Home Alone Breakdown-Parts 1 & 2

Devin: Season’s greetings, StoryOsophers. This is Devin Halden on behalf of Adam Jones with a brief update. Both Adam and I had to take a hiatus to work on projects, both individually as well as a series we are scripting together. But we wanted to thank you for your continued interest in the show and wanted to assure you we are working on new content to hit your earbuds in early 2022. We are also happy to announce the long-awaited Story Blueprint writer’s app will be launched in early 2022 as well. And we are extremely excited to make that available to all of you and look forward to seeing how you use it as a writing companion to your current writing process.

Along with the new episodes and Story Blueprint app, we are also opening a new website with other writing resources and a writing competition, which we will provide a little bit more news about in 2022. And to help everybody get in the holiday mood, we thought we would bring our Christmas episodes to the top of the episodes list by re-releasing them. And of course, they’re the breakdown of the holiday classics Home Alone and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It’s a great time to be a writer, guys. So take advantage of these odd times and make those stories in your head come alive on paper. We hope you are all safe and happy during the holidays and look forward to spending time with you again soon. Happy holidays, StoryOsophers.

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[The original Home Alone breakdown, part 1]

Adam: Hello. Welcome to StoryOsophy. This is Adam Jones.

Devin: And Devin Halden.

Adam: This is our Christmas episode. We’re going to break down Home Alone, one of the best Christmas movies ever, and talk about structure and how it builds and how it achieves such a great climax as it does. We’re excited. It’s one of my faves. Just as a side note, I am not in my normal podcast. I’m in a podcasting booth, so hopefully the sound is still good. Sounds good. Well, of course, it sounds fine. In the apartment I’m staying in, it sounds fine over the phone. Sounds great, dude. Yeah, so I’m in here in Long Island at the moment. Just before Christmas time. Dude, I’ve been walking around the shop working on this stuff and I keep going, Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Like a Michael Caine or something. And people look at me like I’m an idiot, which I’m used to.

Devin: Yeah. Sniffing fumes.

Adam: I just have to say I love John Williams. I love John Williams, yeah. But I love John Hughes. He’s one of my favorite writer, producer, filmmakers. I just love him because he’s fun and slapsticky.

Devin: Yeah, and of course we did another John Hughes last year with Christmas Vacation. Because we can’t help it. He loved Christmas, so he made really good Christmas films.

Adam: He has a good knack for creating realistic or relatable movies that are hyperbolic. That push the edge of like over-the-topness, but still, for humor and stuff like that, but still remain touching or relatable to, I don’t know, I mean Christmas Vacation and Home Alone both. They’re relatable in very different ways, but he’s just good at pushing the envelope on humor and big epic events.

Devin: I’ll say that while I was watching Home Alone with a more analytic eye and ear. There’s a little bit more identifiable structure for me with Home Alone than Christmas Vacation. But there’s one thing that I realized Hughes does really well, and he did it in both Christmas Vacation, and I don’t think I touched upon it or we touched upon it last year with Christmas Vacation, but with Home Alone is he covers his bases. So he basically, you can tell when he’s writing. He’s also thinking about what the audience is going to be thinking at that moment. It’s like, well, why wouldn’t you just call your kid who’s home alone?

Well, all right, well, I’ll make sure that the phones don’t work. Or why wouldn’t you do a head count before you go to the airport? All right, well, I’ll do a head count, but I’ll throw the neighbor kid in there to screw, you know, so.

Adam: And even the rushedness of the getting to the airport causes enough scatteredness that there’s not focus on. Yep. Mama McAllister purposefully counting her kids. She delegates it to one of the other kids.

Devin: And having enough people there. Yeah. Where it makes. A neighbor kid. You know, if it’s a family of four, you’re going to realize that you don’t have a kid. But if there’s multiple families and multiple people and the chaos of oversleeping and things like that. So we’ll get into that more specifically. But Hughes is really good at that. Yeah.

Adam: Yeah. He’s pretty clever with his building. He’s a great story architect. This movie really shows it, too, because there are like five different plots and like two of them are really tiny. Right. You know what I mean? But they still are set up and paid off many times throughout the piece set up many times and paid off brilliantly at the end. And like, I’m just I just always I’m amazed when you’re breaking this stuff down. It seems so effortless. And you’re like, man, he is sharp or he was sharp. We do miss we do miss his creativity. And I would say this, too. He’s oftentimes known as a creator of entertainment or pop culture.

But these days, I would say that John Hughes is an artist. I would say that that during the time it was very current and modern. And you can look back and go, wow, this is a work of art. Scorsese may say differently because he knows. He’s the only person in the world who knows what cinema is. He has a very different and different take on what cinema is. Yeah. But I believe that John Hughes is a great contribution to cinema. Absolutely. And also the director of this, Chris Columbus, has directed many fantastic films. He’s very good at big like the same tone that John Hughes writes.

He’s good at bringing to life through directing like the scene by scene. He’s really great. And this was basically Chris Columbus’s big break was this film.

Devin: Was it?

He did, well, he did stuff before this, but then, and I was, because I was watching a documentary about it, and he said that this was the one huge commercial success for him that really opened the doors for some other projects for him, so.

Adam: I think Chris Columbus has this unique tone that allows for it to feel like a kid is navigating the movie, perspective-wise. Do you know what I mean? It makes it fun and adventurous and whimsical, and, but what a good team. I just wanted to profess my love to John Hughes, because he’s, he’s sharp. And also, while we’re at it, John Williams’ score, as we talk about music’s a character in movies, his score, and especially, like, the song Somewhere in My Memory, the one that really is kind of the big one. And you were talking about a medley before we got on air of all the music from it, but that music makes that movie. It’s so awesome.

Yeah, absolutely. And it ends up being more, like, Jumanji we’ve talked about several times. It ends up, several times, a whole season.

Several. We had a couple episodes where we talked about that. A couple, 30-some episodes of Jumanji. The drums in Jumanji are the herald, like, the music in this becomes a herald. Like, you can be having this tone, and then all of a sudden it goes, it goes darker, more menacing, and then the wet bandits pull up. It’s so interesting the way the music is, plays the herald role in a lot of scenes.

Devin: And similar to how, what you were just talking about with Hughes’ story, where it seems, it seems very effortless and simple. The soundtrack, or the score to this is also, seems effortless and simple, but it conveys so much emotion for every scene. And it literally takes the, the audience by the hand is like, all right, this is kind of what you’re supposed to be feeling right now. A lot of more current films, there’s so many different layers of sound design, score, soundtrack, where a lot of times it’s just like, it’s overwhelming. And then, but with this, it’s very simple and classical and, and, and using, you know, percussion and then using horn and then using, you know, whatever, all the different, different parts of the orchestra.

It, but it keeps it very simple. Yeah. It’s very similar to Hughes, Hughes’ way of storytelling, where even the very important parts of the, like I was talking about where you’re, he’s covering his bases. Williams does that with, and he does that with all his, that’s just how Williams is, whether it was Jaws or it was, you know, he has, he understands what the emotion is. And even just using simple, simple piano, two, two piano keys in Jaws, you convey a completely different emotion. And even in Jaws, like you’re saying, it’s. It’s a, it’s another character to the film, so.

Adam: Yeah, it’s that looming dun-dun, dun-dun, that is the herald for the shark.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: In order to create a score for a movie, you really have to have an understanding of the pacing, the tone, the emotional context, but not sort of blow up the emotional context until the emotional reveals happen and then emphasize them when they do.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: Like he’s just, I mean, we’re obviously praising one of the great cinema scorers. Scorers of, like he needs it anymore.

Devin: It’s not like we’re introducing people to him now. This is John Williams. You guys should really check this guy out. He does, he’s done some pretty good stuff in the past. Today’s special word is John Williams.

Adam: So John, how long have you been in the business? So it’s a, it’s also a great cast. Yeah. This is Macaulay Culkin’s second movie. And Joe Pesci’s my favorite Joe Pesci role ever. Daniel Stern, genius. Catherine O’Hara, who’s one of my favorites. My favorite women of comedy. Madeline Kahn’s my other favorite. And Macaulay Culkin’s brother was in it. He’s in it too, yeah. And John Heard playing the dad. It’s a good cast. I do love Catherine O’Hara. Yeah. She’s really freaking funny.

Devin: She’s hilarious. Yeah, she’s really good. She’s really good in Schitt’s Creek, if nobody’s seen that.

Adam: Oh, yeah.

Devin: That’s a great, she’s really good.

So want to shoot, want to do a quick overview of the film for? Yeah, let’s do that.

Adam: There’s seven people out there that I’ve never heard, never seen. Well, it’s also good, before we break it down, to understand how he laid it out as a broad scope. It’s about an hour and 15 minutes of act one and two, and then a really awesome 25 to 30 minute climax. That’s one of the best things about this movie is he really laid out this brilliant climax that just gets better and better. It’s so good. But there are basically five plots, and most of them are obvious. There’s Kevin’s journey of coming of age. The overall is, of combining them all, is a story about family, autonomy, coming into your own, growing up, facing your fears.

And the A plot, Kevin’s journey, is coming of age, sort of the value of self despite others, being home alone. And the B plot will be the mom and the family who left one member behind at Christmas. Christmas, the time of unity, and she’s on a quest to return home. To be with her family. So if little kids are watching this movie, they relate to Kevin. If you’re a parent, you relate to Mama McAllister. So it’s kind of awesome that way, that he split these two plots. And you get a lot of time with Mama McAllister, too. And the C-plot would be the wet bandits, the criminals, the actual danger, a parent’s worst fear, surveying and robbing the houses as the whole block is away for Christmas and aiming for the McAllister household, the silver tuna, as they call it.

Devin: The interesting way Hughes converges the mom plot with Kevin’s plot is in the church scene with the old man.

Adam: Which is my, the fourth plot, subplot, I was going to mention is old man Marley.

Devin: Yeah, exactly. So, but his, that scene in the church, and we’ll talk about it more specifically, but is the convergence of the perspective of the parent, like you were just saying, and then the perspective of the child coming together because old man Marley was the parent who got in an argument with the kid and hadn’t, hasn’t, and Kevin, Kevin’s able to see the result of not mending quickly. So like, it’s like, in the beginning it’s be careful. Right. Exactly. And it’s like, in the beginning, it’s like, be careful what you wish for. And now Kevin can actually see the results of, of what happens when, you know, it’s never, Kevin’s always, basically the advice he gives him is it’s never too late to fix things or make things right.

Right. And now he sees, like, do I really want to grow up and, and, you know, an old man or my parents becoming old and, and I, I’m, I have kids and I miss this huge gap of life of not being with my parents, you know? So, and then, but it’s interesting. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a very cool scene because like you’re saying, Kevin actually is, is the, is the, the wise man in that.

Adam: Yeah. He’s matured enough to give. Yeah. The, the fun plot of him. Yeah. Because this is, it’s a minor plot. So it’s great to track. I called it the D plot because C was the wet band, C plot’s wet bandits. So the D plot’s minor. You get this little backstory that makes you afraid of this man from the beginning.

Devin: Mm-hmm.

