh train watchers or train spotters would call a continuity error in truth we knew exactly what we were doing. It just didn't come off as we wanted it to. Grimace. Light. Here are the Chicago Police Force, who I was going to say happily, they didn't volunteer to come and shoot this film with us. We called them up and said there's a robbery going

and then rolled. That's right. And this is so weird. So probably most famously, people will know this gentleman here from Scrubs as the janitor. Not a lot of people knew that he was part of the Chicago police force

before he got into action. That's right. As I mentioned earlier, it was not too difficult to get them out because it was a genuine robbery. Mr. Beaupre was actually broken into a house. He actually took some jewellery. We did not sanction this. He actually took some jewellery from the house. Real cops showed up.

They asked, what's with the cameras? We said, shut your fucking mouth and ask us what's going on. And he did. And then we said, Ouija boards, my friend. We're getting into them. We're making them. We're selling them. We're using them to create half of the character names in this film.

Not half as in 50% of the cast names in this film not half as in 50 of the cast of characters 50 is in 100 of the characters names but 50 of those names that's right do the math very well articulated speaking of good articulation check out the fantastic line delivery on this little kid alex d lynn's am i saying it right? I really am embarrassed As the director of the film You should have known better You frequently call them Alex D. Lins While I was happy to hand over the reins And give you an opportunity and a start

You had edited the previous two Home Alone films There was a small part of me That was being entertained by the green-eyed monster I don't want to, you know Weed or jealousy? Jealousy Oh, okay a lot of this movie while i was on set but not in charge i was taking a little swim in the jealousy and what color was it tim well you wouldn't be surprised to hear that your name is raja and it was green

with envy i was jealous of you i was jealous of the control you had on set i was jealous of a lot of the decisions you made not the decisions i would have made but decisions i would have liked to have had the choice to make and is this the unfinished business you were talking about that kept you in some sort of i guess we'll find out when i leave this this realm i feel like you and i got to get to the bottom of this for you to have some resolution and closure on this i just got sick and tired of dealing with macaulay and i wanted to make another home alone film i didn't want him to be involved but at the time that i offered you the director's role i thought macaulay was going to be on set obviously between you saying yes and the movie starting he pulled out we got alex and it just felt like a different experience on set and one that i would

have liked to have been in charge of but instead I had to watch you. And that is probably part of the reason why I was, while presenting as a constructive and helpful collaborator, quite destructive and distracting on set. Ghost of John Hughes, I hate to break up what is undeniably progress being made but we've just had the introduction of stucky of stuck with stucky fame now if there's one way to make your movie profitable it is to get a spin-off

sitcom adjunct to the franchise it's very it's a cop comedy very rarely does a feature film take out a character actor and turn it into its own tv series you might see it with a tv show you know we saw fraser spin off from chairs we saw joey spinning off from friends very rarely will you see a secondary or third tier character in this instance stucky from the fbi be given the reins their whole entire television sitcom a different medium and in many ways a different mountain to climb but we had that specifically in mind with the development of Stucky, some of the character traits, some of the important information, the fact that he's in charge of 13 amnesia agents at the FBI. And we had a lot of fun creating the character. We had a lot of fun fleshing out

a book that we would shop around to different networks upon the release of home alone 3 now sadly none of those networks took the bait so we are essentially sitting on a bottle rocket of content here stuck with stucky is a sitcom that the world is ready for it's one that the world has not yet seen and it's just a nice little detail to know as you watch the movie unfold to to look at those moments and think i see what they're doing here i see the seeds they're planting to later so here's what i'm thinking do we biff stuck with stucky on the blu-ray that will also accompany this or rather we will accompany what do you mean well we did film an off-air pilot yeah i say we put that on the blu-ray that we're recording this director's i see no reason why we wouldn't.

Of the release. Stuck in the middle with you. Here I am. Let's check with the control room that that's not going to get us taken off. You're going to fucking wet your pants over that one, Michael, because it's a song someone wrote once that I'm humming, singing the tune of? Yeah, Michael, if that's copyright breach, guess what? So is every single sentence I've said in my life because I didn't come up with any of these words.

You dumb shit. Yeah. You fucking asshole. Hey, Michael, do you have any concept of how hard it is to exist in the world and create art without referencing the art of others? Maybe go fuck yourself next time you want to pull some of that shit on me. Yeah. Michael. Fucking Michael, man. I believe it was leonardo da vinci

from a country i'm very familiar with it's a lane oh sorry yes who said good artists borrow great artists steal he was talking about gold bullion gold one thing from a time when when people were suffering a horrible sickness that could only be cured with gold. So the only way to survive if you were good at anything was to steal and consume gold. Too fucking right. Now, I love the colorway that young Alex is wearing here.

I initially had written those pants as blue. He showed up on set in green trousers. I let him roll with that and that's what makes john hughes john hughes the fact that he is so dedicated to a movie that he'll turn up on set every damn day despite the fact that he's only the screenwriter but he will also let shit slide now an interesting take from our man kevin who is portraying Mr. Pruitt, Alex's father. He gets a 911 message on his beeper, which could literally mean

any emergency has happened to my family, the only people with this number. And instead of being panicked, instead of being even moderately worried, his read on it was, darn. Yeah. Well, he's an understated guy he's not he's not swinging for the fences

here's a guy who wants you to eat his cooking and take his first reads and that's what we did we had a lot of you know um difficulty working with him and ultimately a lot of respect for the guy he gives you one take and one take only. If he offers you a sandwich, you eat the sandwich. If he offers you a read, you take the read. The guy is not a professional, but he's a fucking good laugh.

As soon as he was finished on set, every single day, he'd roll up the biggest blunt I've ever seen and light it. We'd say, you can't do that. There are kids around here. Between coughing fits, he would say, I could give two fucks.

Now take a bite of this raw chicken breast i'm gonna kick you in the ghoulies had a lot of sore nuts a lot of salmonella on that set ultimately though it's worth it for the performance understated and efficient yeah um a lot of people ask me what was it like working with a young scarlet johansson on set that reminds me actually what was it like working with a young scarlet johansson on set. That reminds me, actually. What was it like working with a young Scarlett Johansson on set? Honestly, fantastic. I knew she had star power from the moment she walked into the audition. We'd run a bunch of different actors.

We'd already had Helen Hunt through, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon. Meryl Streep for this role? Yeah. There must be an age delta of at least four decades between the two. Yeah, that's why she didn't get the role. And then Scarlett Johansson came in. delta of at least four decades between the two yeah that's why she didn't get the role and then scarlett johansson came in she was the first actor we had underneath 40 years old at the time and we said you've got something now this is what we're looking for someone under 40 to play a 14 so we

cast her and she brought the goods to her credit credit, she did not age 35, 25, 45 years between being cast and the movie going into production. She showed up roughly the same age as when we cast her, and that was what we wanted her for, and that's what she did. Well done, Scarlett. Excuse me for being a good citizen was one of the many catchphrases that we tried to get on merch. The amount of merchandise we produced, mostly as samples, some as entire merchandise runs that were never used, is, to remember, pretty upsetting.

