Iwish I had footage of myself the first time I read the script for Home Alone. I was alone in the house, lying on the sofa in the living room, and it was the first time I read a script that made me laugh so hard that I got stomach cramps. John Hughes’s screenplay was a masterpiece, the perfect family Christmas story. He thought of some of the best physical comedy gags ever and he wrote them with such specificity, shot by shot, that it was like watching the movie already made. It would be a riot to see what I must have looked like reading it—rolling off the sofa in laughter and then tearing up when the neighbor saves the day and the family reunites—like a crazy person going through every emotion in the world by himself in a room. From page one, I started to see myself in the role of Marv Merchants. I absolutely loved physical comedies when I was a kid—Stooges, Chaplin, Keaton, Marx Brothers, Bugs Bunny—but that kind of comedy had fallen out of favor, and John’s script was brilliant in bringing that lost art form back to the big screen. By the time I put the script down, I was determined to get that part!

I can’t remember what scenes were used for the audition, but I met the director, Chris Columbus, in the National Lampoon offices at Warner Brothers. I listened to Chris’s vision for the film and then did the scenes a few times. He seemed to like what I did, but when I was driving home, I felt disappointed in myself. I replayed the scenes in my head, and thought about the vision Chris had talked about, and I suddenly understood exactly how I should have played it. I pulled over, called my agent, and asked them to call Chris and ask if I could come back and try it again. My agent assured me that wasn’t necessary, but I insisted, and I stayed on hold until he got the okay that I could go back to Warner Brothers and try it again. So I did. Chris told me later that he had already decided to cast me and there was no need to come back, but I didn’t know that. I wanted to give myself my best chance to be a part of something very original and laugh-out-loud funny. And it was a good chance to really try to play Marv for the first time and lock in with Chris and John’s vision of the film.

My agent made the deal, the same as I had gotten on Coupe de Ville, three hundred thousand dollars for six weeks of work. I was very happy with the deal but feeling anxious and guilty about leaving the family behind; it was too much to ask Laure to move us all again. Just before I was about to leave, I got a call saying they had redone the shooting schedule and they would now need me for eight weeks instead of six. They were asking me to add on 33 percent more shooting time, so I asked if they were going to raise my salary the same amount, and they said they were not. My agent said to just do it anyway, that when you get to this pay level, you commit to the project, and the weekly salary doesn’t matter. But I was still in the blue-collar work paradigm of getting a daily or weekly rate for one’s work and I didn’t think it was fair, since the deal had been set for a month or so. My guilt at leaving my family further clouded my thinking, and I ended up making one of the stupidest decisions in my show business life—I backed out of the movie. They hired another actor, and he and Pesci started rehearsals in Chicago. I still had The Wonder Years directing and acting work, but I realized quickly what a mistake I had made and was kicking myself for letting my pride get in the way of doing something I deeply wanted to do. The gods somehow intervened (and when I say “gods,” I mean Joe Pesci), because after a couple days of rehearsal, I got the call that they wanted me back in the movie and that they would honor the original contract and make the schedule six weeks. By that point, I was so full of regret that I would have done it even if it took six months to shoot!

Within a day, I was sitting in a restaurant in Chicago with Joe and Chris, laughing, drinking beer, and talking through the film. Chris wanted us to be as scary as we could at the beginning of the film so the audience would feel a real threat to the kid, and who better to scare people than Joe Fucking Pesci. Joe said he was going to make up a cartoon language for when Harry gets angry and frustrated, which Chris loved. Marv was always the dumber and sillier one, so I was looking for my way to play against Joe. In Stooges talk, Joe was Moe, and I was a cross between Larry and Curly. It was so fun to work with the costumer to find just the right look—the coat, sweater, and shoes—and with the makeup artist to figure out just what kind of damage an iron was going to do to my face. We shot on location at the house that has now become a tourist destination spot but at the time was just a nice house in a nice neighborhood, with the locals hanging out on the sidewalk right there with the movie crew. It was winter in Chicago, so it wasn’t pleasant, but it was perfect for creating the look of the Norman Rockwell Christmas that we were going for. Joe and I started with a few of the scenes parked in our van, plotting our fool-proof strategy, and it was a nice way to break the ice, but the fun began when we actually started to try to break into the house.