Adam: And then old man Marley, great little reference to Christmas Carol. Mm-hmm. But he starts as a boogeyman, a supporting character boogeyman who we don’t expect is going to show up more and then he does, but he becomes an unexpected mentor in a way. Yeah. And this fun house mirror. It’s a pure reflection of Kevin’s dilemma in family complications. It’s like, it’s a great arc for the two of them in their relationship, Kevin and old man Marley.

Devin: And the, that, that, that mythology that it was created by basically neighborhood children around who he is made me think about the, what we, when we talked about Edward Scissorhands, where it’s, it’s when you don’t know something about somebody or you’re not, you don’t know who he is. You don’t know who that person is. You end up making up assumptions or you make up stories and things like that, that end up carrying, you know, creating, you know, turning into things, having a life of their own. And that’s what happens with, you know, old man Marley, where nobody, nobody knows who he is. So you, you’re, you’re afraid of the unknown is kind of what we would talk about with, with, Scissorhands.

Adam: Yeah. We, we fear that which we do not know. Yeah. You don’t have to, but most people do. That’s why people are afraid of the dark or not being able to see past a certain point. It’s your mind starts to invent the boogeyman on the other side of whatever that is. Right. But I was going to say the last plot is very simple. My E plot was the tarantula as the objective observer. Like that tarantula shows up in probably 10 different shots throughout the movie, at least.

Devin: Mm hmm.

Adam: Just, just, you know, even when he’s setting up traps and stuff and he’s got the twine on the floor and he gets up to go and hang the paint cans, the tarantula runs by. Yeah. But it’s so simple the way they do it for the payoff the tarantula gets, because they basically tell you the tarantula is freaking everywhere in this house, whenever we want it, wherever we want it.

Devin: Right.

Adam: And so when he’s at the attic at the end and it happens to be right there, when Marv has got his leg, it’s like perfect. But I, I thought that was a great little look like low key runner of a story. And that shows you how brilliant an architect John Hughes is like, he’s like, yep, we’re gonna pop them in here and here and here. And then there’s the payoff.

Devin: Even in the setup, you know, he can mean he’s like, all right, well, I need and I again, I making assumptions, but in just for conversation points is like, that seems like something when he say Hughes is writing or anybody’s writing. So what we’ve talked about before is you get to a point where you’re like, I need something here. I need I need I need some danger. So I need Kevin to get caught here or almost get caught here. Enemies gain ground. They grab onto he Marv grabs onto his leg. How can I Without just hitting him over the head, because I’ve done that a thousand times up until this point, what’s a creative way to get Marv to let go of his leg? And he’s like, how about I go back to first act, one of the very first scenes, and I have one of the cousins ask Buzz, who are you going to get to feed your tarantula?

And so I introduce a tarantula, and then I have Kevin try to crawl up Buzz’s shelving to get to his money stash. The shelves fall.

Adam: And accidentally free it.

Devin: Yep, so now it’s free. Unbeknownst to Kevin. Kevin doesn’t even know. Right. And so it’s like just little tiny setups like that are brilliant. I know, it’s brilliant. And so simple.

Adam: Well, in everything, dude, all the little setups that he does, you don’t realize. They’re setups.

Devin: Right, exactly.

Adam: You just don’t. It’s part of the story until you realize that those are the best kind of setups and payoffs. They’re actually part of the story until the payoff comes and you go, oh, this has way deeper roots in the story than I thought it did. That’s really good design. That’s really good architecting of the story. He just builds them really well. Right. But those were my five plots slash subplots. Perfect. And the acts are pretty simple, I think. Yeah. Act one. Act one, act two, act three. Like Devin said, we’re going to try to do a quick overview before we go a walkthrough breakthrough because it’s easier to understand what we’re talking about build-wise, movement by movement, if you sort of get the overview first.

But I think act one is all up until the family is like running through the airport and Kevin leaves the attic and crosses the threshold into the unknown world of. I wish my family away like he he goes into the attic and when he crosses the threshold coming out, that’s Kevin’s threshold into act two is like it’s a brand new world for him. The family, it’s weird. Mama McAllister and Kevin’s storylines, their thresholds don’t happen in the same moment. They’re a little staggered. And so her big thing is, I think, a little bit later when she realizes she forgot her kid. And that’s the big act one sort of he has a longer act one, I think, in this one.

Devin: I think the literal crossing of the threshold, the door opening and walking through to act two is when she’s sitting in the in her plane seat and just says, I hope we didn’t forget anything. And then he and then Kevin emerges. Kevin slowly like his reaction to unknown world is his slowly opening the door from the third floor.

Adam: Guys? Uncle Frank? Hey, this isn’t funny when he’s calling out to everybody. I think that’s his sort of exploring. Yeah. And so the act two is really simple. It’s all the road of trials, as Joseph Campbell would call it, the trials and tribulations up until he realizes I have to defend my house. And when he when he’s at the church and the church bells ring, the heralding of the third act and he runs off because it’s nine o’clock. Or eight o’clock, rather. And then because he has an hour to prepare for the wet bandits, he runs back to his house and when he gets in the door, he closes the door and he says, what does he say exactly?

It’s like, this is my house and I’m going to defend it. I have to. I have to defend it. That that’s the start of act three to me. Yep.

Devin: I agree.

Adam: That’s him putting the plan into action. And so he’s got really delineated act one, act two, act three in this. The act one, two transition is like I said, it’s a little strange. But you get it. He wishes his family away and his wish comes true. And he comes out and there’s a brand new world without a family. And that’s the journey of his quest is learning how to navigate his life and who he is as a small boy without a family.

Devin: And his arc is pretty identifiable, too, with that, you know, where he initially he’s it’s again, it’s like it’s it’s be careful what you wish for. And then when they’re gone, he’s eating ice cream, watching rated R rubbish that he calls it like rated R movies. And he’s jumping on the bed and angels with filthy souls. And then do you see the book that John Heard’s character, Peter McAllister, is reading on the plane is no, you’re no angel or something like that. And then you see him through that subtly because like right before actually when he first notices the wet bandits trying to break into his house when or not.

The first time but when he’s doing the dishes, you know, and so he’s all of a sudden becoming more of a man of the house. And so you we we subtly see him changing from doing whatever he wants to having a little bit more responsibility and accountability in there.

Adam: And yeah, that is the arc in act two. I was saying there’s a I would say the difference between movement two and three when we get to them is the one is all fun and games and movement three is the responsibility move. Yep. Yeah. That’s the way I sort of delineated those two. Because I was like, like I said, man, as soon as you start to break his structure down, it looks effortless, but it’s genius. I know it’s genius. And and I would say this that we’ve said this before when we’re talking about breakdowns and stuff. Pick one of your favorite movies and just take the Story Blueprint events.

And try to identify how things fit. And even if you don’t use the events and you go, okay, let me figure out my act one, act two, act three first. And then figure out where everything builds to a certain threshold and changes. And if you know a part in the movie that you like that sucks, that’s slow, it’s your favorite movie and there’s one part you’re like, oh, this scene is so boring to me. Break it down. Find out why it’s boring. It may have been a mistake. It may have been the one scene that they probably should have cut. But now you get to understand how a scene doesn’t work, too. You could cut stuff from home alone and it would still function.

There’s some Paris stuff that I get a little bored watching. Like John Candy’s at the airport. That scene’s a long scene with her. But at the same time, he is her old man Marley. He is the parent who tells her to go easier on herself. Yep. She’ll be fine. Kids are resilient. I did leave one at a funeral parlor once.

Devin: He was fine. He started talking after two weeks.

That’s so funny. He got paid less than the pizza guy.

Adam: I was going to say less than the tarantula, right?

Devin: No, yeah, the pizza guy, because Hughes called them up. They’re good friends. And Hughes was like, hey, I just need you. I need you for a quick part. And Candy’s like, all right, he’ll do it for scale. Or he did it for less than scale or something like that. And then it ended up being like a 23-hour day. And Candy was like, I hate you. One fun fact that blew my mind is the house that they used. It’s in Chicago. It’s a real house. But the house is only used for exterior establishing shots. And the entire interior was built in a gymnasium in a school. It’s a set. Yeah. Dude, sets are amazing.

And the same school that they filmed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Uncle Buck in. It’s the same school.

Adam: Yeah. It’s amazing, dude. Blew my mind. Having worked on a lot of sets, I can usually tell certain things. Yeah, you’re a pro. I’m a pro. Well, no, they’ll build all four walls, but they have the fourth wall they will call wild wall. So, if they want to get camera in there, they just remove the wall and then put it back in and, you know, fix it up. So, tie it in with the corners, re-caulk it, and put it back together. But they pull walls wherever they want to shoot.

It is really cool. It’s pretty, it’s wild. It’s awesome. Especially big things. Like some of the stuff that I’m working, this one I’m working on now, we’re building this entire garage area, bullpen, restaurant, gym. It’s huge, massive. It’s on a soundstage out in Long Island. And it’s meant to have a live studio audience. So, that means what you’re talking about is accurate. There is no fourth wall. The audience sits at the fourth wall. Yeah, right. And so, the three walls. It’s a three-walled thing. But they still have to be able to track between different sets. If one person walks out of a garage and into an office, you’ve got to go with them. So, the strategery involved in building them, you’ve got to think through it.

Devin: Strategery.

Right. That’s fascinating. I just, that was the one thing I was like, holy cow. Yeah, that’s amazing. I’ll give credit to, I’ll give credit to all these fun facts to the fantastic show on Netflix called The Movies That Made Us. They did Home Alone, basically the behind the scenes or the story behind, behind Home Alone. And then they did the story behind Dirty Dancing, which is fascinating as well. I mean, absolutely fascinating. And how they, how they basically filmed, like, it was like in Virginia for parts of it. And then it’s like the main, not to go on, I’ll keep this tangent quick, but it’s going to how they do the tricks of making it seem like they’re in the same place.

So they had like a place in like Atlanta or Georgia or maybe like that. It’s somewhere down there. That’s the main cabin of this retreat or the. The Catskills that they’re in, in Dirty Dancing. Right. And then the little path that Jennifer Grey or Baby takes when she’s following her cousin or something like that, holding them watermelons when they go up to a place where they’re doing, during, they’re doing the Dirty Dancing. That little path actually is in a completely different state. And in order for them to connect the two locations, they, they just added these light posts. These white light posts with black lights on them along the path in the, in the location by the resorts for, for Virginia.

And then they added light posts. That’s so brilliant. In the location. Yeah. And you’re like, oh, I, you wouldn’t even think you’re like, those are the light posts that she was just walking past.

Adam: That is a production designer and art director who they, they know what they’re doing. It’s, and it’s the one thing you can shoot stuff in different locations and still create a singular. Cinematic space. If you do it like that. And that’s what, when they, when they talk of movie magic, that’s sort of what it is. It’s like, look, we shot this in three different States and it’s supposed to be on one property. Boom. Right now. It’s awesome. It’s brilliant. It’s so brilliant. That’s why I love movie making. It’s, it’s so awesome. Yeah, it really is. Shall we delve into the walkthrough? Let’s do it. Movement one, act one, as most of you StoryOsophers and listeners know.