You would think that sorry for being a good citizen would have taken off as well. Because, I mean, at the time we were trying to lift it off the back of the movie. And then, of course, we had the Bill Clinton trial of perjury, and we tried to sort of attach it to that cultural moment, that zeitgeist as well. Sorry for being a good citizen. The president lied to us. It was next to a caricature of Bill Clinton,

nude with a stiffy, but instead of his penis, we'd edit it in a cigar. Tasteful and, I think... Hilarious. Hilarious and good commentary, I think. Don't ask us to explain exactly what it means. That's good satire. You put it together.

The merchandise run didn't take off. We wound up with 500,000 of these t-shirts in my garage. Classic John and Raj. RJ, against the world, printing merch, selling to no one, just trying desperately to keep those rent payments in. The good news is I wound up using a lot of those t-shirts to insulate my holiday home, which was on Lake Michigan. Let's talk about the relationship that we developed over this franchise john can we because i feel like without doing that there's no

chance of you ascending into um heaven i want to be in heaven uh cheek to cheek best known in my eyes for a rendition performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Beautiful. From their album Ella and Louis. Have you been hanging out with Louis Armstrong up there? Not as much as I'd like. The guy's avoiding me like I'm fucking sick. I can understand that.

We met at a Jiffy Lube. Yeah, and I took you to a Hooters. Yes. Then we finished up the date at 31 Flavors And then we started pretty late and we went for breakfast Or what was at the time lunch at a TGIF Weirdly still hungry We trip over to a Denny's and order a little extra I got the waffles you got the pancakes

Because we're different like that. And then we went to a IHOP or an IHOP I should say. We did. We went Where did we go first? Before the Denny's? We went It's hard to say.

We did it all. We went to a Hooters We went to a Jiffy Lube. Yep. A Denny's. I mean it's all there. We said it about 30 seconds ago if a Hooters. We went to a Jiffy Lube. Yep. A Denny's. It's all there. We said it about 30 seconds ago if anyone's interested to retrace those steps. And we felt sick.

Yeah, we did. Do you know why we felt sick? Because we hadn't been to McDonald's yet. Yeah, we were still hungry. So we went and got ourselves a couple of burgers. And after that, we strapped ourselves

into two toilets next to each other. It's one of those situations, you get them at airports sometimes, where there are two toilets next to each other it's one of those situations you get them at airports sometimes where there are two toilets in the same room so there's no divider and often there's a child's toilet an adult's toilet in this instance there were two children's toilets and we sat on them our asses were bigger than the bowls yes and we would have been shitting for about three hours straight it was disgusting but a real lesson in accuracy a powerful way to bond.

And after that, I mean, we didn't look back. We came up with the idea then and there in the toilets. I said, we've worked together. We've edited films together before. We've never met in person now that we have. Yeah. And we've shit through these dang toilets. Yeah. Home Alone 3.

You, me, Macaulay Culkin, if he's willing, which he wasn't. Started working on the paperwork we got into a KFC then we had to go yeah little known fact the first third

of this movie was written on KFC napkins yes straight off to Wendy's after that of course that's where you

need to head to after a KFC why don't I just take a moment to break from us reminiscing as we stroll down memory lane

sorry this director's commentary is brought to you by the reigning sovereign Just take a moment to break from us reminiscing as we stroll down memory lane. Oh, do we have to do the Burger King ad? Sorry. This director's commentary is brought to you by the reigning sovereign of shitty food, the Burger King. Get your whopper now. It definitely won't dissolve your intestines. It clogs you up tighter with the King. Now, what I wanted to talk about was this scene.

So this is obviously quite a significant scene in the movie. We had to take several creative liberties to capture it the way we imagined. The torque and traction on this car to be able to perform as it does through this entire scene is totally unrealistic. And to try and make it more realistic, we got an actual car and we put it in an actual house. We destroyed the whole house. Most of that footage is totally unusable. It's quite interesting because a lot of film directors you might have heard of peter jackson doing this we use miniatures to mock up a larger object what we decided to do is the inverse of getting a larger object which is to

say get a actual car and then build a house to scale above that if the if the car was a toy yeah so we had to construct a house um that was 16 times the normal size of a house and then just roll a car around inside of it to get it took us seven months to do it we honestly thought it was the cheapest way to do it but now that i'm saying it out loud that just well it wasn't helped by the fact that as soon as we had the car in there the scales were all off the house was built the normal size of a house. The car remained the normal size of a car. We took out three walls. We lost a lot of good crew members on set.

A lot of good crew members. I cannot stress how many. But before it was taken down for violating copyright reasons, the bloopers reel from that day on set on YouTube was the most viewed clip until 2005 before it got taken down. Big old hard-on talking about 2005 before it got taken down. Big old hard-on talking about things that are getting taken down for copyright infringement. It's getting all chubbed up over here.

We own the rights to that footage. You know what I don't understand? Michael decided to unplug our microphones twice for reasons that he stated as soliciting a scam or fraud. We've changed nothing. And yet he's not pulling any mics this time yeah and if you do we're not going to be pulling any punches michael you bag of shit so at this point in the movie you'd think that you're about halfway through and truth be told i don't think you are there's only one way to tell and that's by just re-syncing with the control room

at a crispy 39 minutes and 45 seconds into a 1 hour 40 movie, which means we've got an hour to go. And what a pleasure and a delight it is to see you on the other side of the 1 hour mark, which is about now. Oh, that rouge my oh my we're at a point in the film now the criminals

are starting to get wise to the fact that someone's on their tail they don't quite understand it is a genius child but they do know that they're in trouble he's weaponizing a parrot he's utilizing technology he's leveraging the fact that he're in trouble. He's weaponizing a parrot. He's utilizing technology. He's leveraging the fact that he is in a beautiful Chicago suburban

shooter home on multi-stories with a lot of carpentry tools, and he is just the kind of boy to grab a jigsaw and half-cut some floorboards to get some villains to fall through. Beautiful singing voice on this bird. Yeah. So good that it cast a bit of a spell on anyone who was on set. We kept falling asleep every time I would sing. Well, it's bad, bad.

Leroy Brown. The guyling. Watch yourself. Michael will fucking kick you in the nuts. Yeah. Because that's a song that exists. Can't have that. Can we, Michael?

Fucking Michael.ael anyway the car makes a break for it it spins out and this is my favorite bit of director's commentary when we just start describing the action on camera it is completely needed because some people aren't watching what we're watching a car goes through a puddle it's a people mover it's driven by burton jernigan say the name with me burton jernigan alex is terrified the car that he has attached a also uh remote transmitting video camera to has fallen on its side and is unable to get up who else can't get up burton jernigan because he has tripped and fallen in the ice

into his head mr bupre that dastardly leader of the villains has found the car so this seems like it's all over this is meant to represent an all is lost moment that's exactly right we know that alex needs to know who the crooks are we know that the chip exists inside of the car what have we lost here we've lost the ability to show anyone that there are actual robbers in the neighborhood, and we've lost the missile chip, which is the catalyst for all of the action in the film. How are we going to get ourselves out of this bind? I originally wrote this to be a 42-minute movie. The studio said to me, that's not long enough for a blockbuster.

We're going to need more. So I took the 42 pages of script I had, and I continued writing from this point forth. They might get the tape, but they're not going to get the car. Jernigan watches on as Bupre hands it to Ribbons. We've taken a lot of liberties with the torque of the car and the traction of the car so far. Why not do it again? While it might seem like all is lost, bang, hit the accelerator.