This film had absolutely no special effects. Everything in it really happened, relying on great camera work, great props, and great stunt people. The first physical comedy scene I shot was Marv going down the outside stairs to break into the basement. Kevin, that little devil, has made the steps icy, sending Marv falling and sliding down the stairs on his back. We started shooting the scene. I walked to the top of the stairs, scanned my surroundings, took my first step onto the icy stairs, slipped, and fell backwards out of the shot and onto a nice soft landing pad behind me, just off camera. We did a few takes and got some funny ones. Then they set up for the stunt of Marv actually sliding down the concrete stairs. Leon Delaney, my brilliant stuntman, took his place at the top of the stairs, Chris said, “Action,” and I watched in painful amazement as Leon threw himself up in the air, landed hard on his spine at the top stair and proceeded to slide down the entire flight of concrete stairs on his back, landing in a heap at the bottom. Holy shit, it was something to see, so painfully funny, and the whole crew applauded loudly—and set up for take two. Leon did it again, and then again, each time adjusting to Chris and the stunt coordinator’s notes to “Jump a little higher,” “Slide a little bumpier,” and “Keep your face hidden,” until they got it exactly how they wanted it.

I vividly remember sitting with Leon that night between takes and asking him, “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Fuck yeah, it hurts.”

“So why do you do it?”

“Because I have two girls in college and Daddy’s got to pay the bills . . . and besides, it’s really fun.” It started to dawn on me just how far we were going to take the physical comedy, that it really was a live-action cartoon. They moved the camera to the bottom of the stairs for the shots of me sliding down the last few stairs, getting up, and breaking into the house. Leon gave me his body pads, apologizing for how sweaty they were (even in freezing weather). They felt good to have on, ready to take a hit like I was wearing football pads, and I decided to go for it as best I could. I slid down enough stairs to get good momentum to crash land on the bottom landing. I thought it would be fun to make it super slippery when I tried to stand up, and I had the set decorators grease the landing to make it easy to slide around. At one point, I brought my slip-and-slide to an abrupt end by sliding my feet out to the side to brace myself in the narrow stairwell, channeling a Roadrunner cartoon, the way something chaotic comes to a sudden, frozen, comic halt. It was a small beat but felt just right, and the crew and Chris loved it. The scene was really funny, and I now understood how this movie was going to work—Leon would do the big stunts, but I was going to have to keep up my end of the bargain and bring this cartoon to life when it was my turn in front of the camera. Joe’s stunt double was Troy Brown, a former rodeo rider who was tough as nails. I watched him and Leon do such dangerous things that any other normal human would end up in the hospital if they did them—falling from the staircase after the paint cans to the face, climbing across the rope in the backyard and then crashing into the side of the house—but because of their professionalism, they not only survived but thrived in their craft.

There were so many fun gags to play—the nail in the foot, glass Christmas bulbs crushed into my feet, paint can to the face, iron to the face, BB gun to the face (my face took a beating!)—it’s hard to pick a favorite because I loved doing them all. John had written each one so vividly, and the way Chris and the cinematographer shot them brought them to life just as I had imagined. I knew just what Marv was supposed to look like in each shot, with each lens, just how Redford had taught me, although in a very different milieu. The prop department was genius, creating such realistic props that it made you feel like each gag was really happening. Christmas bulbs made of sugar crunching under my feet made me feel the pain that poor Marv was feeling. Driving a rubber nail into my foot and feeling a foam iron smash me in the face are as close as I ever want to get to having those things really happen, but what an opportunity to get to play it out in such a funny and safe way. The worst I ever got hurt was doing one of the simple scenes. It was a perfect comic frame, sticking my big face through the doggy-door and right into the camera, with a big shit-eating grin, only to get shot in the face with a BB gun and have to pull my head back out again. The problem was that my nose is so fucking big that not once, but twice, I clipped it on the frame of the doggy-door when I was pulling my head out and gave myself a bad bloody nose. It’s those little ones you think are simple that will get you every time.

But the weirdest one had to be the scene when I have a tarantula crawl on my face. The day came to shoot that scene and I assumed the genius prop department would come up with a realistic-looking tarantula, but when I got to the set, the prop was just a rubber bug, no mechanics for it to move or crawl. That’s when they brought in the “Tarantula Wrangler” and introduced me to a very large and scary-looking spider. The wrangler explained to me that they had done some tests where he had let it crawl on his face and nothing bad happened, so it was probably safe. I asked how he trains a tarantula and he said that they are not really trainable, but as long as I didn’t make any sudden moves, I should be fine. He explained where the poison is located on the spider, how it bites, and how long you have to live once you get bitten. He told me that they could remove the poison, but that the tarantula would then die. I said I understood, but if the tarantula bit me then I would die, so maybe we should think about removing the poison. But I could tell that was not going to happen. The scene had me lying on the floor, not noticing the spider crawling up my body until it eventually crawls across my face, at which point I scream with fear. I was concerned that when it came time for me to scream in the scene, that might scare the tarantula and cause it to attack me, but the wrangler brushed off my concern, telling me that spiders can’t hear. I guess that could be true, since as far as I know, spiders don’t have ears, but this question had never come up in my entire life. I was going to have to hope for the best. Before the camera rolled, they had it crawl around my face, just to get it used to the terrain, and I started to get comfortable with it. By this point in the filming, I was loving the challenge of each individual stunt and gag, and ready to take a few chances. Once I got comfortable, I could really let it rip. They rolled the cameras and released the tarantula onto my face. It just walked around randomly but any time it got into a good camera position, I was ready to go. The crew squirmed, watching it go in my mouth and all over my head, and that only made it more fun. I wanted the scream to sound like the woman being attacked in the shower in the movie Psycho, and I think I got pretty close. Once we got those shots, we moved on to the equally dangerous part where Pesci beats me with a crowbar. Joe had a rubber crowbar, and I had a pad protecting my stomach, but he got me good a couple of times on unprotected areas. Quite a badge of honor, to have been beaten by The Man himself. God, did we have fun!