We, we call act one is the known world into the unknown world and movement one is from the comfort zone to out of comfort zone. It’s sort of the foundation or essence of your story. So you want to build this strong. And I have to say the hook scene slash known world routine of this story is awesome. I love it. Cause I’m watching it again and I’m like, I know, I know I remember this, but I didn’t recognize how genius it was. The first person we are introduced to physically, not voices of chaos, where you hear, like you see a big house, Christmas and lights lets you know, it’s Christmas time.

The setting is there. Perfect. First shot. You hear a lot of chaotic dialogue. Where’s my suitcase. Who stole my hairdryer. Then we’re introduced to what we think is a supporting character, a police officer, or not even a supporting character, just a throw in. It’s just some random police officer in the doorway. So what we don’t realize. At first is that this Harold, who has basically just come to tell them that there are a lot of robberies during the holidays, please be careful, just checking in on your security systems is actually the antagonist getting reconnaissance in the first moments of the movie.

Devin: One of those things that seems really simple, but Hughes, and a lot of, a lot of movies do this with that identifying character mark, whether it’s like a scar on someone’s face. So you understand when you. If you only see a little bit of it, you understand that, okay, this guy’s a villain, but the, his gold tooth and it’s interesting, it’s interesting to us. I was actually thinking about this is, is Hughes’s, decision to give that character a little bit of a menacing grin right away.

Adam: Well, he sort of punctuates it at the end. The last thing that he gets is the tooth.

Devin: For me, it was interesting decision to do it so quickly.

Adam: Yeah.

Devin: That gold tooth come is important. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. Three or four different points of the story. It’s important in the very beginning. That’s how Kevin recognizes who this guy is.

Adam: Kevin identifies him, right?

Devin: Yeah, and he identifies him. He almost gets hit by the van. Then it gets knocked out. And then at the very end when Peter finds the tooth. So it’s like there’s, so it’s four. Four spots where it’s kind of like the…

Adam: The tooth could be the sixth subplot if you really wanted to give it something because he tracks it that well. Right. It’s so… I would love to see his structure boards in terms of set up payoffs and how he tracks them.

Devin: I know. I was thinking that.

Adam: Little kid. Hey, little girl. Little girl. Little boy. Hey, do you live here? Can you, are your parents here? Like, it’s just, he adds to the chaos in such a wonderfully comic way that you don’t think of him as a villain at all until that tooth moment where he smiles at Kevin and it just sparkles and you’re like, that was weird. And so that’s sort of like one of those. Yeah. Opening hook questions that we have is like, why, why that?

Devin: Yep. Mystery.

Adam: Like, cause it doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong. Something weird.

Devin: Exactly. That moment. And then his, when he’s at the very end and he’s like, you got nothing to worry about. Don’t worry. Your house is safe with me or whatever, you know? And then you’re like, okay, something’s up with this guy. So I’m going to put that in my, my memory bank for later. And it’s also important too, though. He makes sure that the discussion informs. The cop in the foyer or the foyer, however you want to say it, that they’re going to Paris. So they’re going out of the country, meaning they’re not going to just show back up. Yeah. The premise. And he actually says that he’s like, they’re not going to, and I can just fly home or they’re not just going up to somebody’s, the grandma’s house up the street a couple hours away. They’re gone.

Adam: It lets us know the premise of them going away, but also the premise of robberies happen in the area, blah, blah, blah. Like he literally tells. It’s an interesting disguise because the information is straight up, but the disguise of his costume, if you will, is what makes it a different angle. But he’s basically saying, we’re going to rob your house. People rob houses all the time. It just happens to be me. You just don’t know it. And so the plot of the movie of them traveling to Paris and then the threat, the looming danger of the antagonistic force of robberies, burglars is all set up within the first like five minutes.

Devin: Yeah. It’s awesome. They get right into the story, which is fantastic. It’s like, we’re in it right away.

Adam: The known world routine is sort of like an inverted known world routine. This one we’re introduced to is not the McAllister’s normal known world routine. This is a house full of relatives and cousins and tons of people. There’s chaos. There’s trouble getting along. The closest thing we got to known world is Kevin coming into his mom’s bedroom. And she’s like, no, Kevin, get off that. We can see that Kevin normally is like a bother. Like he’s the youngest. He’s always in the way. Things like that.

Devin: The real known world routine for me is Kevin’s rank in the family and how people perceive him or look at him or feel. About him is that is constant, whether it’s chaos of going to a, on a trip or if they were, if there’s nobody there, like you’re saying, he’s a bother. He’s just, he’s getting into stuff and he’s a little bit, he’s got a mouth on him. You know, once you get off the phone and make me, you know, and so he’s just a kid, he’s a kid, you know? So, but he, but so it gives a little bit of just, that’s important. So the way that he snaps back with his parents and he’s got these little.

Snide little remarks back because it allows, it gives a little bit of justification to the straw that breaks the camel’s back later when he spills the milk or the milk is spilled. It’s like, all right, you know, enough is enough. It’s so we have to have a little bit of that head-butting with Kevin and his parents for everything else to make sense and why he wishes them gone or what, you know, all that stuff too. So it’s, it’s well done again.

Adam: It has to be a slowly escalating tolerance of Kevin introduction of relationships. Kevin has with everybody else until the. For me, the inciting incident is the milk spill. That’s what separates and segregates Kevin from the rest of the family and causes everything else to happen. And what’s interesting, too, is Hughes uses the watering hole in several spots, but this is the big one. He uses the watering hole as the inciting incident where everyone’s having pizza and then the milk gets spilt. And so he uses this family gathering place where all of the family is together because they’re eating and everybody blows up and hates Kevin. And the watering hole comes back later because there are several meals Kevin has on his own in an empty kitchen. And so it frames it for his loneliness and home aloneness later down the road. It’s just so smart.

Devin: And this is… This is one of the more overlooked setups is when Peter McAllister is cleaning up the milk and he cleans, you know, with all the paper towels, he accidentally throws Kevin’s boarding pass in the garbage, too.

Adam: Oh, is that? Oh, I missed that.

Devin: Yeah. And it’s literally, the cut is so fast, you don’t notice it, but it’s Kevin’s boarding pass is in the garbage. So another thing is like, well, if the dad has all the boarding passes, why? Of course. And they’re handing out all the boarding passes when they get out of the van. Yeah. Well, that’s why. Because Kevin’s boarding pass wasn’t in there.

Adam: That’s another place he covers his butt.

Devin: Yeah, absolutely.

Adam: It’s like when we were talking about before, if there’s something illogical and you really have want to do like a lame way of covering it, you have one character go, we shouldn’t go in there. We’re all going to die. And the rest of them go, no. And discount the person’s protest. But the audience is that character protesting.

Devin: Yeah, right. Absolutely.

Adam: If you’re smart, you use a little fiction putty and you cover up the cracks in all the design so that it seems like it all works. And Hughes does it so well. And he probably did this retroactively.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: He probably got to the scene with the airport and he was like, oh, shoot, they’re going to notice he’s not here because they have a ticket for Kevin and Kevin’s not here. So let me go back to the milk scene and what he spills milk on is his own ticket and it goes in the trash. And so they don’t even notice it. Yeah. I guarantee you, John Hughes, the reason why these stories are so intricately plotted and well designed is because of that. He gets to a problem place. And we say this too. If you’re at a problem place in your story and you can’t figure out why it’s not working or, oh, no, what am I going to do here? Chances are you have to fix it retroactively. You have to go back to a previous scene and fix something up and then that scene will work because you’ve covered your butt.

Devin: But don’t be lazy about it, too. It’s like, that’s what, it can be as simple as and creatively brilliant as what Hughes does here, where if you’re in a hurry to just to finish a story and send it to an agent or send it out, then that’s, it is what it is. But if you’re really trying to build a story and create a story, create a world and build, build some structure, then that’s why we’ve talked about in past episodes is the different points of view to be tracking and the audience, you should always be tracking on, okay, where’s my audience now? What do I want them to see?

Yeah.

What do I want them to know right now? But also, what would they be thinking? How would they be critical about what’s going on? And one of them, like we’re saying is, Hughes may have done it retroactively, he may have figured this out, but he, while he’s writing, but, you know, at some point, I’m sure he was just tracking, all right, I’m going to go through my script right now, as an audience member watching this film, and I’m going to be very critical or point out holes, be like, well, you’re just, everybody’s getting on a van and you’re handing, you’re handing tickets out. Okay, so that, I need to figure out why he doesn’t have a ticket. I need to figure out why they can’t just phone home and they can’t just call Kevin and be like, oh my, we’re sorry, we left without you. We’re going to just stay there. We’re coming back. Okay, well, we’ll make sure that there was a huge storm the night before that blows the power out, because that solves our issue of them getting up late, but it also, you know.

Adam: Solves the communication issue.

Devin: Hey, Miss McAllister, we got the power back on, but mom, it’s going to take Ma Bell days to get the phones back working because of the holidays, whatever. Yeah, it’s very simple. They’re simple, but they’re, if from an audience, we’re like, oh, okay, that’s why he doesn’t have a ticket. Oh, that’s why you can’t just call him. All of that, all of the little tiny things.

Adam: Yeah, you never want those moments where you’re like, come on, really? Yeah. Like, if your response is that, as an audience, where you don’t believe what they’ve laid out for you. Because we’re, as an audience member, I know I am, but I speak for all of us. You’re willing to suspend disbelief if you’re into the story. And if the reasoning, Devin, you introduced that word earlier in the season, but that’s a really important point. The cinematic reasoning is good. It doesn’t matter if it, like, look, by the end of this movie, Joe Pesci or Harry peeks his head in a door. Stands there as it blow torches his scalp, going.

Right. It’s ridiculous. But by that point in time, we’re so into this movie. We’re all about it. We don’t doubt it. We just love it. We eat it up. But if you did that in the beginning of the movie, we might go, Oh, this is going to be a silly, stupid movie. It might be too much for the beginning, instead of easing us in with all this logic and all things make sense. Of course, that’s the way it is. And of course, is what would happen because a kid invented this trap. You know, it’s like Bugs Bunny or like it’s so right. Yeah. The whole intro, it’s all very chaotic. And then the inciting incident extends the chaos.

Devin: The other good setup that he does during the inciting incident is when he is sent up to the third floor, the scary attic. Oh, this is what I was calling the call to quest. When he says, I wish my family away. Like that’s to me what his… Kevin up to the third floor. And he has this conversation with his mom about Fuller’s going to wet the bed. And his mom subtly says, fine, we’ll find somewhere else to put him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That means Kevin is now alone on the third floor. And he’s not going to hear the chaos that’s going on when they wake up late.

So good. So that’s, you know, it’s just like, well, he’s so, it’s so brilliant on him being able to put Kevin in a place that…

Adam: He’s forgotten about.

Devin: He won’t either wake up or… Yeah. He’s forgotten about. So it’s like, just little things like that, where he’s literally covering all of his bases.

Adam: Because they set up the whole thing with Fuller the whole time, the whole time, the whole time. And then all of a sudden, it’s like, fine, we’ll put Fuller somewhere else.