That car's going to fucking run, baby, run. As I mentioned at the start of this beautiful director's commentary that we've been baking in an oven for 40 minutes for you or longer depending on when you started watching what part of the control room observations you joined in on uh there is basically no flaws in this film whatsoever physical plot or otherwise so uh flaws in this film whatsoever physical plot or otherwise so uh you can't hold that over me you can't say that there was something going wrong with the amount of torque or the physics on this car because i tell you what i did the math yeah fuck i i mean you challenged me the ghost of uh john hughes i'll try not to but i'm telling you the car is rendered entirely unrealistically yeah it was a great read

on the what yeah mr bupre bringing a terrifying energy in that read of the what i didn't like it but you really overruled me on the day insane to me that not only the director would be in the editing suite but also the screenwriter yet that is how we make a film how we make a film. How we make a film. Not how one makes a film, but how we make a film. In this particular instance, we chose to make a film. Now, Raja, I'd love if you could tell me a little more about the breakdown of your family or your relationship to your wife and children that happened while we were on set during Home Alone 3.

Here's the thing. I witnessed one of my cinematic heroes, John Hughes, attempt to swap children out for cast members when he was working on this picture. And it inspired me to attempt a maneuver of my own. He didn't watch it all the way to the end no i didn't i didn't see the outcome of that particular um uh attempt and i i worked pretty hard to tell you everything was going to be fine yes you certainly did you really pulled the wool uh

over my eyes so i was uh in a relationship with my wife for 30 years she nursed me back to health after i became very ill uh she had essentially everything she was your soulmate she was my rock i don't know that i necessarily believe in the notion of soulmates but the relationship between you two was one of the most powerful palpable and real things i've seen undeniable in all my time both alive and in purgatory yeah there was nothing quite like it um through the millennia that humans have been on this mortal realm. I thought to myself, Raja, look at John upgrading his kid for a cuter kid. I wonder if you could do the same thing.

So I attempted to swap my wife for the sexually evolved Mrs. Hess. Unfortunately, it was a huge swing and a miss on set for me. was a huge swing and a miss on set for me, made worse by the fact that, unfortunately, a socialist pooch had gotten in her ear earlier and managed to get her signed up to the collective agreement, and I was in a tremendous amount of hot water for sexual harassment. I cannot tell you the damage that this has done to both my career and my marriage, except to say I've never worked in Hollywood again,

and I've never been married since. It's an incredible anecdote really, isn't it? It is like Midas, a story of a man who reached for too much. Perhaps Icarus would have been a better metaphor but they both seem to apply. Midas got greedy though, isn't it? Did Midas touch things that turned to gold?

Yes, he did. And in many ways you did that too. But he wanted it, he sought it, he went after it. He was the dog that caught up to the car. What you touched didn't turn to gold so much as absolute shit. And for that I would like to accept no responsibility and apologize on behalf of you to yourself. I will graciously accept this apology via proxy to myself,

from myself, via the ghost of John Hughes, screenwriter of Home Alone 3. It takes a big man to acknowledge the fault in their own ways. It takes an even bigger man to attempt to, no, get out of it, to a dog has gotten into the booth, which seems insane to me. Yeah, what are you going to do, though? Yeah, nothing. So here we see Alex's trademark bowl cut.

I wonder if that dog's unionized. Probably not. We should ask. Hey, Rufus. You unionized, bro? Shit, hard yes. Okay, we won't fuck with him. Yeah, you're not going to be in any movies then, you dumb dog.

Yeah, listen, we don't want to get any more trouble than we've already got, all right? Just for control room as well, I'll give you a quick sync point. 47, 10, 11, 12, 13. Right now in the film, if it's your first time here and you don't have it currently on, we're at that famous bit of Home Alone 3 where alex pruitt opens up the uh cam quarter and finds that the tape has been taken this was his one piece of evidence that he had to prove he's been right all along justifying his actions to his family he's called the cops on multiple occasions he is currently the boy who cried wolf he thought he could uh prove his

innocence with this and sadly not to be so now he sits also i'd like to say this was one of my favorite uh pieces of set i actually took that home and i slept on it till i passed on the bed that alex has is one of those sort of iconic american beds that has those uh large oversized pencils as the sort of pillars of the bed, as the bed head and the bed posts. Yeah. I think that's fun. The idea of a pencil so big that it's big enough to be a piece of furniture is hilarious to me and remains so to this day.

It's an undeniable one. Filled with real lead as well, which made me pretty sick because I... Got lead poisoning. I mean, it makes perfect sense when you put it all together. But was it worth it for having that cool little bed I think so

for a time until I was sick this scene was filmed in a hotel room my hotel room I got into a lot of trouble not allowed to

have one on one meetings in hotel rooms anymore as the news cycle has told us but we got the goods we got the scene we got it done any legal troubles didn't happen till after the film was released this is forrest

whittaker here and not a lot of people know that um before he had uh the incident that caused his eye to sort of quite famously he's got that very strong look of um it's sort of half closed but this is before that happened and he is one of the finest actors of my generation raja gosnell um i wouldn't say your generation because you're dead so i'm not sure that we do you kind of have it i guess you have a generation i guess i kind of encompass all generations now yeah my favorite actor of my generation please mr sydney poitier ah fair enough too oh man that is a line that honestly I could watch all day

you should have taken driver's ed you shouldn't have let your emotions get the better of you fine whatever Burton Jernigan's getting it out it's on the page we've got to get it delivered but do you know what Earl Unger does with it he sees an opportunity and he attacks. You should have taken driver's ed.

I know the line. I wrote the fucking line. Yeah, it's good. And is he just sculling cough syrup at this point? Yeah, I had written a big fanciful scene where we'd see Earl Unger robo-tripping. That's, of course, when you neck a lot of robo-tussin. I can't remember. I think they started calling it Sizzurp

in colloquial popular culture. Right. So pretty much, I made a point of Earl Unger going method here and actually necking a whole bottle of Robitussin on set. It made him unusable. He became quite sick. And again,

that blew out the production schedule by another month. Would I do it again? Almost definitely definitely he said some of the funniest most nonsensical shit i've heard in my life when he was in the throes that high and a lot of it's unrepeatable but my god the guy had a lot of opinions and he was putting them out there what a tempting mouth strap you set some cheese on and then uh yeah didn't allow us to visit. What kind of shit was he talking about? What was he saying? Couldn't tell you.

But a lot of it was to do with the breakdown of your relationship. Oh, okay. Yeah. Now, while the dad, Kevin, would insist that we ate all of his cooking, all of his pretend cooking he'd do on set, Harlan was, she was from a different book. She was from the old school. She said, this is prop food. This isn't for eating. She was she was from a different book she was from the old school she said this is prop food this isn't for eating she was from the old school a generation of actors that recognizes props for what they are props not food yeah not consumables

it was a real drag she wouldn't let us eat any of the food and um we're not she caught me having a mouthful actually while they were on set and she broke very unprofessional she broke character to tell me to take that fucking mouthful of grated carrot out of my mouth so what do you think I did? What did you do? Grabbed a fistful of carrot

put more carrot in my mouth what do you think she did? That is absolutely petulant I can't believe that was your response as a grown screenwriting man a grown screenwriting man yeah well what can a poor boy do except sing for a rock and roll band but i do do do do do do do do screenwriting man hey you better watch yourself man michael will have bloody conniptions. Worth it. Oh, yeah.