There were only a couple of scenes where Joe and I got to act with Macaulay, and he was as sweet a kid as he appears in the movie. Chris was so great with all the kids, directing them so that they felt they were doing a great job, making them feel safe, keeping things simple, giving them line readings, and acting out for them so they could mimic him and clearly know what he wanted. John Hughes didn’t really spend much time on the set, trusting Chris completely—and probably spending his time writing all the great scripts that came after this one. We didn’t have scenes with any of the cast except Macaulay, but we did get to cross paths with everyone and watch them work—Catherine O’Hara was a hero and great in the film, Kieran Culkin was just as funny at age seven as he is now, and John Candy’s improvisations had everyone rolling on the floor with astonished laughter. But the biggest treat was that John Heard played the dad. An amazing twist of fate that the stranger who took me into his home my very first day in New York and I would now be doing our third movie together.

I rented a little apartment outside of Winnetka and ate at the Wendy’s next door just about every night, barely able to take care of myself on the road. I missed my family so much, but it was frustrating trying to talk to the kids on the phone because, frankly, they were boring as hell. In person, we talked and played and did homework, but on the phone, everything was a monosyllabic answer. They wanted to get back to real life, not answer questions from a disembodied dad on a phone call. At some point during the shooting, Warner Brothers decided the budget was getting too expensive and wanted to unload the movie. I got that call from Joe Roth, who had been running 20th Century Fox for less than a week. He saw the footage of what we had shot and scooped up the movie, seeing the potential the film had. I finished my six-week stint and was glad to get home to Laure and the kids and our friends—and started looking for my next job, with no idea that the film I had just put in the can would become the worldwide cultural phenomenon that it has become.

THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS? . . . GETTING FIRED!

I loved our sweet little house on Highridge Drive in Beverly Hills Post Office. I was so lucky to have found this little oasis. It was a last-minute decision not to move to Woodstock, which was going to be the cure for the claustrophobia and pressure caused by living in Manhattan for twelve years, and our house on the top of the canyon felt like we had moved to the country. But our little, secret, natural hideaway had been discovered by rich assholes bound and determined to make it theirs, and in doing so make it not little or secret or natural or a hideaway.

Some pretentious prick bought the house next door and started doing major construction to transform a modest house into a palace, including drilling pylons right next to our house to support the upper deck swimming pool he was putting in. It drove me insane. Pastureland a block away, where sheep used to graze, was plowed over to build Beverly Park, now one of the most exclusive gated communities in the world, home to Sylvester Stallone, Eddie Murphy, oil barons, and such. We started looking around LA for what would be the equivalent of Woodstock, a couple of hours outside of town where we could buy a house in nature, with a lot of space and privacy. We looked in Ojai and Santa Barbara, but they were too expensive and had already been discovered by the pompous glitterati anyway.

Laure’s family had a tiny, nine-hundred-square-foot summer cabin in the middle of a national forest in Lake Tahoe that we got to use for a couple of weeks each year, another little, secret, natural hideaway, with no entitled assholes in sight. The water was pristine and icy, and we spent every day at the beach, playing and swimming with the kids. This year in particular was fantastic. Our kids started hanging out with some other kids on the small beach, and Laure and I got to be friendly with their parents and grandparents. We had cookouts and got to know each other and told them of our desire to move out of LA. One of the families was from a place called Half Moon Bay, a small town right on the beach, an hour away from San Francisco, with good schools and modest prices. It sounded like the perfect town for us but was probably too far from LA to move to. But I decided to take a peek at it on the drive home, and the amazingly generous people from the beach gave us the keys to their house so we could spend the night there. Since it was going to be a lot of extra schlepping, Laure and the girls took a plane home, and Henry and I drove the loaded-up Chevy Suburban to Half Moon Bay. It was spectacular, with a Pacific Ocean beach with huge rock formations. The farms on the hillside were like out of a painting. We drove through the neighborhoods, by the little league field and the elementary school, and I could really envision raising our family there. The house we stayed in was in a very nice, suburban-feeling neighborhood, and Henry and I went to dinner that night at a place called The Distillery, right on the water. We decided to eat on the outdoor porch, with the waves crashing and mist overtaking us. It was an incredible night with Henry, but I was really wishing Laure was there so we could have shared the absolute romance of this day and night.