Devin: Yep, exactly.

Adam: Because the setup is the opposite of what the payoff is in terms of that little minor Fuller. Like, Fuller, what’s the bed? That’s Kieran Culkin, too. It’s his little brother he’s talking about, which makes me laugh. I know. It’s like, he wet the bed. Yeah. He’s like, fine, we’ll put Fuller somewhere else.

Devin: It’s such a great exchange between mom and son, that entire exchange with him, where he has to, like, walk up five steps to look eye level with her. So he walks up and gets eye level with her. He even goes up a little higher than her. Yep.

Adam: But this is a great, also, new and interesting way of looking at call to quest, refusal of call to quest, and answer the call to quest. Mm-hmm. Because he says, I wish that I didn’t have a family. Like, he wishes that his family would go away. And she goes, are you sure? Which is the refusal. Are you sure, Kevin? I’m giving you an out, because that’s not something that’s good to wish for, and you should think that again. And he goes, nope, I’m committing. He’s a willing hero. I want my wish, and I want it granted. And so that three-step call refusal answer is an argument between the child who says, this is what I want.

And I’m not being treated fairly. And the parent going, no, no, no, Kevin, you’re going upstairs. And I don’t want to hear any ifs, ands, or buts about it, da-da-da, part of the parent argument. And she goes, are you sure? And he’s like, yes, I’m tired of all of you. And that’s an interest. It’s also a really interesting call to quest and refusal and answer. It’s weird, but it’s fascinating.

Devin: You hit the nail on the head with it’s the call, the refusal, the answer, because it’s that entire, maybe 20 seconds, 25 seconds, but it’s, you know, it’s maybe you should ask Santa for an answer. I don’t want a new family. I don’t want any family. Families suck. Okay. That is the refusal. And then I don’t want to see you again for the rest of my whole life. And I don’t want to see anybody else either. And then she says, you’d feel pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you didn’t have a family. He’s like, no, I wouldn’t. And she says, and then say it again, and maybe it will happen. And then he says it again. And then, and then we get to the, get to the final answer in the call. And he’s like, I wish they would all just disappear.

Okay. And when he’s sitting in the bed and he, and then his voiceover, his haunting voiceover is, I wish they would all just disappear. And then we cut to like the storm.

Adam: The voiceover is such a weird choice there. He should have just said it out loud to, cause he’s sitting there with the, when he’s grooming himself in the mirror, he’s like, I washed every crevice of my body. He’s telling the audience exactly what’s going on out loud. I’m like, why don’t we just do that in the bed? Same difference, right? It’s weird, but let him narrate out loud to himself. It’s kind of funny.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: There was another weird.

Devin: I think there’s also a exclamation to that when it’s, we want the audience to know, you know. All right, well, that must be important because we’re doing this haunting. Yeah, it probably was like, hey, maybe here instead of him just thinking on the bed and we don’t have any footage of him saying anything, we’ll just throw a voiceover in.

Adam: But they did that in two places that I’m like, nope, didn’t like it. That was one. I didn’t like the voiceover.

Devin: When he’s eating breakfast and they’re just having the clouds of people saying stuff to him. Is that what the other part you’re talking about?

Adam: That’s another one. No, I just don’t like that is alright. But I don’t like the fact that they did one of Buzz when Buzz never said that. I didn’t like that part. Everybody else, it literally was the line you heard them say in the kitchen or whatever. And then Buzz is like, I’ll feed you to my tarantula. I’m like, I don’t quite recall. This incident. How can he recall it if I don’t like, you know, so no, the other one was he it’s right after he hides in the nativity scene from the wet bandits and they say, I’m not going in that church and they drive off. And then you realize he was hiding as one of the shepherds. And when he’s running back to his house with his back.

Away from us. I’ll be ready. Yeah. When they come back, I’ll be ready. Yeah. And it’s not like a breathless kid running. I don’t mind that one. I hate it. Really? I’m like, I don’t even need, we don’t even need it. We don’t even need it. I don’t know. I don’t mind. It was really obvious ADR to me. It’s a little too on the head, I think, but. Well, it’s also like, it doesn’t sound like it’s coming out of his body. He’d be, if he’s running, he’s going to be a little breathless and stuff. And, you know, and it just sounds like he’s sitting in a room recording the line.

Devin: All right.

Adam: All right. But those are my only criticisms. I love this movie. I’m just like, those technical bits. Anyway, dude, oh, something we didn’t mention was Old Man Marley was not in the original script. I didn’t know. Yeah. I was like, wow. Well, that’s a brilliant addition to a second draft.

Devin: He’s a big, it’s a very important character.

Adam: Huge. Yeah. But it goes to show you that your first draft, you won’t get it all right. Because if you would have left him out, there’s a dimension to that story where we don’t have to see Kevin reunite. With his family and give these warm, sentimental, poetic hugs. All he has to do is look out the window and see the look from the old man after he hugs his granddaughter and our heart will break. Yep. Right. And he, and we can impose on Kevin the feelings and thoughts based on his observation.

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[Clip from the Home Alone trailer]

Adam: Before we get to the first threshold, the whole beginning of this is great. It’s not a normal cut and dry hook, known world routine, inciting incident, and call, refusal, and choosal. It’s not the normal way it’s done, but it all is there. The ingredients are all there.

Devin: He also gets to the crossing of the threshold into his second act at about the 15 minute mark, which is nice. And not the classic, let’s break everything up into 25, 75, 25. So the way that this film is written and the way that it was, it was actually executed, directed and acted, is like the, for me, the perfect formula. It’s let’s get into the story. And we’ve talked about it before. A lot of the emergence of long form storytelling with Netflix, where they can do everything’s episodic and seasonal. It seems like, like they take liberties in, in a really slow building or establishing of the setting and establishing of the characters and building, you know, character profile and things like that. It seems like it sometimes they take forever. And so I’ve learned, I’m like, all right, episode one is going to be.

Slow. So if I want to, if I want to get into it, I’ll wait till episode two or three or four, where the story will start picking up.

Adam: You have a little more patience than I do. If you can’t get me in the first couple episodes, I’m not going to watch the rest of it. I’m just not.

Devin: I have certainly completely quit on, on, on things. Even.

Adam: There are even things I should have quit on that I did not. And I’ve learned my lesson.

Devin: Oh, I have a broken glass or whatever, whatever it was on. HBO. I literally watched like the 12 episodes, whatever it was. And because I thought for sure there’s going to be, I’m going to be paid off for the amount of time that I’ve spent. And HBO sucks in the way that you have to tune in every Sunday night, you know, they don’t, they don’t drop all the episodes. So I’d like literally gave my Sunday nights over a summer to, I forget. It’s not broken glass. I forgot what it was called, but very disappointing. So get into it.

Adam: Well, you know, Disney+ is doing that now. The first, I mean, the way they’re getting people to sign up for free and then continue their subscription is by distributing the Mandalorian and the Mandalorian is a huge hit. And so every, that there is a brilliant, it’s brilliant marketing on their part. The obsession with baby Yoda and all that. Have you ever seen it? I have Disney+, but I haven’t, I haven’t. Dude, awesome. You should check into it. It’s, it’s awesome. I love it. Baby Yoda is what makes it. I got away from the Star Wars universe for a while. I’m with you. I’m not necessarily a Star Wars guy, but I am a cute little creature guy.

I love that. Right. And so I know basically baby Yoda. I mean, there’s a meme of baby Yoda next to a Mogwai, Gizmo, from Gremlins.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: And it goes, it goes, Hey, can I copy your homework? And it’s like, yeah, just make sure you make it look a little different. So no one knows. And they have the two pictures side by side and they almost look identical except one is green. And the other one is the mogwai. And it’s like, Oh, I see where they got their baby Yoda design. No wonder everyone thinks he’s so freaking cute. Someone said, you got to watch the Mandalorian. I’m like, I’m not big into the Boba Fett mythology and all that jazz. Cause he’s part of a sect of bounty hunters. It’s like a religion. These bounty hunters.

Yeah. And I’m like, I’m not as big into the Boba Fett thing as everyone else. And they’re like, no, no, no. For baby Yoda. And I’m like, all right, I’ll watch an episode. And then I’m hooked. Cause every time you, you’re like, you’re, you can’t wait until baby Yoda comes on screen. And then you’re like, Oh, he’s here.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: And it’s not Yoda. It’s just an alien. People call him baby Yoda, but it’s just a baby version of. Is it Yoda? No, because in the timeline, technically Yoda would be dead. So it’s another of Yoda’s race as a child.

Devin: Is he called baby Yoda? Baby Yoda in the show?

Adam: I think he’s called baby Yoda by the fans. That’s how he got the nickname. Okay, gotcha. I’ll check it out. He’s adorable. It’s so adorable.

Devin: It’s kind of like Groot in. Yes. Not Groot, but. Yeah, Groot. Baby Groot. Is it? The little guy? Yeah, baby Groot.

Adam: In Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah. He’s way cuter. I love that character. Anyway, so. So anyway, crossing the threshold, I think it’s, it’s the storm. The storm and them trying to get the hell out of the house. Yep. It’s like the crossing of the threshold is them leaving their kingdom threshold, the threshold of their kingdom to get to the airport. Yeah. For me, it starts with the storm and it ends with her. I hope we didn’t forget anything. It’s one of the longer crossing of threshold events. I think I would absolutely, I would agree with that for sure. I’ve, I’ve sort of broken down. Yeah. It goes on for a long time, which is very interesting to me because their whole threshold is from leaving their house to crossing the airport threshold, to getting to the counter, to going through the gangway, or whatever it’s called, to get to the plane. And then once they’re in the plane and the plane takes off, you need a tunnel. They go through that. There’s all these thresholds to get to the plane terminal. And then once you see the, yeah, but I’m talking, whatever the attachable tunnel, no, the jetway, it fell off the jetway. [unclear] So once we see the plane in the air, we know it’s too late. We know that threshold of no return for them is over. Oh yeah. And then he comes out of the attic. And so those thresholds are, there’s tons of thresholds.

And this first crossing, which is fascinating, but like I said, he knows the formulas and all he does is go now, how can I do this differently, uniquely, something that people haven’t seen quite before. And even just the choice of whether this was probably him. Cause he loves the music, John Hughes, but when they’re. It cuts the airport and the entire family is running like maniacs and it’s like, run, run Rudolph. The energy of it is such a great thrust into act two. Yeah. You know what I mean? Coming from act one, it’s like, we got to make the plane. And we’re sitting here knowing you forgot a child. There’s all this dramatic tension.

We’re under this race to the plane that we, that we’re feeling while it’s happening. There’s a lot of energy in it, which is sort of interesting. The whole beginning of this film launches with energy. It’s full of energy in life.

Devin: The pacing is fantastic.

Adam: Yeah, absolutely. Throughout every, throughout the entire story. It’s slow. It shows a little bit in act two, but it sort of has to, because how else do you show Kevin’s loneliness?

Devin: There’s got to be a contrast between the climax and the, yeah.