How about that for a change in lighting state here in the studio? It was getting dark, so what does my boy Raja do? He turns on the light. That is what makes the film worth it. How many lumens are we talking here? 80,000. Seriously? Yeah, if we're under it long enough,

we're going to require some pretty serious sunblock. It's not fucking around. It's not fucking around it's not fucking around this is the bit in the movie where karen is being tricked by the villains who have infiltrated the phone lines as alex correctly identifies this is the first time that was done in film um not a lot of people know about the ground that we broke making home alone, but never before had a phone system being tapped by baddies been depicted on the big screen before. And a lot of movies retroactively wrote and shot and edited those scenes

into their movies to make it look like this wasn't our invention. They were the absolute death of my legacy because I started so many things. And then, like, George Lucas, they went back, revisited, added shit, put it out as a DVD. Well, you were the first person to have the idea to introduce the idea of space. And then, of course, all of a sudden,

Star Wars went from being a movie about, you know, celebrities fighting over property lines to something sitting in a different galaxy. It's enough to drive you up the fucking wall. It's disrespectful. It's unprofessional. And I find the behavior unsavory. George Lucas and I have a longstanding feud, of course.

Of course. Of course. Involving his ex-wife, who you managed to successfully whisk into a marriage of your own, involving her. You married her. Yeah. I married George Lucas' ex-wife for one day on a whim her whim too i was there i married them it was in las vegas and i was dressed as alvis presley the king of pop so this is a great scene which sort of represents the beginning of the middle of the movie a lot of people would think that when you got to the booby trapping sequence in Home Alone

that you're on the home straight. Well, not in this instance. I got a writer's room full of the guys from Jackass, Impractical Jokers, various different prank shows, Ashton Kutcher from Punk, the writer's room from that. I pulled them all together and I said, I want to have 40 minutes of hijinks at the tail end of my movie. They said,

that's fucking insane. No other Home Alone movie in the franchise has even approached 30 minutes. I said, you shut your mouth. You're talking to John Hughes. I'll be dead one day.

Don't speak ill of the dead. Start dreaming up booby traps. You know what's fun? John Hughes-ack. Anyone ever called you that before? John Hughes-ack? No, or John Cusack Anyone ever called you that before? John Cusack? No, or John Cusack At a Halloween party I hosted once

He showed up dressed as me And introduced himself as John Cusack That's great You should have done it the other way around I think it works better if you're John Cusack The other is Sister Joan She came dressed as a young Scarlett Johansson Really?

What a dashing pair they would have been. Books being loaded into a trunk. You can't get me on the physics of that one. A child cannot lift a fully laden trunk of books, but they can lift an empty trunk and then fill it up with books after the fact. You can't fucking get me on this. Now, we tried to get Steve Buscemi to play this weatherman,

but he was busy doing something. I believe when I spoke to him on the phone, it sounded like he was loading a bunch of rope and shovels into the boot of a car with Adam Sandler. And so instead, we just had to get some no-name actor. I wonder, to this day, what exactly were Buscemi and Sandler up to? I think he was preventing fires, but I don't know if Adam Sandler had a ton to do with that.

At least, did Adam Sandler get dragged into the New York Fire Department by Buscemi? All I could hear was the sound of a lot of rope and a lot of shovels. A lot of rope. Do you know, have you ever... Folks, have you ever heard the sound of a lot of rope? It sounds like, John, you do it. You do the sound. It's a very unique sound unmistakable can i just get a steam check with you how much steam are you are you running into running out of or carrying you

carrying the appropriate amount of steam i think if you visit the amount of steam and you look at it it dissipates too quickly there's an observer effect to the steam. There's a phenomenon in quantum physics where if you look at the sub-particle travelling through the gate, it'll change its behaviour. Right now, I am in superposition and I need to not be asked questions

about where I am. I am Schrodinger's steam. Well, Mr. Steam, I apologise. We now have the beginning of the, not fun and games, but I mean, this is what people come to the Home Alone franchise for. They come to see a child booby trap a house and essentially kill the cartoon version of villains anywhere between five and 50 times.

And in that respect respect we deliver big time the first death or what would be a guaranteed death you're going to see isn't for a bit but certainly what happens in this scene would cause grievous bodily harm to Alice Ribbons we have young Alex he's set it up so that he's got a dog whistle

he's blowing in various different positions the dog that Alice Ribbons is walking is now tying loops around her legs. And this is a very strong dog. We put a lot of anabolic steroids into this dog's food for about two years before we started filming. So it had the strength and the mental fortitude to drag Alice physically through various different brambles, snow, twigs, gorse, concrete, until she was hurt, if not know mortally wounded certainly physically frustrated phenomenal use of brambles there's the kind of vocab you can expect for a man who dedicates his

life to writing for a living that move by the way from us of feeding a dog antibiotics and anabolic anabolic steroids for two years prior to shooting really came back to bite us in the ass when the dogs unionized the workforce uh once again a tremendous amount of money settling out of court to it's amazing that little issue put that it's amazing to think what was legal before times just how many how many different things were legal when we did them against how legal they became as we were doing them. I mean, you talk about bad luck, but we had a real run of that on set, didn't we? It's a miracle this movie got finished and released as it did. It was a different time.

Something quite strange has happened in the control room. Yeah, this is a bit in the movie where I wrote in sort of a glitch. It might just be for us, which might make it difficult for the blu-ray sync later don't worry about that too much i won't worry about it too much i'll tell you what we're seeing on screen and that is uh what's her name again harville and williams descending the stairs trying to obtain her coat from the closet intercepted by a young alex pruitt who has booby trapped said closet my god it's lucky that she didn't get in because she

honestly probably would have been killed or at least severely it's got to be said at this point how heavily we'd written the house to be booby trapped pretty much makes the entire thing a ticking time bomb or a walking fucking disaster zone to my credit i did tell you i thought the thing that worked about the first two home alone movies is that the booby traps existed solely for the displeasure of the villains. If you introduce the film's heroes and they have to tete-a-tete with these weapons of war, it kind of introduces a level of complexity and tension that isn't quite needed in essentially a family film. And you said, Raja, shut your fucking mouth. How are things at home?

How are things at home? And I said, you fucking bastard. I knew they weren't good. He knew. He was needling. Worked. I shut my fucking mouth, that's for sure. That's right.

Harvlin Williams went on to an incredibly successful career in real estate. That's right harvlin williams went on to an incredibly successful career in real estate that's right in ontario um is that actually right yep she would look for the houses where people had passed away and then bring in um shaman and uh priests perform exorcisms which is a spiritual version of uh flipping properties which is a lot easier because you don't have to paint anything you just get rid of the spirit that is in the house which takes a day day and a half depending on how much incense you've got and boom property price goes up. We go to my holiday house that was,

as I said earlier, on Lake Michigan. Of course, one of the big problems with that property was it was entirely insulated by old Bill Clinton unsuccessful merchandise t-shirts. Did they keep you warm at night? No. Both in a physical and emotional sense? Emotionally, it kept me very warm.