The next morning, we packed up for the drive to LA, and as we passed through town, I spotted a real estate office and decided to pick up one of those real estate listing magazines to bring home to Laure, just so we could fantasize about it together. I spoke to a very nice realtor there. The prices for homes with land were so affordable compared with Ojai and Santa Barbara, the schools were great, and it was so easy to get to the San Francisco airport and get a plane to LA if you had to. She told me of a house in an even smaller town a few miles up the coast called Moss Beach. This house was on seven acres, overlooked the ocean, and was seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She asked if I wanted to go look at it right then, since I was there, just to see, and that is what we did. Moss Beach was a tiny town that consisted of one block with a bar, a pizza place, and a video store, all a person really needs. We drove up the hill above the town to a dirt road and took that small road until it came to a dead end and some impressive-looking gates. The gates opened, and an incredible, tiled villa and guesthouse laid out in front of me, with the Pacific Ocean right below. We went inside, and it was like out of a magazine—huge windows, professional kitchen, bedrooms galore, and an interior courtyard, complete with swimming pool. There was a sauna and steam room, but my mind was officially blown when I got to the “his and hers” bathrooms and the “his” bathroom had a urinal. Who ever heard of having a urinal in your house? It all made me laugh, especially the thought that all of this could be had for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I called Laure from a pay phone and told her I thought I found our new house. We talked about it all week and flew up the next weekend so she could see it. She was blown away by it too, and we felt our vision of living in a small town in the countryside with a bit of land was finally within our reach. We bought it the next day and started making plans to move in time for the kids to start the new school year there, which was only about six weeks away.

I was prepping for directing an episode of The Wonder Years—scouting locations, casting, scheduling—when I got a call to go in as soon as I could to audition for a new Billy Crystal movie called City Slickers because Rick Moranis had just dropped out and the movie started shooting very soon. I got the script delivered to my house that night. Like Home Alone, the script was absolutely perfect, full of great characters, inventive, truthful, insightful, action-packed, and with fall-on-the-floor laughs. The character was Phil, a sweet, self-loathing guy with a terrible wife, who had so many good moments of comedy, heroism, and friendship over the course of the movie. By the time I finished the script, I wanted this one a lot. I went in the next day and, holy shit, there was Billy Crystal! And a bunch of other people who I would end up knowing well but at the time were a blur because, holy shit, I was going to read the scenes with Billy Crystal! I knew this character very well, the jokes were natural to me, the rhythms perfect, and the audition felt like a home run. Sure enough, I got the job. It was shooting in Colorado and New Mexico in ten days, but I needed to start right away with horseback riding lessons at a ranch in Griffith Park, because so much of the movie takes place on horseback. My agent got me four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a surprising and enormous leap in salary. The tough part was it was going to take three and a half months to shoot. I was in almost every scene, so there would probably be no time for any trips home, and it was right when we were supposed to be moving to our new house in Moss Beach. But I had to say yes, and I had to say it fast. The producers at The Wonder Years were great and said of course to take the job and that I could direct a different episode when I got back. The nice thing was that they agreed to replace me with my first assistant director, who would finally get his break to make the leap to being a director. Before I knew it, I was in Griffith Park staring at TJ, who had been chosen to be my horse in the movie.

Horses and I do not get along. I have already told you of my death-defying horse-riding experience on the set of Samson and Delilah in Durango, Mexico. The only other time I had been on a horse was when Laure and I were on our honeymoon trip to England. We took a very freaky side trip to the Moors, land of ghostly spirits (check out my episode of the TV show Ghost Stories), but it got dangerous when the owners of the inn we were staying at gave Laure and me their trail horses and sent us on our way. The horses were very old and slow, and I started to relax, letting go of my PTSD. Laure was a natural on the horse (and is now an accomplished rider), and it all felt right out of a postcard or TV commercial—young lovers on horseback, sun shining, flowers blooming. But things changed rapidly when, from out of nowhere, a helicopter came tearing across the landscape, flying as low as a crop duster, and buzzing right over us. Both of our horses reared up on their back legs, something they probably hadn’t done in fifteen years. I held on for dear life and watched my wife hold on for hers. The horses bolted, galloping across the moors. Luckily, they were old, so they ran out of gas after a couple hundred yards. We got off those fucking horses, walked them back to the bed and breakfast, and drank whiskey with the weirdos in the bar until our nerves calmed. The point being, horses and I don’t get along.