Adam: Or the setup in the second act. There’s all this family chaos and then there’s nothing. Empty kitchen.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: All quiet. And he sort of, they mix it up with Kevin, Kevin being quiet in some moments. And then his little adventurous ideas, riding sleds down the steps, eating bloopy marshmallow, ice cream and chips. Like there’s all the, like scaring away the pizza driver junk and watching rubbish. It’s like, no, like still coming up. Like those little moments where it’s like a kid’s prank or something. They’re intercut with these quieter moments.

Devin: And he throws in to help Kevin’s arc along the way, his fear of the furnace. And so we see him go down and the furnace comes alive and he runs upstairs.

Adam: And then the, when he first see, when, when the wet bandits, the wet bandits, we’re actually getting to this step-by-step too. This is, you get to see in movement two and three, the fear and then him confronting his fears that what he doesn’t, he doesn’t know how to shop. He doesn’t know how to do this stuff. But he figures it out. He doesn’t know how he’s going to scare these guys away, but he’s intuitive. He flips on the basement light and they run the first time.

Devin: And for that one, he gives them a false victory where he keeps hiding under the bed. And he’s like, a wimps wouldn’t hide under the bed. I, you know, I’m the man of the house now. And he runs outside and he’s like, I’m not afraid. And then old man Marley just steps in front of him. And he drags that trash can of salt. He’s not ready yet.

Adam: He just, can you imagine? He just stares him in the face and just screams at him.

And then runs away.

Devin: And he also covers his bases again, too, in this scene, in this reaction to it, because we’ve kind of moved down to the reaction to the unknown world a little bit. It’s overlapped. So as Kevin’s already crossed his threshold, and he’s exploring, we’re still at with the mom who hasn’t crossed the threshold yet, because they’re still on the plane. She hasn’t yelled Kevin yet. And so we’re still on the plane where he’s- Yeah, as soon as she yells Kevin, that’s the act one, act two threshold for her. Kevin! And she’s trying to figure out what, why she feels like she forgot something. And so they go through, she’s like, did I unplug, did I turn the coffee off? And he’s like, no, I did. And then, and then they get to the point- The cars and- Because we’ve already seen Kevin go outside, and he looks in the garage, and the garage doors are open, and the cars are there. He’s like, they didn’t go anywhere. He doesn’t realize they were picked up by airport vans. And so he thinks he, this really did happen. He made his family disappear. And then, cut back to John Heard, or Peter, telling Kate, that’s it. I forgot to, I forgot to shut the garage. That’s it. And she’s like, no, that’s not it. You know, and then we get, and then we have her cross the threshold, her threshold. So it’s a little, like you’re saying, it was, it’s a, they’re on different paths. It’s just a little delayed. Hers is a bit delayed.

Adam: If you’re a masterful storyteller like John Hughes, you can basically take two different plot lines and assign different timings for these events. Yeah. And it makes the story a little bit more juicy and interesting, because building to a threshold, there’s usually a build in tension, and then something happens, and there’s a close call, or an escape, or something. And if that happens on one plot line, then you cut to the other one, and they’re still at the threshold, or building to it, there’s always this swift momentum to the entire story. You know, if you did a singular hero and followed these events, it’s still going to be entertaining.

But it takes a masterful hand to stagger them. Trust me, earlier stories I’ve written, it’s been basically a singular plot line. And then as I start to get more involved with subplots and stuff, and you and I talk about the stuff we’re working on with subplots, you realize, oh, shoot, these characters all don’t have the same revelations at the same moment. That would be idiotic. They have to have them at different points for their own character arc to feel organic. And that’s what he does really well with. The parent missing the child, and the child missing his family. Two separate plots that just sort of undulate, and they’re like a sine wave up and down, and, you know, they hit different marks at each, at different places.

Devin: Right. And now we’ve pushed Kevin into him having to cope with not having a family anymore, and Kate McAllister having to cope with forgetting her child and trying to get back, which is huge.

Adam: Every parent’s worst.

Devin: I’m going to make sure he’s like, well, I’m not going to just, I’m not going to just have them travel to LA. Yep. Because that would make it fairly easy to get back. I’m going to send them across the pond, and they are going to, it’s going to be a, I’m going to have the storm that knocked everything out is going to be an obstacle. So she’s got her own objective obstacle and desired outcome. That’s the, again, the brilliance of how simple he makes it look on film. And it’s also, you have to understand that you’re the audience. Unless you do some cheap split screen when everything’s happening to Kate McAllister on the right side and everything’s happening to Kevin McAllister on the left side, and then they both cross the threshold at the same time.

Like she says, Kevin, while he realizes the garage doors open, the cars are there. That would, it just, you need to have it staggered in that way.

Adam: Which would be sort of interestingly poetic if he’s sitting there and goes, I made my family disappear. And then he comes to the revelation that that’s okay. By him, I made my family disappear. And then you cut to the plane and she goes, Kevin, right? The, the, put the tug of war in your heart where you’re laughing at what he’s thinking. And then you feel hers like instantly fear that she left a child might’ve been effective, but he’s doing it as you should in full scenes. He’s building to those Kevin moments and those, I made my family. He doesn’t cut back and forth because, or Chris.

Columbus, whoever was made decisions with the editor, as far as pacing that, that you need the build to that revelation and that discovery. So, the first day of school is pretty simple for both of them. It’s Kevin running around like a freaking maniac and, you know, doing all kinds of stupid stuff. And her being calmed by the fact, I forgot my reading glasses, if it makes you feel any better, by Uncle Bonehead and the rest. Look what you did, you little jerk. He’s such a dick. They go to the airport counter and all that stuff and try to figure stuff out. And Kevin’s, I would say, in terms of our order of events, rules and tools precedes the watering hole in this segment.

He goes into Buzz’s trunk.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: And Buzz’s trunk is filled with firecrackers. He sees the gun on the wall and he practices with the figurines. Here’s what I love about John Hughes. It lets us know he’s a good shot and he knows how to use the gun.

Devin: Uh-huh.

Adam: The firecrackers, he says, these will be useful for later. And he puts them in his pocket. But he also, in shooting out the stuff in the laundry chute, lets you know how the iron is going to work with Marv in the climax. Uh-huh. Effortlessly. Like, why did he set them up there? Because John Hughes wanted to set up the laundry chute. It’s so good, man. It’s so good.

Devin: Every scene has a reason for being, and we’ve talked about that in the past. It’s like. A purpose. Every scene has a reason and a purpose. That’s the difference between screenwriting and novel writing, which is also. Why you can get into a little trouble when you’re released from the shackles of screenwriting and given the opportunity to write, or you take the opportunity to write a novel. You’re like, oh, I have all this time to set stuff in that you can lose. Momentum. Pacing. Without those constraints of pacing and page numbers and trying to get it, you know, everything to happen very quickly and the economy of the page.

Novel writing, you can kind of accidentally and kind of lose your audience. Uh-huh. Where you take too much time to explain stuff. But with screenwriting, what Hughes is really good at is the economy of the page. He knows that, well, I have this amount of time to write this entire story. So every single scene is, has, has a purpose and there’s no throwaway scenes. There’s no, there’s nothing there to in, in any of his movies that are, are just there because he needed to transition from somewhere to someplace, someplace, or he was, he got lazy with, with that. Or he’s expecting the audience. He’s expecting the audience to understand how the shoot works, you know, things like that.

So, and even with the, with Peter McAllister going up right after, you know, when they land in Paris, the subtle setup of, oh, you know, it’s only, there’s going to be two days before this flight can go before there’s another flight back to Chicago. Well, the panic of the mother, you know, you lose logic and reasoning as a, as a, as a parent or anybody who was in crisis. And the father’s like, well, I’ll wait with the rest of the family. We’ll take, we’ll, you know, we’ll take the plane back in two days. And then she goes on this wild goose chase to get back to Chicago on this, you know, all over the, going all over the map.

And the payoff is she beats her family home by 10 minutes or five minutes or five seconds.

Adam: So it’s like, that’s what I think is great about her journey is it’s fueled by a mother’s worry.

Devin: Exactly. And that was, that’s important.

Adam: It’s not terribly far. It’s not overly focused. It’s very scattered and frantic and terrified. Relatable. So the results she gets are just as equally frantic and, like, she doesn’t get a straight path. Her, her modus operandi is out of worry, you know, a mother’s concern and fear. And so her path is jagged. It’s all over the place.

Devin: Right. It’s doing anything you can to get back to your kid.

Adam: Yeah. And so that, but it also sort of mixes up her alignment on, she’s motivated more by the fear.

Devin: Right.

Adam: Whereas he is looking at it from a slightly calmer place and going, look, let’s use logic, honey. She’s like, no, I don’t want logic, Peter. I want to get home to my son. And so she ends up creating her own pathway that is crazy to get there because she’s a little, she’s like, oh my God, I’m a bad mother.

Devin: I’m terrible. And we’ve all been there where you, you’re not panic. It’s panic here, but where you feel like if you’re not doing something. You’re not moving forward or you’re not contributing to obtaining or attaining what you’re trying to do, even though the logic and more efficient. Pathway to something is to wait. Right. And yeah, but you, you, you just imagine her sitting in a hotel room waiting two days for a flight. She couldn’t do it. You just can’t do it. Like you almost have to, even though in the. Back your mind, you know, there’s no way I can get back in a day or an hour. It’s going to probably take me two days to get back. At least I’m moving towards that person. You know, at least I’m moving towards that objective. I’ve been there.

Adam: Her feeling. Emotional set point, her feeling place and her perspective is desperation. And so her path is desperation. Absolutely. Yeah. So it’s a really important thing to note for characters. Don’t just give them some random adventure. Make sure as we talk about throughout since episode one, characters are made of choices. Make sure they choose their path. She has chosen a desperate path. And so she’s got a desperate journey. Peter has chosen a will take. Make the most logical when the entire family can be back and it’ll be two days. And his path is effortless because he’s chosen the logical path and she’s so distraught because she feels like there’s a lot of guilt and other things that she’s got going on underneath of it because she told her son, why don’t you Wish your family away. So you know she’s revisiting that conversation just as much as Kevin is.

You know, that argument they had on the attic steps. But it’s always important to note, your character, just like people, stuff doesn’t just happen. You choose a perspective. You choose what you do. You can prepave. You’re not at the whim of things in a lot of ways. That’s what I love about this with Kevin is, it doesn’t just happen to him. He literally asks. For it to happen in the call to adventure. He says, this is what I want. I don’t want you guys around anymore. And she goes, fine, then say it again. Maybe it’ll happen. And she challenges him. And then on the other side of that challenge, they both feel guilty or like, Oh, I wish I wouldn’t regret. I wish I would.

It’s really like, God, I love breaking down huge stuff. So movement two starts with that first day of school. It’s when she discovers her kids at home and he discovers he’s home by himself. And it’s movement two, as we sometimes call it based on the, this. This is one thing I do agree with Blake Snyder. It’s all fun and games. This is always the best spot to like liven up your movie. And that’s when Kevin says, I’m free. I can do whatever I want. This is my house now. And then the rules and tools with. Stuff in the room. We start to slowly set up all of the rules and tools throughout this movement, movement two and movement three, which we’ll be discussing next week. The, all the rules and tools that will be the payoffs in the climax.