Physically, it was freezing. Those t-shirts were too thin. They were made with very cheap and flimsy cotton.ally, it kept me very warm. Physically, it was freezing. Those T-shirts were too thin. They were made with very cheap and flimsy cotton. Right. Flimsy cotton. The worst kind in my experience. Yeah.

I like my cotton to be stiff. I want it to be stiff. Stiff as a board. Yeah. Well, they became stiff but not because of the reasons you might like because of ice anyway.

Oh, I'm so glad you said ice. What else would I say? Now, first implementation of our favorite song which we fought long and hard with the studio to get into the film my town uh is that the name of it by the jerky boys jerky boys no it wasn't actually the jerky boys uh i thought it was also called ring the bell oh no it is called my town isn't it i always thought it was called ring the bell but i was wrong in that i'm gonna try and get the band name out. How fucking handy is this character that you've penned?

An eight-year-old applying a ratchet wrench to a swimming pool and swapping around a whole... Cartoon boyfriend. There it is. They didn't do a lot after this. Well, they did a pretty big pyramid scheme, which actually worked out incredibly well for them ever so briefly until they got caught.

Thanks a lot, FEC. How about you mind your own fucking P's and Q's. Pyramid schemes are good for literally as long as it takes for people to figure out their pyramid schemes. Which really pisses me off. Because they should be good for time immemorial. But alas. Not my call. Like

the actual pyramids. Not my problem. Yeah that's right. That's a scheme that's lasted a long time. That's the model, surely. Is there any more rouge in that bottle, Tim? Certainly not. By which I mean Raja? Oh, yeah, there is. I keep mislabelling you as a Tim.

I've gotten that my entire life. People say I look like a Tim, which I find incredibly offensive. Something very funny about an angle grinder being applied in a kid's film i loved it when earl anger first played with it while he's eating spaghetti and meatballs and i love him when he whips it out to actually use you call them spaghetti and meatballs we were contractually obligated to call them spaghetti and goofballs. One of the few pieces of product placement we managed to sneak into the film. American Airlines, spaghetti and goofballs. Of course, we were unsuccessful in getting...

Are we still under contract, though? Do we need to keep calling them that now that we're doing the director's commentary? Absolutely. As long as we're watching the movie, we've got to use the appropriate name. Oh, shit. Well, in that case, I apologize for not bringing up the fact that we were under exclusive license to use mrs hess's fuck lotion uh there was a certain clause which she managed to get in with the dog after heated negotiation with uh john and myself that every time we referred to mrs hess we also

had to dedicate some time to talking about mrs hess's fuck lotion this is an all-in-one lubricant slash adhesive which depending on the temperature will either make you slide off or connect to a loved one or an unloved one it's really up to you yeah and also not to be confused with mrs hess fuck potion which is, which is essentially an anti-adhesive. It is something that will separate you from your loved one if you find yourselves bound together by the sheer potency of the fuck lotion. Now, if you use the potion at the wrong time, you're going to get a pretty strong burning sensation that will require professional medical assistance. to get a pretty strong burning sensation that will require professional medical assistance we are not obligated to share this information right now all we have to do is do the read as it was written but i think in the interest of communicating as much sort of accurate information

as we can it's important it's best to know make sure you distinguish between the two products the branding is exactly the same the way the labels are printed is exactly the same the p it's actually written as a soft p on the label of the bottle it's written as an l so something to look out for p is written as an l yeah so they both read as lotion although one of them is the potion one of them is the potion you got to be careful it's tricky almost as tricky as a young alex pruitt connecting a car battery to a chair, positive and negative terminals wired to the metallic seating implement, which will surely destroy a mortal man. Very cute.

Danger. Electrical energy. Sign that he's written up. Which is, it's actually true. There is an electrical energy and it is dangerous. Yeah. Look, he's playing the ball as he gets it. We set all these booby traps up for real.

How does that saying go? Hitting the ball as he... I think it's... Something about a ball. I believe the saying you're looking for is it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. God damn. Burton Jernigan overplays it, but Erlanger, perfect comedic performance of getting electrified.

Saddle difference. perfect comedic performance of getting electrified subtle difference a lot of people say electrocuted that is only when you die because it is a portmanteau of executed and electricity the more you know

and it is a warm day in hell when I can add some vocab to the late great screenwriter John Hughes my best friend and a ghost who joins me in the voice booth for the Home Alone 3 DoCon.

Some would describe the performance as electrifying, but I guess that just means that they set the screen alight. It's an exciting thing to watch. It doesn't need to be rooted in its scientific base. Yeah, it's not literal. Great hair on Erlanger, don't you think? That long jet black hair on a six foot four man. It's not something you see all the time.

Here's a fun fact. All the snow you're seeing on screen right now is fake. Originally, we tried to use real snow and we would get some of our props boys up on the roof. They'd use it in their hands and they'd drop it on the actors, of course. By the time it was in their hands, it would turn into water

and we just wound up with some very wet, very frustrated performers. Now, here's something exciting because I never told you this. So everybody is getting this at the same time. This is new information. The fake snow that we used in Home Alone 3 is actually, anyone, anyone, asbestos. I didn't know that.

Yeah, I know. New information for everyone. And we really struggled to keep that under wraps. But obviously, it was incredibly important and looking back now casting my mind on it is that the reason we lost the late great john hughes so early impossible to tell it would be hard to say i didn't move on from this realm for years afterwards but any amount of asbestos you breathe in yeah particularly in tandem with the lead i mean yeah there's a variety of melodies in the salmonella that i you know carried with me from this movie into my life afterwards that um yeah could all cumulatively be responsible here we go

fantastic injury a fully laden chest of books bursting out of a top story window and landing square on their head i would argue this is the first instance in the movie of us actually trying to kill the characters yeah in earnest uh now here's where we bring the sexual heat alice ribbons mrs hiss um mrs hiss the elder tied up uh do you call i don't think you call it gagged if there's just tape over their mouth. You might call it bound. Bringing a psychosexual energy to this Trojan horse, which is a family-friendly movie.

A crazy decision which I didn't make, nor did you, but both the actors on screen here went, you know what? This scene has untapped potential. In 1998, we actually released a porn adaptation of Home Alone 3 called Boned Alone 3. And it was three people masturbating and walking. And eventually they sort of walk into each other. They're not boned alone anymore.

They're bound together four which was the sequel to boned alone three both of these movies perform very poorly i played all of the characters in both of them some fantastic trick photography there to um see john hughes depicting three separate characters meeting together i don't have a lot of range as a performer while i'm fantastic at directing other people i find it very difficult to perform as other people and so essentially what you wound up with was three different pieces of video footage of myself masturbating spliced together to make it look like there were three of me in one room horrifying when you lay it out like that isn't it really confronting to watch yeah and much more on i won and I think this is the first instance of an R18 genuinely pornographic film being

nominated for and winning a Razzie, one of the golden raspberries, for worst director, worst title, worst performance. Boned Alone 3 got worst title? Unbelievable, I know. That is a travesty. I think it's quite inspired myself. You live and you learn, don't you certainly do now we are seeing two adult villains getting donged on the head by i would estimate a 50 to 60 kg weight

a lot heavier than that 150 to 160 kilograms how did alex get it up that high we don't need to ask any questions we don't need the answers to certainly another example of two characters in the movie being killed fatal knockout blows not rendered on camera but certainly in person we were lucky enough that both of these actors had uh they come from families of triplets so at this point we had to stop killing them off and start respecting them in a way that we hadn't been control room can michael can you hear me we're at an hour 10 minutes and 20 seconds 21 22 23 that's once mich, can you hear me? An hour, 10 minutes and 20 seconds. 21, 22, 23. Michael, can you hear me?