TJ was different. TJ was a real movie horse. He had done a lot of movies, maybe more than me. His trainer was Jack Lilley, a legendary horseman and stuntman. I told Jack my bad experiences and fears, but he didn’t care. He knew I had to learn to ride because the movie started shooting in a week and the first scenes were on horseback. Billy, Rick Moranis, and Bruno Kirby had all been training for months to prepare for the riding, and I had a lot of catching up to do. Jack basically took me on a pony ride, leading TJ around the arena and teaching me the fundamentals of how the gas pedal, brakes, and steering wheel work on these things. I held on tightly to the horn of the saddle and Jack kept telling me to let go, because “You can’t ride like that,” but my survival instincts were on high alert. Eventually I got the reins and walked TJ around the arena by myself. Well actually, TJ walked me. All I had to do was hold on. They had picked the mellowest horse in the stable, and he knew just how to handle me. It’s supposed to be the rider who is the leader, in control and command of his horse, but every horse I have ever been around can read me easily and knows they are in charge of the situation, and TJ was no different. TJ was a pro. He knew his job. Jack and his trainers would tell TJ to do something, and he would do it. He broke into a trot when Jack clicked his tongue and stopped when he raised his hands. I moved the reins to guide him through a figure-eight pattern, but he already knew what he was supposed to be doing. My first-day confidence was building. I got a tiny glimmer of how this could work, although knowing all the herding of cattle, stampedes, and galloping that were written into the script, I was still very intimidated. But not as intimidated as when Billy and Bruno arrived at the arena.

Billy and Bruno had done When Harry Met Sally together, playing best friends, and the friendship stuck. Billy and the writers, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, had written the part of Ed especially for Bruno. So just like the story, these two best friends were living their fantasy, getting horseback training from the best in the business and making a real Western movie. We kibitzed for a few minutes, and then they hopped up on their beautiful horses, already saddled by the wranglers, and took off. I watched them gallop and trot, even ride backwards. I watched them herd and rope cows. These guys had been training a lot and were proud of all they had accomplished. They tried to encourage me, but I obviously had a long way to go.

I was no better the second day than I was the first, which is to say ridiculously bad, especially considering the riding challenges that were coming up very quickly. The director, producers, and writers came out to Griffith Park to watch and work that day and I got to know everyone a bit more. The one issue seemed to be that I looked a little too young. We were all supposed to be having a mid-life crisis. Billy and Bruno were both ten years older than me, and everyone felt I didn’t look “mid-life” enough. I tried on some glasses, which helped make me look a little older, and that seemed to solve the problem.

When I went for riding lessons on the third day, they had a makeup trailer in the parking lot. Billy and Bruno were doing tests on the progression of how dirty they should get over the course of the film. Evidently people were still a little nervous about how youthful I looked because the makeup folks tried some aging makeup on me. They put lines around my eyes, which I thought looked pretty fake. They tried more lines on my forehead, which looked even worse. But it hit an absurd level when they said they wanted to try a bald cap on me. I said I didn’t think that was going to work. They agreed, but insisted I try it, just to show the producers. They squeezed a terrible-looking bald cap over the top part of my head, leaving my hair on the sides and the back showing. I guess they were going for the classic Larry David look, but with the aging makeup on my eyes and forehead, the look was much closer to Bozo the Clown. While Billy and Bruno were trying on their sexy, dirty cowboy look, I was looking in the mirror, horrified and embarrassed, thinking how terrible it would be to ruin such a wonderful script and movie by looking like I came straight from Ringling Brothers. The producers knocked on the door and said they wanted to speak with me, so I stepped out of the trailer to show them how ridiculous this look was. They agreed it was not the right look but said that was not what they wanted to talk to me about.

“We don’t know if you know this, but the reason Rick Moranis left the film was that his wife has been diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer and Rick left to be with her.”

“Oh my God, I had no idea.”

“Yes, it’s terrible. The thing is, he’s changed his mind. He wants to come back to the movie. He and his wife decided it would be best for Rick to keep working and carry on with life. And so he wants to come back and be in the film.”

“Oh, okay. So I guess I’m out?”

“We are so sorry. You would have been great. And thank you for being so understanding.”

“Sure, I understand.”

I mean, what was I going to say? It was such a loaded situation. It was so embarrassing to be fired on the spot with no warning and for no offense, and having the bald wig and clown makeup on felt like the perfect, humiliating costume to receive the news in. I couldn’t even go back in the trailer. I grabbed my stuff and got in my car, where I pulled off the bald cap, wiped off my face, and drove home.