That’s a half hour genius, almost Looney Tunes esque climax. Now I would say this movement two and three, like we said in Christmas vacation, Hughes tends to keep his movement four short because if not, they get overly emotional. They get, they start to make the movie drag pacing wise and the, because it’s the fall of the heart wall and recovery and stuff. And that happens for mama McAllister with John Candy in the van as he’s, she’s traveling with a polka band, and with Kevin. With old man Marley in the church. That’s basically around the movement for time. But before that, you’ve got two movements, movement two and three that are building the slowly encroaching wet bandits threat and Kevin.

Kevin’s arc of being free and carefree and playing to realizing he’s going to have to take care of himself a little bit. And the first step is, I don’t have my toothbrush. That’s the first time. He’s like, Hmm, I need something. I can’t ask mom for it because it was obviously packed in my bag or whatever the heck, you know, somewhere he doesn’t have it. But the toothbrush is one of the first things that is the responsibility. I’m going to have to go get that in town today and making sure it’s. Yeah. And so there are these, there are these cute adult kid moments like that. And when the, the sweet gal rings him up in the grocery store, Oh wait, I have a coupon for that. And she’s sort of inside.

It’s such a good performance on her part. She’s a really good actress. Yeah. Her facial expressions are perfect. I really loved her performance because she’s inside. She’s like sort of smiling and charmed by him, but she’s playing a different surface thing.

Devin: And we also know he’s quick-witted. He’s quick with what he says because of his conversations with adults. Do you think that?

You’re right. I don’t think so.

Adam: But anyway, so that’s more of the movement three part. The movement three, he starts shopping for himself and stuff like that. But the movement two, we get the hint that it’s headed that way with the toothbrush. Yeah. And we can outline all the different things that he sort of does in movement two. Like the watering hole revisited is he’s not eating in the kitchen where he should be. Microwave melting marshmallows and goopy crap is everywhere. He’s sitting in a chair with this bowl of crap and he’s just eating it. So the revisiting to the watering hole is. Not only is he denied pizza. And room to have the pizza because everybody’s chaotic in the kitchen. He chooses his own junk food meal and eats it in the living room while watching a rated R.

Filthy movie, right? Only to discover that it scares him, right? Seeing a guy get gunned down on TV really scares him. And now he knows why his parents protected him. And there’s these weird little moments like that. I’m like, oh, it’s so smart. Mm-hmm. Isn’t that that right after that’s when she goes, I feel like I’m forgetting something, Peter. Like it’s delayed her discovery. It happens, I think, right after he goes, Mom! And it cuts to the plane and her face is like, Yeah. I feel like it’s almost like,

Devin: It’s close to that, yeah.

Adam: She heard him scream, Mom. He calls out to her and it’s almost, through the universe, she hears him on the plane.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: The way the cut happens. It’s sort of cool. It’s almost like that mother’s intuition, they play on that in that cut. It’s kind of cool.

Devin: That’s the contrast between her and the father. And it’s also that contrast, what we were just talking about. It’s like why the father is able to have this logic.

Adam: The father would be watching, he’s reading the angel’s book while the mom’s like, something’s wrong. And he’s like, no, no, no. Yeah. I’m reading Filthy Angels. We’re good, honey.

Devin: Well, he’s not reading Filthy Angels. He’s reading You Are No Angel or something like that. No Angel or, I forget. I forgot the name of it, but it’s pretty funny. That’s also one of my favorite easy Easter eggs to do is not, don’t just put any book in someone’s hand. Use that, use that book to, as like a hidden. An opportunity. If people catch it, people catch it. If not, but it connect, it can connect things. So it’s really, it’s one of those.

Adam: It, it, it expands the story world with just a simple prop that people will overlook if they’re not avid movie watchers.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: Yeah. So movement two, we’re building to the threshold, which is crossing into the danger zone. And I think you could say the approach to the danger zone, the event that happens after this watering hole event is there’s no way home for mama McAllister or the family. They can’t get to Kevin. Right. But meaning to mention this, but this is a great place to do it. This movie would never be able to work now. Nope. In the current day because of cell phones. Technology. Yeah. Yep. The only time this movie could have happened is, is when it did, when it came out and was it 90, 94, 91 or 92 cell phones have ruined a lot of movie plots.

Devin: Well, and that’s the thing is like, even with you and I deciding what we’re writing now, which is a present day, you know, heist film, it’s having to be very, we were talking about with Hughes is like cover your butt. The audience is going to ask, well, why aren’t you, you, why aren’t you doing this? Why don’t they want to use a cell phone? Why don’t they use GPS? So it’s like, all right, well, you got it. All right. Well, you got to account for that stuff. You have to try to answer the questions either by actions of the characters or like you’re saying, subtly implant a character that is acting on behalf of the audience that at least addresses what you know, they’re thinking and then allow that the reasoning for why you’re not using a cell phone to come out, you know, like, oh, they’re going to track, you know, whatever.

Yeah. But you just, you have to be cognizant of it. You have to be, you have to account for the technology and it sucks.

Adam: Your audience has to buy it. If your audience doesn’t buy it, it, it, the story fails instantly and forever. Like they won’t forgive it after that because you’ve just built it on some shaky foundation. Even if it’s one little thing like that, it’s amazing how conflict and suspense and thriller and all those things, the cell phone has destroyed. Literally those genres, you have to be so specific.

Devin: And then if you try to use it, it’s just cheap and lazy.

Adam: If you do it artfully, but if you do it poorly, it just becomes crappy. Like I’ve seen stuff where they do text on screen.

Devin: If you use it as a tool other than calling people, I agree with it.

Adam: Well, but I mean, it is a tool that people use more than just calling people for looking stuff up information.

Devin: To use the technology, the other technology of the phone rather than communication, then I, communication from person to person. I think I enjoy that, but I think it’s the technology is just really hard. It’s, it’s in order to just, and this is a personal opinion. Just let me caveat that before I get jumped on, not by you, by anybody listening. For me, it’s, I try to remove as much technology, remove as much technology as I can from stories just because I, I enjoy the obstacle of not having that, I guess is probably the best way to put that.

Adam: But I think if you’re going to include that technology, include it in a way that’s comprehensive. Like, if you’re going to put it in there, allow them to turn the phone into, you know, it’s a flashlight. It’s a this. Let them use it as the Swiss Army knife tool that it is.

Devin: Yeah, that’s cool. I’m cool with that.

Adam: Because if not, and they’re like, I can only call people because I got a flip phone. It’s like, nah, lame excuse. If you’re going to give them a phone, make sure you give them the tools. If you’re going to leave out the phone, make sure you don’t give them the tools. It’s like, there’s this, I really, we should do an episode in the future about the timeline when the cell phone really started to become a multifaceted Swiss Army knife type tool and see the difference between old world plot lines where you only had a landline and answering machines, right? Even before beepers and stuff, you could pay people mobily and remotely.

And then now how things are transitioning because people still want to write those old school. Plot lines, but you can’t believe them as much anymore because like, oh, we don’t have a signal out here. It’s in the woods and there’s no signal. It’s like, you gotta do better than that. And that used to work, actually. It did for about a year or two.

Devin: The signal thing used to work, but now it won’t work. At all. I guess there are places in the world that certainly don’t have, like, they’re not developed.

Adam: And StoryOsophers, we can actually talk to this point and attest to it because one of the pieces we’re writing, we’ve really been struggling with who has levels of. Technology within our cast and who does not. Our cast of characters.

Devin: See, I’m not opposed to technology. I came up with a technology concept for our story, so I’m not against it. I’m just probably because there’s no way for us to avoid it. I bet that’s why I enjoy watching, like, films and series that take place in, like, the 1850s or 1800s because of the simplistic lifestyle. And the storytelling behind it. I guess that’s why I enjoy those types of films.

Adam: I do, too. But at the same time, I want to see, I want to explore what we can do with this. Most people aren’t really pushing the envelope of where our technology goes next in stories. Very few stories are like that. They’re like, it’s reflection of reality and not imagining beyond. But anyway, let’s get back to this. Let’s get back to the, we went off on a tangent, but it was an important tangent. This movie would not have. It would not have worked if cell phones existed. The whole plot would have crumbled. Where are we, by the way?

Devin: What event are we in?

Adam: We’re approaching the danger zone. So Kevin’s rules and tools is Buzz’s trunk. The watering hole is the eating the bad food and the airplane scene. Approaching the danger zone and the second threshold of the danger zone is a longer chunk. There’s a slow build to these things.

Devin: Let me just add something real quick. I love the use of a toy chest. Because you can put, it’s kind of like a bag, like your, your character having a satchel. You can put anything, anything you need to set something up like the firecrackers and everything or the fire. But you can also use it to, if you have to late or retroactively go back, you’re like, all right, well, let’s put it in the chest and let’s put it in the satchel.

Adam: Firecrackers. He pulls them out. These will come in useful later. Will they? How do you know that? What are you going to freaking use? Firecrackers for unless someone went back and ADR that line because you were going to use them to scare off Daniel Stern at the middle of the movie.

Devin: Like I’ll save these for later. Again, it was a ADR for sure too. All he had to do is pick up the firecrackers, firecrackers and put them in a pocket. Bingo. Now we know he has them on him.

Adam: Anyway, I would say this next build is the approaching the danger zone rules and tools. It’s a little mixed up and then crossing into the danger zone. He gets a visit from the firecrackers. He sees the shadows sneak past the door because they want the silver tuna of the McAllister household. And then he turns on the basement lights and then the police come to check in on him and he’s still hiding under the blankets. And then he goes out to the street eventually and says, I’m not afraid anymore. And old man Marley shows up and he screams at him and runs back in the house. All this stuff is to me still part of movement two.

And the threshold of crossing into the danger zone. The threshold of movement two for me is when the wet bandits almost hit him with the van and then he hides at the church. All right. And then he runs back to the house and says, I’ll be ready for them when they come back. That’s the danger zone threshold of Movement 2 to me. He has two interactions with the Wet Bandits in Movement 2.

Devin: I’m close to that, I think. I have, the crossing of the threshold is Harry and Marv thinking the hou- so it’s basically when we were introduced to Harry and Marv and then, the attempt to break in, and then and then Kevin notices the silhouettes walking towards the basement and he turns on the light. For me, that’s the cross, that’s a crossing. And it’s just all blurred.

Adam: That’s what I originally had marked down. And then I moved it so that the actual crossing of the- into the danger zone was when they almost hit him with the van, and they follow him. And then he hides at the church and then returns to the house. To me, I thought that was more dangerous because he’s face to face with the antagonist. He sees the gold tooth and all that. So basically, I moved that back to the threshold of the danger zone. And because the first one, he’s scared and they go away. And it’s almost like it moves from first day of school where he’s having fun to a little bit of fear to he sees their faces. Because I did the same thing you did. I had the same threshold of seeing their shadows and he turns on the basement light was my danger zone. But then I realized.

I think because you could probably do three builds their little short builds every time he meets the wet bandits in some capacity is a threshold. You know what I mean because they’re always trying to infringe on his threshold of his house. Right. So you can sort of build these weird little mini builds. But I agree with you. That’s the first. That was my first note was that’s it. The close call to me was the party. You know he does that fake party.