One hour, 10 minutes, 30 seconds. 31, 32. Not quite sure if the one that we're seeing here in the booth is exactly the same as what they'll be seeing in the control room. It would be an approximation. It's good enough for a director's commentary. Man, I've got to tell you. I love this movie.

Me too. It's among my favorites. Here's Mr. Pruitt, Kevin. In the airport, just minding his own business with a newspaper. Can't even remember why we put that shot in, to be honest. Just to establish the fact that the movie exists, the characters exist. We're all still here, we're doing it. And I guess that the contractually obligated Home Alone portion is now.

Can I ask you a question? Always. What was your favorite meal we had on set undeniably the chicken because it's like so many people eat a meal and they know what they're going to get which is a food that won't give them explosive diarrhea but you could taste from the moment you put kevin's special chicken in your mouth that there was something distinctly wrong about it. And I'm a man who enjoys adventure. I love a punt.

I love a gamble. And I love to mix things up. And so when the opportunity was offered to me to take a bite of this incredibly visibly undercooked chicken, I jumped at the chance and uh do i regret it from a physical point of view because i had to get a portion of my intestinal tract removed due to an inflation caused by an infection caused by the salmonella on the chicken and kind of but do you know what i don't regret taking a punt because that's what filmmaking is all about it is it was your favorite being bold enough to take risks.

There was a day on set when someone prepared an eggplant parmigiana. Now I was dabbling with vegetarianism at the time and in lieu of eggplant, which was out of season at the time, they used beef. And this was one of the most delicious meals

I've had in my life. I said, what? If you get a meal which is intended to have beef and then swap that out for the vegetarian equivalent and then swap that out back for the beef, you're in Flavortown, baby. Yeah, it was a delight. And that was actually the end of my relationship with vegetarianism. Did Guy Fieri serve that to you?

Guy Fieri, we couldn't afford at the time. Even though he was a young upstart, we couldn't get him. So we instead just hired people off the street. Anyone we saw walking past. That's my least favorite bit at the time. Even though he was a young upstart, we couldn't get him. So we instead just hired people off the street. Anyone we saw walking past. It's my least favorite bit of the movie. Why? I hate seeing someone grab a twig, put it into their nose that deep,

and just mess around. It makes me queasy. Wow. You did not watch Boned Alone 3. Cartoonish sound effect of a twang as something big gets loosened out of there didn't like it i think it was at this point in the movie we decided that burton jernigan would be rendered as a fucking idiot for our visually impaired audience members who

are following along on this high definition blu-ray set this is the part where the petrol powered um lawnmower has been activated by an incredibly crude trap set in the roof of the garage. That's right. So I would read this as our third fatality on set. This is another example of introducing a booby trap, which is altogether too powerful for an ordinary person to survive. And that is why, unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to our third person on set. And that was the fourth. So at this point, we have successfully killed off

all of the original actors who were cast to play the villains. Thankfully, all of them born of triplets once more. So to be clear, Beaupre and Unger, we've burned through two of those sets of siblings on both sides. We've got one left. Ribbons and Jernigan, we've got two more of each actor to enjoy the use of see a light concussion is very different from a fatal accident i don't even fully understand how that one works despite

the fact that i set it up that window falling on him because of a measuring tape being adjusted slightly it just it reads a little off to me now this is something i fought the studio very hard for and that is a shotgun-wielding maniac to make his way into the house occupied solely by an eight-year-old. They said it's too much, it would be terrifying for children, and off-putting for adult ticket buyers.

I said, go fuck yourself, 20th Century Fox. You did. Who's making the movie, me or you? You said literally that, and they said both of us, this is a collaboration, we're going to need a little bit more nuance, a little bit more give than what you're providing us. And what did you say?

I said, go fuck yourself, 20th Century Fox. Do you have any understanding of who you're dealing with? The man who gave us 16 Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I probably made a movie before. Did I make all those movies? I think so. Shit shit what an incredible back catalog indeed i hope i'm not tarnishing my own memory by appearing on this director's commentary i can't imagine how anyone would interpret that to be the case

everything i say in this is true bit of the film that i love yeah there it was potentially the most things are looking up incorrect burton jernigan so once again we now kill off one of the characters oh can i just explain that joke for a second because a lot of audience members didn't get this so um when burton jernigan appears in the window he sees alex pro and he says things are looking up because that is the turn of phrase you use metaphorically when it looks like your fortunes have changed for the better um but of course in a more physical and literal sense it would mean an upward direction of things are ensuing what happens mere moments after fractions of seconds is that he falls through the floor and actually descends

in a downward direction just the opposite of up the comedy is in fact if you've have i still got you following so we've got a line of dialogue suggesting things are going up but we've got a physicality of a character who's just delivered that line going down and where those things are having each other, they're at odds, that's comedy. That's conflict. Yeah. That's storytelling. Comedy is often getting one of the characters

in your film, your TV show, your radio play, your podcast to say one thing confidently while the opposite happens. For example, John, I respect you too much to make any moves on your wife. And then you do another

and it's funny. Yeah. This is the comedy that drives me. That example wasn't strictly accurate because what Raja said was true

and therefore the example of the joke we were trying to make didn't qualify. Do we have any more rouge? You're in luck. See, if you were going through a comedy response, you would have said,

we're all out, and then poured the glass. You've got a lot to learn, John Hughes. I'm a ghost, man. I finished learning when I died, bitch. I guess that's true. A lot of gunfire in this movie. Again, something I steadfastly fought for

in a PG-rated film. The studio told me I was out of my damn mind. Yeah, and what did you say? Last time I checked, this is America. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Tipper can go fuck herself and her parental advisories. Oh, look at that. A deep freeze chest. Man.

How cool are they? This is a part of the movie that i tuned out for both in production and as an audience member by this juncture we've had roughly 20 minutes of booby traps and also no progress from either the protagonist or the antagonist as to the eventual outcome of the film essentially you're banking on these 20 minutes of booby traps providing enough laughs the audience won't experience a lag or fatigue or exhaustion at the idea that they're still trapped inside of this kid's movie and with hindsight i regret bringing in that writer's room of 100 to create all of these elaborate booby traps because

there is an experience of fatigue coursing through the audience there is an experience of saying hey are we going to reach a resolution do we even remember why we're watching this movie in the first place? I would say at this point, you don't. No. It's almost hypnosis at this point. You're in there. You're watching the film.

You don't know what's happening. All right. Turning point. Mrs. Pruitt has rung the house. This has tipped the villain's attention to the fact that someone's in the house. It's Alex. He now has to scramble his way to intercept the phone call, get his mum off the line before too much is revealed about his current predicament.