The first thing I did was call the folks at The Wonder Years and tell them I had been let go and wanted to come back and direct the episode I had left. The first AD and producers were mensches and said of course, because they knew how much it hurt to have the movie fall apart and how important it was for me to get back to work rather than stew in my own juices. I went back to work the next day and dove into prep again. In some ways, it was a relief. I had been about to ditch Laure and force her to pack up the whole house, move the family to the new house in Moss Beach, and start the kids in a new school all by herself. Now we could all start that new life together.

Two days later, I was at home when my agent called and said that Rick had changed his mind and was dropping out of the film again. They wanted me back. I was stunned, exhausted, and thoroughly confused. My agent said we might be able to get more money, but that was not the issue.

“The issue is I am back directing, which I love, and I can’t be so flaky and leave again. It was wrong to leave Laure with all the responsibility and logistics of the huge move, especially since the whole thing was my idea to start with. And besides, I have my stupid pride. It was so embarrassing the way the firing happened that I don’t really feel like going back. I have many other commitments and I am exhausted, and therefore please tell them that I pass, that I am not going to just pack up everything at the drop of a hat and leave my responsibilities.” I hung up with my agent and felt the real weight of how tired this rollercoaster had made me. I went into the bedroom and fell asleep. To this day, I remember it as one of the deepest and most energizing naps I have ever had.

When I woke up, I realized what a stupid decision I had made! My pride had made me shortsighted, just like it did when I left Home Alone. What an opportunity I was throwing away—an incredible part, the best actors, a ton of money, experiences I would never have any other way—and my wife was willing to shoulder unfathomable burdens to see that the family was taken care of while I pursued these dreams. I came out of the bedroom to messages on my answering machine from Billy, the director, the producers, and my agent, all begging me to reconsider. I was already planning to beg them to take me back, so it was nice to be begged as well. I called everyone back, told them what a great nap I had, that I was an idiot, and that I couldn’t wait to get started. I once again backed out of my directing job at The Wonder Years, which was embarrassing, but the First AD couldn’t have been happier. The next day I packed up my stuff and had a very nice panic attack and cry, with Laure and the kids comforting me and telling me that everything would be fine. I took a small plane to Durango, Colorado. Upon arrival, the teamster driver didn’t take me to the hotel or the production office, but instead drove me into the beautiful mountains outside the town. I was met by Jack Lilley, a few other wranglers, and TJ, saddled up and ready to go. The sun was setting as Jack led us on a trail ride into God’s country, TJ surefooted and steady on the tight mountain trails, and me holding on to the saddle horn for dear life.

RIDE ’EM, COWBOY!

It was a great way to start the film, shot out of a cannon into an unknown situation, needing to do things I had no idea how to do and wanting to not only survive but succeed. After all, that is exactly what City Slickers is about, and my character, Phil, is probably the least prepared of all the friends. The first scenes we shot took place in the middle of the movie, in the thick of the shitstorm, having completely lost control of the cows, who escape into the woods, and which we must somehow capture and drive back to the main herd. I was on TJ’s back, riding chaotically through a forest of trees, herding a hundred cows while a rain machine blasted a torrential downpour. Billy had an amazing horse named Beechnut who he could get to do all sorts of tricks—walking backwards, sideways, cross-stepping stuff. (They bonded so much that he kept Beechnut after the movie was over.) Bruno was also quite comfortable in the saddle. Mickey Gilbert was the stunt coordinator on the film. He had become a Hollywood legend when he doubled Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, jumping off the waterfall in the iconic scene of that movie. I had worked with Mickey on four films already—Honky Tonk Freeway, Blue Thunder, Milagro Beanfield War, and Coupe de Ville—and I loved and admired him. He knew I liked to play and have fun doing stunts, and I knew I could trust him with my life and he would never put me in danger by asking me to do something he didn’t think I could do. On the wide shots, and shots where we had to gallop, Troy Gilbert, one of Mickey’s sons, doubled for me, but I was doing a lot of the riding myself. They all knew I had no idea how to ride, but Troy would rehearse TJ for each particular shot so by the time I got on his back, I just had to hold on and let TJ do his thing.

Ron Underwood was the perfect director for the film. He had a great eye for real-feeling action that made room for the characters and the comedy to shine through. He is a kind and reasonable man, and maybe most importantly, collaborative. This was Billy’s vision from the beginning. He developed the script, wrote it with Lowell and Babaloo, executive produced the movie, starred in it, and was intimately involved in all aspects of the film, including hiring Ron. So Ron was very respectful of Billy’s input, but not to the point of being a pushover. He had a firm hand on the set and was very organized, leading the crew with great humor through mud and rain and cow shit to get every scene shot and every moment covered with no stress. Billy and he would talk after each take, maybe watch video playback, and make sure everyone was happy before we moved on to the next shot. We got through those first tough days with no problems—until the dailies came back.