Devin: For me it’s like what we were just talking about. And then the close call reaction is his reaction is he’s hiding under the bed. He goes out declares that he’s not afraid anymore and then he runs back in on that. It’s not bad either. And I only put that there because I have my new discovery lesson or information. The second Herald is Marv listens to the Murphy’s answering machine. And now they have this new discovery that the McAllister’s are out of town. And then they almost hit Kevin with the van with the new discovery because then. Kevin also is Kevin’s. The wet bandits discovery is McAllister’s are actually out of town. Kevin’s discovery is that dude that was in my house earlier is not a cop. It’s but he doesn’t. I guess he doesn’t know exactly what the guy is yet. But that’s his discovery to know this is good. Everything you’re saying is absolutely 100 percent.

Adam: The only thing I was doing between movement two and movement three was going, here’s the fun and games movement and here’s the responsibility movement. So as soon as he. So the toothbrush thing, which, by the way, is one of my favorite things. He runs away and then he cuts to him sad on the street and he goes, I’m a criminal criminal. It’s I. And I laughed out loud and backed it up and laughed out loud again. It was so funny to me. It also is right next to one of my other favorite slapstick moments when the van almost hits him and he goes, oh, and it’s like right at his nose.

I laugh every single time, every time it happens because you knew they did it in reverse. You know, they shot that in reverse. Yeah. But it works so well, it’s hardly even noticeable. It’s so funny. But he almost gets killed. Danger zone. That’s why I put that stuff there with them, close call, and they see he meets them and almost gets caught by them but barely escapes the nativity.

But also, movement three is the entire thing when, so the sort of new direction or new lesson or new information is mama can’t find a way home. The wet bandits realize that, oh, so we were right, right? Like you said. And also, Kevin going. And he’s narrating before, I washed my crevices, I washed my toes, I did this and I did that. And in this one, this is what I love about the subtlety of the soundtrack and the, it’s not subtle, but I mean, it is in a way. He’s maturing. He’s going to get responsibility. He’s going to go shopping later in the day and use coupons and get laundry detergent and milk and all that.

So he’s lip syncing to one of the deepest voiced Christmas songs ever. In the mirror while he’s spritzing himself. He’s like, so it makes him seem more adult. And so the two movements, the reason why I separated them like that is one shows him being a child and the events that happen in that one make him choose. I’m a criminal now. I’m not going to be a criminal. I’m going to go and be responsible and use coupons. I’m going to do it right this time. And so the threshold is all the stuff. What happens in that first one, the child movement before it gets to the matured responsible movement of movement three.

And that was my only break. That’s why I changed the breaking up of it because of that. But everything you said about new discovery and information. But once again, you got three plots, Kevin, Mama McAllister and wet bandits, and they’re each going to have events in different spaces. So the wet bandits, new discovery and information is when Harry’s playing with the toy car and Marv being the greatest cat burglar. By making a lot of noise and here’s the answer machine. The new information for Mama McAllister is that she can possibly get a flight with this old woman and her husband negotiating her translator and earrings and stuff.

And so, because as soon as that works, new direction happens for her. She can go on the plane.

Devin: There’s a good line with that, too. She’s like, is that a real Rolex? Do you think it is?

Adam: God, this is why I love Catherine O’Hara. I love her so much. Yeah. You know, Madeline Kahn, too, right? You know, Madeline Kahn. Oh, yeah. Those two actresses, comedic actors, they’re two of my favorites. I find them so charming and utterly hysterical. Madeline Kahn is no longer with us, but thank God we still have the treasure that is Catherine O’Hara.

Devin: Is it a real Rolex?

Adam: Do you think it is? Just think about this. A single soundbite. A single soundbite from her has changed the way that anyone in the world named Kevin is ever addressed. Kevin!

Devin: I know. I don’t know. So, I get what you’re doing. I get the new discovery for me was so obvious. So, that’s where I’m like, all right. So, because when I was putting, when I was analyzing the film, I was going through the Story Blueprint. And I instantly, things I knew, I put them in. I’m like, I know this is a three-part climax. This is it. Boom, boom, boom. This is it. This is the new discovery. This is the threshold. So, I was throwing stuff in. So, I knew. And again, Hughes didn’t write Home Alone. Same with, this is the same thing we ran into with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation last year.

Story blueprint isn’t going to, we’re not going to have specific, you know, easily identifiable events in this story. Any other story you’re going to break down who didn’t use Story Blueprint to write it. So, a lot of like. Escape the Eye of the Hurricane. Some of these other events, I’m like, no, there really isn’t that in this film. And trying to shove something in there just for podcast purposes just wouldn’t make any sense. It would be a little bit misleading and arbitrary.

Adam: And that’s why we say when we’re using the Story Blueprint events, if you’re using them to build your story, do try to figure out if what your character would do in that event. But if that event does not work in your story or in the order in your story. Or in the story that we presented, change it. Delete it. It’s not meant to be rigid. Add your own, yeah. It’s meant to help to build and architect a better quality story. But if it’s hindering your process, don’t use that event. And like I said before, if you, to be honest, Devin, if we really wanted to do this properly with a Hughes film because he’s so complex.

We’d probably do an episode that’s called Home Alone, Kevin’s Journey. Home Alone, Mama McAllister’s Journey. Home Alone, Wet Bandit’s Journey. And you’d find every single one of these events per person. Because he knows how to do that per plot. That’s a really seasoned, experienced, and complicated storyteller. But, you know, we’re trying to do this in one fell swoop so you understand how StoryOsophers, how all these varied plot lines dovetail together. And can work in tandem with each other but also staggered. So that. Kevin may be playing with spraying his armpits with right guard in the mirror and singing a tune. But we cut it with the wet bandits, you know, discovering that, yeah, Harry, is that the McAllister house?

They are in France.

Devin: They’re not home. So for me, obviously, that’s a new discovery. And then the new direction where the adventure opens up a little bit. It kind of does start right after he’s almost hit by the car. And he’s like, when they come back, I’ll be ready. Because he’s, that’s when he. His plan now, or his, is to, his new direction is now protect my house.

Adam: A classic Hughes film. He’s used to having the crisis for his movies. We like a center crisis. But he delays his in a traditional Hollywood act one, act two, act three pacing. His crisis tends to be pushed further. He likes a lot more road of trials in his movements two and three. Fun, if all fun and games, and then approach to the crisis. And so they tend to be a little bit more inflated.

Devin: It’s when Marv drops his shoe in the dog door, right? And Kevin quickly runs up, turns the movie on, gets the fireworks. For me, that’s fight, flight, or freeze.

Adam: StoryOsophers here. I’ll tell you what. We’ll get our shit together. And next week, we’ll recap a little movement two and three as we get into four and get into the climax. Because like we were talking about, Hughes does some interesting things. But if you do know that movements two and three are the road of trials and also transitioning Kevin from all fun and games to responsibility, that’s really the most important thing to understand. That’s what he’s building to in those two separate movements. He’s got two distinct builds for that journey. And the stuff that we try to label in events, part of the problem is he’s got three different plots, each with their own set of events.

And so the us playing semantics sometimes. It may get in the way of understanding the overall comprehensive build. But I think Devin and I agree on the fact that in these two movements, he’s transitioning from a child to a pseudo adult with a responsibility to take care of himself.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: And what that ends up doing is leading to the discovery in the hero’s darkest moment where he really misses his family and asked Santa Claus to have them back. To the fall of the heart wall with old man Marley and then the climax. So the two movements we’re debating over semantics wise here are the setup and the progression of Kevin’s journey to be able to have these revelations. Then one of the greatest climaxes in film history. Merry Christmas, everybody.

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[The original Home Alone breakdown, part 2]

Adam: Hello, welcome to StoryOsophy. This is Adam Jones.

Devin: And Devin Halden.

Adam: This week, we’re continuing our conversation about Home Alone, our Christmas episode breakdown. It’s one of my favorite Christmas movies. It’s very fun and funny. I could watch it a million times. And I have. Yes, Devin has watched it a lot recently. We spoke last episode about the formation of the film, who wrote it, directed it, music, and the overview. And we got into the events. We got into the event-by-event breakdown for a little bit, almost up to the crisis. And this episode, we’re just gonna pick back up and continue talking about its fantastic climax. It’s a really well-sculpted ending, this movie, because the movement for part of it, which…

Devin and I like to explore a good bit in movies. It’s somewhat brief, but it’s really poignant and relatable. And then it moves into this climax that is amazingly ridiculous. And then the resolution is actually quite brief. They don’t waste time. They literally just hit the points that they need to and they’re out. So as far as the structure of this film is concerned, or even screenplay, because I guarantee you John Hughes writes a screenplay like an architect draws a blueprint. Like he is so spot on with every little measurement and every little detail that the building of the film in shooting and editing and all that comes from the template he laid out.

So… His complexity and attention to detail is quite astounding and brilliant. We were discovering in last episode. But you’ll even find evidence of it more so in the second half of the film because everything he set up sort of subtly and for fun comes back around to pay off in amazingly tight ways for a story.

Devin: Yes, I agree.

Adam: Bingo. Did good job, Jones. Did good job. Bingo. So we want to clarify a little bit before getting to the second half, our movement two and movement three, because we ended last episode sort of trying to sort out some of the different events. And part of the issue we were talking about last episode is that when John Hughes writes something, he does not just write a singular protagonist moving through a story and the events cater to that one perspective. [unclear] As a screenwriter, he will sort of track each character through the events as a separate path and then stagger when those events happen in the story so that you’re always getting something juicy happening. So if Kevin’s got some lag time, Mama McAllister is discovering Kevin is not on the plane. So there’s always something exciting happening if you plot it that way and then stagger them. So part of our discussion, and we weren’t really debating, we were just sort of trying to sort out what the movement two and three events were. We’ll discuss or recap our conclusions. Mine, I sort of laid out movement two as the it’s all fun and games. Kevin is a child relishing in his newfound freedom. And movement three to me would be him realizing because of probably the wet bandits encroaching.

On him, and the fact that he’s missing different things that he needs, that he has to become an adult and learn how to take care of himself. So that’s how I would sort of differentiate those two builds. For me, as if I’m building a thing with characters with events, that’s how I would try to structure it for a strong sequential build to a payoff at a threshold. But as we were saying, Devin, if you want to continue the idea of where these events happen, you were cataloging, as different than I was. Well, I did. Actually, I agree with you on all of them. And then I tried to work it out with the childhood and then the adult responsibility movements of two and three.

Devin: I think you discussed a more macro analysis of the movements. And then I was more pinpointing specific events on where they occur within those movements. So I think, we’re on the same page with what movement two represents in the story, what movement three represents in the story. We’re only off by a beat or two with where certain events come into play. And I think for me, the concrete event that I started placing other events around was the new discovery for me was pretty obvious in the story. The Wet Bandits tracking the Wet Bandits story was their discovery, while in the middle of burglarizing the Murphy’s house across the street, or their neighbor, I’m not exactly where they’re located. Over here is Peter McAllister leave a message on the answering machine, verifying to them that they are in fact out of town. And then Kevin’s, if we’re tracking Kevin’s story, his new discovery happens right after that, when he almost gets hit by the van. And he discovers the gold tooth, these guys, the gold tooth, this guy who was in my house as a police officer is actually not a cop. Right. And then that’s when he says, Adam’s favorite line, his favorite scene of the movie, walking away.