He needs to protect his circumstance. She's after a sit-rep. He's after anonymity it's hilarious because those two things are in conflict that's funny anything that is conflict in Raj's eyes is funny for example

when people disagree that's always funny that's comedy did you find that during the divorce proceedings between yourself and your soulmate? I have seen Jerry Seinfeld perform live to sold out audiences no less than 14 times in New York City, the greatest city on earth,

and nothing compares in hilarity to the divorce proceedings of me and my wife. The finest living comedian we have over a dozen times live cannot touch the comic highs of me ending a relationship with my beloved. Pure conflict. Absolute conflict.

And what about the art? Insanity. Things and words were thrown. Things and words that had permanent and lasting damage. That, to me, is just so rich. What about all this simmering resentment that builds up, all of that conflict that you're talking about, the aftermath? As the dust settled and life was undeniably and unchangeably different

from how it had once been, not just today or tomorrow, but as far as the eye can see ahead. Were those moments of sort of de-escalating conflict, but still long-lasting emotional trauma and difference as funny as the conflict at its height, or would you say that they had lasting and devastating ramifications for you and your mental health? Certainly the latter. But isn't that the funniest thing of all?

In many ways, yes. Erlanger now, thwarted by the eight-year-old Alex Pruitt, who is in a sort of a laundry bag situation in a closet right under his nose. Yeah, hiding beneath a feather duster. You'd think if you're going to open the door to a room that you are certain a child is in, that you would at least have the decency or the intelligence to check the various different places large enough to obscure a child's body. One would think.

Alas, we didn't write it that way, so no. Now, we see the reintroduction of Stucky here, sadly flanked by much fewer than the 14 amnesia agents we originally wrote him to be charged with. And in fact, half of the people who are behind him are members of the police force who have fully functioning memories. Well, that was a flourish by me because, of course, I took your original premise

of this man being in charge of a set of amnesia agents at the FBI and wanted to make sure that we were doing a true-to-life representation of that. And the natural cut and thrust of that situation is you're going to lose a lot of guys along the way. They're getting caught up at a 7-11, they get hungry, they forget who they are, what they're doing. Literally anywhere, they could get lost at any moment, at any time.

Constantly. Part of the excitement of the premise, but also part of the challenge of accurately representing it on screen. So instead of seven amnesia agents from the FBI, we've got seven semi-competent police officers from the Chicago Police Force. That bit of rouge went down the wrong way. Scarlett Johansson here,

delivering one of her four powerhouse lines in the film. That's right. Now, when we'd written the script originally with Meryl Streep in mind, the daughter character had a lot of a meteor role, a much greater character arc, she fell in love she fell in a ravine all of the great stories

there's seven great stories and they are of course falling in love, falling in a ravine falling into debt falling into a pyramid scheme. Falling out of an aeroplane. Falling for a prank. Falling for a prank.

And finally... We're at six so far, so there's probably a few more. There's seven, aren't there? Did I say eleven or seven? Oh, you said eleven, maybe. Falling out of love. Falling over because your shoelaces are untied. Falling overboard.

And falling for your enemy in the last and greatest of all the classic tales. Falling through a hole, into a hole. Yeah, falling into a hole. Falling through and into a hole. Anyway, when we realized... No, no, not anyway at all. Because, I mean, I cannot dwell too much on how great these classic 11 stories of human... We'd put all 11 stories into the film with an eye to Meryl Streep performing them.

The concept of a hole. What even is it? It's just an absence of thing that was there. Yeah. Kind of. How would you describe the hole in your heart? Is it the absence of your soulmate? In the same way that a hole in anywhere else is just,

hey, we thought there was going to be something here, and there wasn't. Or maybe previously it's not just that we thought, it's that there actually was. Well, sometimes there was never. You think that there would be, and there wasn't or maybe previously it's not just that we thought it's that there actually was well sometimes sometimes there was never it just you think that there would be but there isn't and wasn't what's your favorite kind of hole mine is the one that's it's a big ass undoubtedly my one is it's when there's a big hole on a track or a path, and then it's been covered over with leaves. Right. They're both good holes, I think.

Speaking of good, the phenomenal Swing to the Nuts, which is essentially... Alice Ribbons on Burton Jernigan's Ghoulies. Not a lot of people know this, but in America, in Hollywood, you're not allowed to make a family film unless someone gets hit in the nuts during the final cinema cut. It's a stupid rule, but it's an important rule.

Yeah, so that was how we snuck that one in there with a hockey stick, which is a nod to your Canadian past. Yeah. Not that you were born there or anything. I did a lot of stuff there. You did a lot of stuff there, of course. Yeah. Famously, John Hughes did a lot of stuff. I was the lot of stuff there of course Yeah Famously John Hughes did a lot of stuff

I used to I was the first person to milk a maple tree for syrup Seems like the right verbiage Now A dumb waiter That isn't so dumb Electrically powered Yes please

This house is so cool Yeah It's more like a It's just a waiter at this point A verbose waiter He's an intelligent waiter He's a A waiter of great repute Are we cool?

Yeah we're cool Oh yeah we're cool Are you and me cool? I think we're alright But The fact that you're still here Suggests to me that we're not I think you are going to disappear when we get cool.

Because I think that's your unfinished business. Let's talk about our wives. Am I cool to do physical touch with you? Yeah, dude. Of course. Always. But what's the situation here? I married your wife for a day.

Yeah. You stole my wife, I think. I don't know that i stole your wife but i certainly drove uh a sort of irreparable rift between you and your wife yeah and it's something i do again in a heartbeat i struggle with seeing anyone who's doing better than me personally or professionally and once i identify that i'll do everything within my not you know not minor power to disrupt it oh that that's um the best use of your energy a lot of people listening like i've i've uh you know uh attended a lot of tony robbins exclusive seminars which have cost a phenomenal

amount of money and right not just for the ticket, but he gets you to walk on hot coals. And I tell you what, it's not as easy as he makes it look. Because I have had skin graft after skin graft under the private health care system. Well, you know the coals he's walking on are actually just warm. Oh, fuck. That's where I'm going wrong. Anyway, look, what Tony Robbins has taught me. If Tony Robbins has taught me two things it's number one

check the coals he's walking on to see if they're the same ones you are being instructed to walk on and the second is if someone's doing better than you your energy is a best served kneecapping that person rather than raising yourself into yourself that's exactly right the easiest way to improve your own quality of life is by disrupting that of others. You have no control over what you can do. You have a lot of control over what you can stop other people from doing. Attack. That's me being the robot. Yeah, and very convincingly too.

Thank you. Alice Ribbons is still in the house. She hasn't been injured beyond repair yet. She is, of course, absolutely dripping in fecal matter that is poured upon her by i can't remember a burst pipe or something now i made this decision in the heat of a meth bender it doesn't make any damn sense according to human behavior but to just open a door and ass first fall down into it i mean what are you looking at michael then he's looking at alice

ribbons oh yeah i am looking at what was michael saying uh lol now they're all wet michael sometimes the office is strong and sometimes they are observations on literally what is happening in the film mrs hess fuck machine reintroduced to the film at a pivotal moment by alex pruitt saving the day is it dicey to have the eight-year-old protect the incredibly sexually charged protagonist well by this point it was of course illegal for us to have them in the same room and so once again you'll see you never see their faces on camera simultaneously except for except for that one shot otherwise yeah and there's it was very important that we shot them across each

other so that we didn't have to deal with the a lot of moving parts when you start breaking it down we had the asbestos running in through the window uh from the um fan machines which cost too much because they had to be manually operated by unionized workers we've now got my original attempt at sneaking blackface into a movie by having the lead bandit with black spray paint on. We've got Alex Pruitt in the same room as a... Well, Alex Dillons in the same room as the performer who he was legally barred from sharing a space with. I mean, people say making movies is good and fun and a great time.