It was a tradition at the time to screen dailies almost every night after the shoot. The cast and crew were invited to watch the footage so that everyone could see what had been shot and the director and crew could make adjustments. They served food and beer, and it was a great way to unwind together and enjoy new friends outside of work. So about three days into the shoot, we all gathered in the production office for the first day of dailies. Two astounding things happened.

The first is that it turns out that on film, I was a better horseback rider than either Billy or Bruno. And when I say better, I mean worse. My horseback riding was so bad that I was getting huge laughs. Billy and Bruno were riding like the semi-professionals that they had become—low in the saddle, reins loose in the hands, and commanding their horses. But I looked like a real city slicker, hanging on to the horn, sliding around the saddle, unbalanced, and bouncing up and down, investing my real ineptitude and fear into my character’s comic lines and actions. I looked ridiculously out of my element, and TJ had made me feel safe enough to find the comedy and the character. Billy was sitting up front, and when the reel ended, he had an epiphany. “Fucking Stern is getting all the laughs. We are supposed to not know how to ride, just like him. Bruno and I need to ride a lot worse because we look like we know what we’re doing.” The next day of shooting, the two of them tried to ride as badly as I did, but they couldn’t even come close. They bounced around and tried to look unbalanced, but they had gotten too good. It took them a few days of shooting to finally be able to be as convincingly bad at riding as I was. Next time you watch the film, see if you can spot it.

The second thing that happened at those first dailies was not as trivial. Bruno was playing a city slicker who was a wanna-be tough guy, complete with a Burt Reynolds-style mustache, and thought it would be good for his character to have a big wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek. But while we were watching the dailies, it became apparent that he had so much tobacco in his mouth that it was difficult to understand his lines. Also, that much tobacco produces an enormous amount of tobacco juice and that juice needs spitting. He couldn’t complete any of his lines without interrupting himself with a cowboy spit-take, and it was distracting. When the lights came up, Billy and Ron pulled Bruno aside to talk to him about how he should cut way back on the chew, or maybe not use it at all, because it was really messing with the comedic rhythms of the scenes. Bruno got very defensive, saying they didn’t know what they were talking about, and that it was his character to create, not theirs. But they wanted to address it early, after we had all just seen what a distraction it was. Bruno really got his back up, voices were raised, and he ended up storming out of the room. And that was it. He decided that he and Billy were no longer friends, breaking a twenty-yearold best-friendship on the spot. As far as I know, he did not speak to Billy ever again. Not during the entire filming of the movie or in all the years afterward. It crushed Billy. I don’t think it affected the film at all, because they are both such professionals, but it was a wound on the psyche of the set and so unnecessary.

The upside for me was that it drew me and Billy close. We started going to dinner together after work. I could see how hurt and confused he was about this small comment taking down their entire friendship. We would have a lot of laughs and talk about the movie, but the conversation always went back to Bruno. He struggled between feeling guilty for having said anything, and feeling angry that Bruno would take it this far, especially after Billy wrote the role for him and went to bat to get him the part. I wanted to be the go-between, but I really didn’t know either of them very well yet. Bruno was nice to me, but I could see he didn’t want to fix his problem with Billy, so I stayed out of it, focusing instead on the marvelous part I was playing and the phenomenally talented people I was playing with. Billy crushed his part in every scene, Bruno was great and funny, the rest of the gang of city slickers were all perfect for their parts, and the scenes flowed so easily because the script was so well written. When Jack Palance came on the set, everyone had to up their game just a little bit more. His character dies halfway through the movie, so he was only on set for a few weeks, but it was so fun to act with a real live Western Movie Star, especially playing the sad and meek character I was portraying.

Every day was a new challenge and another great scene. Phil was a great role. He goes through an enormous change, with very emotional moments always punctuated by world-class jokes. My wife leaves me, I have a breakdown, I save Billy’s character from drowning, fight the bad guy, and get the girl in the end. The locations were where they had shot many old westerns and were stunning and peaceful. TJ was an awesome horse and I ended up doing things I never would have dreamed I could do. When Billy’s character gets swept down the river, I chased him on horseback along the riverbank, jumped off the horse, ran out into the river on a slippery log, and reached out and grabbed him heroically just before he went over a waterfall. In another scene, I rode TJ as we slid down a long muddy embankment, then crossed a rushing river with all the cows swimming around us in the deep and fast water. It was thrilling to do this scene, especially knowing there were safety people everywhere and trusting TJ completely. The horseback riding culminates with the three of us galloping across the open plains while singing the theme from Bonanza. These were amazing, eight-year-old Danny’s fantasy moments coming to life, moments I still cherish to this day.

Meanwhile, while I was having the adventure of a lifetime, Laure was in a living hell. All by herself, she had packed up our house, moved the three kids to Moss Beach, enrolled them in their new schools, unpacked all our stuff, and everything else that goes into a life-changing move to a brand-new town. I finally got three days off together, and I flew back to see everyone and our new house. When I arrived at the house, before I even got to give everyone a hug and a kiss, a very low-flying airplane buzzed right over my head. What the fuck? Now the kids were jumping on me, and Laure and I were hugging and kissing hello, and another plane came buzzing right overhead. What the double fuck? When I said to Laure, “Wow, does that happen often?” she looked very upset, and we decided to ignore it for the time being. There were so many planes buzzing our house that weekend that we had to ignore it, because the problem was so big that it would have overwhelmed the weekend. But the turd in the punchbowl was definitely there. We had only seen the house twice, both days so magical and beautifully misty. But that mist meant those were not good days to fly, so there were no planes taking off from the AIRPORT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL THAT GAVE FLYING LESSONS ALL DAY LONG, WITH ITS TAKEOFF PATTERN RIGHT OVER OUR HOUSE, THAT NO ONE TOLD US ABOUT!!! The dream of moving the family to a quiet place in a small town was immediately shattered, and I was crushed. Every plane overhead was a reminder that I was an idiot to have bought this house so impulsively, that I was a terrible husband for leaving Laure to deal with it, and that when City Slickers was over, I would either have to try to sell this piece-of-shit house and move the family again, or I would have to have my ears removed and a possible lobotomy. We did decide that we were definitely not selling the house on Highridge Drive, because we might be moving back into it. I was so discombobulated that I could hardly focus on reconnecting with the kids and Laure. When it was time to go back to work, I was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but truthfully, it was also a relief.

It was right about this time that my little movie, Home Alone, hit the theaters. Until this point in my career, I had never given one thought to the Box Office Numbers. Never. The only thing I ever paid attention to was critical response and if it was running in the theaters. Breaking Away and Diner were critics’ darlings and they played for a couple of months in a few theaters in each city. Milagro Beanfield War was loved by the critics but stopped playing in the theaters pretty quickly. Blue Thunder had a good run and others had been ignored. But there was a whole other Hollywood game going on that I knew nothing about called, “Who Is Number One at the Box Office This Week?” I have since learned that this is the only Hollywood game that matters, because it means that your movie is making the most money of everyone’s movies. That’s the reason the studios make movies: to make money. Billy of course knew how important it was when he came into the makeup trailer one day with his Hollywood Reporter trade paper and told me that Home Alone had opened at Number One. I had no idea of the significance, but it was certainly good news. The next week we were Number One again, and Billy was impressed that such a little movie could stay at Number One for two weeks in a row. This went on every week for the rest of filming, because Home Alone went on to be the longest running Number One movie in history, staying in that slot for twelve straight weeks. Each week, Billy was more and more incredulous, trying to make me understand that this was a very big deal, but I had no idea of any way to take advantage of it as an opportunity for advancement. I was just proud of the movie, and the thought of audiences laughing at all of the silly stuff I had done made me smile. All I knew was that I was working on a great film and hoping I could get another good job after this one ended, and maybe Home Alone would help.

We finished the shooting in LA, where I had some great scenes to do. There was a comically humiliating scene of my wife and I losing our shit and getting divorced in a big party scene, ending with me spending the night in a child’s bed at Billy’s house, sharing the room with his son, played by a sweet and funny kid named Jake Gyllenhaal in his first movie ever. (I like to think I made a huge impression on him and kind of taught him everything he knows about acting in that one little scene. You’re welcome, Jake.) But the craziest scene we did was recreating the traditional Running of the Bulls in Pamplona on the back lot of Universal Studios, the opening scene of the movie. We had been talking to Ron Underwood for weeks about how he was planning on shooting this sequence. He had been such a stickler for realistic action with everything else so far, so we were a bit concerned about how he would give it that same realistic feeling without us having to actually run down the street with real bulls chasing us. He assured us it would be done safely. They were building a series of low fences along the authentic-looking Pamplona street. The bulls would be running on one side of the fence, and we would be running on the other, but with the right camera angles and lenses, it would look like we were running right with them. The day we got to the set for that scene, the first thing we noticed was that there were no fences.

“Where are the fences?” we asked Ron.

“Oh, yeah. We tried some camera tests with them, but it didn’t work, so we took them down.”

“Oh, well what is the new plan?”

“The new plan is that you guys are really going to run with the bulls. But we are going to have a couple of stunt guys running right behind you so that if any of the bulls go crazy, they can try to stop them before they get to you.”