It's fucking hard. Incredible confluence of circumstance. It's like everyone was conspiring against us actually realizing this movie for what it was meant to be. And they did a pretty good job. We made a very different movie. Bone to Lone 3, however, I came across very few production challenges.

The quality of product was severely diminished because I didn't have to adapt to various different governing bodies or sensible people who are guiding me in the right direction but that is one of my projects i can look at and stand behind and say yes this is what i wanted to create three of myself masturbating in what appears to be one room yeah probably alex's best delivery of a line that doesn't belong to you either he's swapped an actual handgun and this is funny because it's a kids film an actual handgun which is being

wielded at his 8 year old body for a bubble gun unbeknownst to the lead villain who thought he was wielding an actual handgun at him it is funny the idea of an 8 year old child being threatened with an actual handgun in that respect you are not wrong it's funny that idea of an eight-year-old child being threatened with an actual handgun the whole thing in that respect you are not wrong it's funny that alex is being threatened mortally with the

handgun it's funny that he turns the table and threatens an adult with a handgun it's funny that neither of those are a handgun however we have seen several real both handguns and sort of shotguns throughout the film and not just just fake ones. They were discharged. Comedy is often the introduction of guns into a PG-rated film. Absolutely. It's either conflict or it's the introduction of real weaponry in a kid's movie.

Yeah, yeah. You heard of comedy? Knock, knock. Who's there? It's a gun. A gun who? A gun in a kid's film. Oh, hello, comedy.

Come and take a seat. Yeah, please. Welcome into my house. Let me serve you up some undercooked chicken. Now, finally, we are experiencing what I would call the tail end of the film, the falling action. Michael, if you're listening, just to re-sync it, 1 hour 31 and 38 seconds, 39 seconds, 40 seconds. Which means there's roughly seven to eight minutes of film left. We have seen our young champion Alex on the tail end

of trying to mortally wound these characters, at least incapacitate and trap them. Detective Stuckey from the FBI will show up to arrest them, armed by, I believe, as little as one of his amnesia agents. Stuck in the Stuckey with you. Yeah, what is it? Some agents are sharp Some agents are blunt

But you've never been stuck with such a stuck up cunt As Stucky It's Stuck with Stucky What's happening to Stucky in this episode? Well in this episode John Hughes And this episode as in the TV show or the movie? I want to hear the pitch for this episode

That we're going to explain in this If this episode was rendered instead of being Home Alone 3 as an episode of Stuck with Stucky, you would start it with Stucky walking into the office. All of the amnesia agents are congregated there. They're looking out the window. What are they looking at? It's a Christmas parade. It's a Christmas parade.

So they're watching everyone parade by and Stucky says, Agents, you're not meant to be here. It's Christmas Day. You're meant to be with your families. And they yell back, you're not allowed to call us by our race. That is incredibly uncouth. We work for the FBI. And he says, no, agents.

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, eventually all of them disperse. They scatter. Several of them follow Stucky home under the impression that they're meant to spend Christmas with his family. But instead of following them home, they follow him onto an airplane. He flies from wherever the Washington, D.C., actually, FBI HQ. They get on a plane with him to Chicago, Illinois. Yeah.

I researched it. Maryland? You keep saying this. That was the CIA. Oh, okay. We found out in the last, when we last listened to an episode of The Worst Idea of All Time. Michael, cut that bit out. Can you cut that out?

You've got to do us a solid. Thanks, mate. Anyway, several of the amnesia agents follow him to O'Hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois. They get into a police... What's it called when there are cop cars supporting... Squad car? I guess. What't know looking for oh you just asked me to articulate an episode of stuck with stucky not a paddy fucking wagon escort um escort okay police escort do you know that's originally a slight on irish

people that's what that that name is from paddy wagon because you'd fill it up with... Irish... I drank Irishman, originally. I didn't know that. Is that still in parlance? Yeah, I mean, I hear it used. And as a, um,

pretty direct Irish descendant, you know, maybe something should be done about that. Sorry for the challenges you face in your life, Raja. They are huge, and insurmountable. Now,

this fucking parrot he has reassembled the remote control car smashed moments ago on screen brought from somewhere parts unknown a safety match which barely exists in the world right now where you can just strike it on any surface and they light and found our final villain who has fixed himself in an explosive laden igloo the parts are really all coming together now folks this is how you end a fucking movie you got a cracker call back here we're about to see the power of these fireworks that have been hidden under the older brother's bed for the entirety of the film is the older brother called stan stan and molly are the siblings and what i like is that you and I made a joint decision

to show the full force of these fireworks, which leaves no question in your mind that the man inside has been absolutely murdered by that parrot. Yeah. He's dead. No one survives an explosion like that. There's no way for him to survive. There's absolutely no way.

We see the conclusion of the film now. Stan Lee makes a reappearance in a cameo. We did not shoot these on the same day. We, as always, worked on this movie chronologically. Everything you see happens sequentially. It's too hard otherwise. Yeah, it gets really confusing. Because you've got to sort out the footage,

and it's just too difficult to do. It's a pain in the ass, to be completely honest. So all of this is sort of the wrapping up of several loose ends. There was an extensive scene in this featuring the fish that was not included hence hughes's fish now i cannot stress this enough i have seen john hughes make some absolutely brilliant moments in cinema through his deft understanding of the human condition and what it means to tell a good story. Some great moments that come to mind, maybe Cameron actually facing off against his dad at the finale of Ferris Bueller.

But what we're about to see on screen in terms of a bookmarking event to wrap up the film will rival Shakespeare, any great writer, Plato, anyone. You pick a writer this beats the pants off of it Plato wasn't exactly known

for his narrative work no no he bloody loved the stuff he loved the stories nothing will rival a film about a remote controlled car this is my town

being wrapped up by the father coming back and gifting to his son from the airport what is it? what is it? what is it? what is it? exactly the same remote control car

it's the same model it's the exact same toy and with that and several mug shots of the captured crooks it represents the end mercifully of Home Alone 3

I don't think I've ever been so happy to see the end of a film it was a lot of fun to make it was a lot of fun to talk about but now I feel as though I've ever been so happy to see the end of a film. It was a lot of fun to make. It was a lot of fun to talk about. But now I feel as though I've been set free. A weight has lifted from my shoulders as I no longer have to discuss what was one of the most challenging production experiences of my life. Well, it looks like it's time for John Hughes to ascend

into parts unknown, by which I mean heaven. How could we know it? We're alive. I hope so. I hope I don't go back to purgatory. As for me, Raja Gosnell, well, I guess I'm going to continue to make the best films you'll ever watch.

Thank you for joining us for this director's commentary for the Blu-ray of Home Alone 3. Bonne nuit, which is French for good night. Really? Yeah. Bonne nuit? Yeah, N-U-I-T. Huh. Thank you.