Adam: I know. I love when his face is so close to the van, he goes.

Devin: And then like stumbles away by hitting the hood a little bit. Yeah. It’s so funny to me. So then. So that was pretty much and then like approaching the innermost cave if we’re looking specifically at Story Blueprint and then threshold and everything kind of merge into each other.

Adam: Well, also new discovery. Let’s track Mama McAllister. What’s Mama McAllister’s name?

Devin: Kate.

Adam: Kate. So Kate’s adventure is she gets to the counter and she sort of thought… So let me do this as an example. Movement two danger zone for Kate would be she makes the plane, right? She tempts this old woman, she gets the plane, she gets to the rental counter for a vehicle. And the guy says we can’t do anything or not to be but transportation of some sort. She’s trying to work out how to get home. And he says, I got nothing for you, lady. So he’s a threshold guardian. There’s several threshold guardians for her preventing her from moving across the threshold to get to where she wants to be. So she’s very quest oriented in a physical way. And when he denies her the route, and she’s freaking out and sort of at a loss, John Candy’s character steps up as the new information. I’ve got a van, you can come with us. And the new direction ends up being, okay, I’m not going to go home the way I thought it was. I’m going with a… All of her threshold new information, new direction stuff happens in one scene.

You know what I mean? All her stuff happens in one scene because he’s plotted her those three event choices like that. It doesn’t go, you know, in sync with the Wet Bandit’s information and Kevin’s information. It’s around the same area, but they don’t just cut between them all having new discoveries or information all at the same moment. So he’s plotted them out, as we were saying before, by the events and then just ordered the scenes of when those events should take place to create an ascending, you know, build to the climax. Or the crisis in this point.

So, the approach to the Inmost Cave, there’s a lot of stuff in New Direction Adventure opens up. Because that’s, this is when… That’s when I would say all of Kevin’s trials and tribulations of responsibility, like shopping with the clerk who’s like, Are you here by yourself? That whole scene is still part of this segment. And it’s him, it’s us, it’s showing us, the audience, that he is not just capable of taking care of himself. He’s willing to do it. And he knows how to deal with adults. This is where Devin’s comment last episode comes in, of the mom going, Kevin, can you please get off the bed?

And him going, why don’t you get off the phone and make me? Like, he knows the adult world. He’s the youngest. The youngest always knows, from the older siblings, how better to deal with the adult world. And we can see in the coupon at the supermarket thing, Kevin’s learned quite a bit. Right. She’s like, where are your parents? They’re in the car. What’s this? Ma’am, I’m eight years old. Do you really? Like, he’s good. Like, he knows how to navigate the world. Yeah. As opposed to the contrasting previous movements. Because you’re a stranger. Yes. The previous movement where, in trying to get a toothbrush, he’s so out of his element and scared, he runs away and gets accused of shoplifting.

Right. So just those two events of Kevin shopping, you can see the growth.

Devin: Yeah. So basically, I just have everything leading up to his darkest moment is basically where, because we don’t really have a real definite escape the eye of the hurricane. There’s not, in this story, there really isn’t. There really isn’t one of those moments, per se. There’s a bit of aftermath, I think, in what’s happened.

Adam: The closest one he’s got is the nativity, literally face-to-face with a van, with them. That’s the closest bit that he comes to. Right. You could probably put the crisis as Daniel Stern’s shoe in the door, and he firecrackers him off with the whole setup of the pizza boy.

Devin: I have that as the threshold three tipping point. The fight, flight, or freeze moment. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I thought that was pretty.

Adam: That’s probably the closest. Here’s the thing that I would say makes that that point. They don’t just try to get in the door. He sticks, he crosses the threshold. He sticks his foot in the door. And that’s scary. Think how scary that is. That’s a big step. So to me, that represents crisis for a little kid.

Devin: I think that’s scary. And so is that freaking scene with him, with him decorating the tree. Yeah. And he sees the dude looking through the window at him. Like, that is terrifying for me when I was watching that. And you also see how smart he is there with, hey, dad, can you help me? Yelling for his dad. Yeah.

Adam: But, but I would say, so here’s what I would say, maybe to appease our structural commentary, what we’re talking about event wise and the thresholds. As we get closer to the climax where the wet bandits are going to invade the kingdom, the McAllister kingdom and cross the threshold, the proximity, when they come to inspect or try to get in, becomes more frequent. It’s not just once and they run away because the light’s on. They’ve discovered new information. They’ve slowly, as detectives, figured out that Kevin’s home alone. And so now they keep checking in for the silver tuna because this is the house. They want. And so their visits become more frequent. So there’s the foot in the door. There’s the bulb. There’s Kevin watching them from the upstairs window where if anything, dude, I would call that the after escape from the hurricane is him setting off the firecrackers to scare Marv off. And the aftermath is him actually being able to listen in on their plan and register the fact that he’s about to be invaded this evening.

Like the threats coming.

Devin: That makes sense because I have that as the as the tipping point for me and fight, flight or freeze moment. But then I don’t have escape of the hurricane or aftermath at all. I just kind of go right into his darkest moment. So I would agree that it was all kind of wrapped into one sequence.

Adam: Yeah, it’s just they’re all wrapped in. It’s really long. That scene doesn’t just because he’s waiting. Marv shows up. There’s the intrusion point. His reaction is fight and Marv’s is flight. Right. Because he thinks he’s. Shot at, and then [unclear]

So the escape is sort of like him trying to get away from the door and Marv getting away from it. It’s the closest thing that you’ve got to that. And the aftermath is like hearing their plan, which is an important event. In this story, because how does he know what to expect? Really important. Or, or when they’re going to get there unless he eavesdrops. So after all that, then we move to hero’s darkest moment and fall the heart wall. Now, we, like I said, last episode, we left off sort of debating movement two and three. And hopefully, in the beginning here, we’ve clarified a little bit about what those builds are and why the threshold thresholds are crossed more frequently in this film than most others, because you have two people trying to break through the threshold.

Right. Of the home. And so, you know what I mean? You, you get to see that more frequently than infringing on it. So movement four, as most of our listeners, storytellers know, is from the crisis point with Daniel Stern being scared off with firecrackers to recovery, escape, aftermath. So hero’s darkest moment all seems lost. I feel like, to me, that scene is the Santa Claus scene.

Devin: Yep.

Adam: Because. I agree. He goes to wish.

Devin: And he asks, instead of presents, he wants his family back.

Adam: Right. And at the same time, the inside adult joke is that this Santa is so fictitious, he’s got his beard down, he’s smoking a cigarette, trying to get in his car, his crappy little car.

Devin: Driving a Pinto.

Adam: And so. Or whatever that is. It’s sort of like disillusionment with that thing, too. A little John Hughes commentary, I think.

Devin: I have his darkest moment. All seems lost, starting from the Santa Claus. And then. While he’s walking home, the choir catches, you know, the choral music actually like beckons him. And he goes in, he sits by himself in this church, which is like, it’s a beautiful scene, beautifully shot. Colors are great, really warm colors. And then this terrible myth of old man Marley is dispelled here. And then Kevin learns more about…

Adam: Yeah, when he has that conversation with him, that’s transitioning from the darkest moment. The fears get dispelled and he, his heart opens up and he gives advice. He’s wise. It’s so good.

Devin: So old man Marley is dispelled. And then that’s when he learns how much they actually do have in common. Like we talked about last episode where, where old man Marley represents the adult in the argument that Kevin had with his mom. So… That argument that Kevin had with his mom, old man Marley had with his son. However, years have gone by since he’s even talked to his son or even seen his grandchild. So it’s almost like he has, he has to sneak into this church to even just be in the presence of his grandchild. And so what we don’t really see through Kevin, Kevin’s actions here is that light bulb coming in.

Light bulb coming on for him. But I think internally he’s, he’s either already there where he regrets. There’s, there’s, you know, they’re sharing this regret together with things that have happened in their past. But I think he’s already before this has already made this new quest to get his family back or him wanting his family back. So… Yeah, yeah. It’s not necessarily, it’s not necessarily this aha moment for, for Kevin. But it’s a moment, the aha moment comes where… With understanding who Old Man Marley is, understanding that this argument he had with his son is the same, similar to the argument he had with his mom. But he, he is this, this therapist in a way, or he gives, he gives Old Man Marley this advice.

That he has already learned. That’s what he’s learned. So his new knowledge, he gives him.

Adam: The surprise for us is that Kevin doesn’t learn something there. We learn something about Kevin there. We learn that internally, because he’s been alone, he doesn’t articulate everything externally, even though sometimes unnecessarily. In those moments, we go, oh, he has grown from child to responsible adult. He gets it. He’s given this guy advice without realizing it himself. Either he has sort of internalized that lesson already, even with that, as you say, maybe he doesn’t know it yet. But he’s that wise, you know? Right. And I think that’s a great way to show Kevin’s growth is to have us in that moment realize, wow, he just gave some really wise, adult-like advice to this man.

We didn’t quite expect this. I love the guy, the Old Man Marley. He’s like, when you see me around town, you don’t have to be afraid of me.

He’s like… He just cracks me up. I love him. Because he ends up being so sweet. Like, they pick the perfect performer to be this sort of, like, looming, terrifying guy, and then at the end, you’re like, you just love him.

Devin: Yeah, well, the majority of his acting is facial expression throughout the film until we actually get to sit down and hear his voice. So it’s… He doesn’t… He acts with his eyes really well.

Adam: They’ve used the narrative and the audience experience to frame who and what he is and what we think. Think of him. Which is kind of awesome.

Devin: I would wrap the campfire in here. This is also… For me… It’s a very campfire scene. This connected with, I have to protect my house, this is my house, I have to defend it. This is very campfire. I think I would meld those two together here.

Adam: The re-choosal of the quest is that statement to me. This is my house, I have to defend it. In one moment, he closes the threshold door and says…

Devin: Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. And then I was gonna move in, and then the montage of him setting the traps and pitfalls, I think, is all part of that. Because that’s not putting the plan into action to me.

Adam: No, to me, that’s putting the plan into action. He has a plan, he’s building the traps.

Devin: Putting the plan into action for me is the… Is the dinging of the clock when he sits down, he’s got the bowl full of macaroni, and the clock hits nine, that’s putting now everything that he’s set up… Because in a lot of movies, in some movies that we’ve talked about in the past is, in the campfire scene, the plan is hatched. We don’t necessarily get to see what the plan is. In Home Alone, we get to see what most of the plan is up until the point that he gets to the upstairs, the bedroom during this whole climax. We don’t understand, we don’t know what happens after he gets, after he puts the tarantula on Marv’s face.

So for me, I think it’s, I think the, the campfire scene is almost, and it is part of this montage. It’s this, this threshold. And then the plan, putting the plan into action, clock hits nine. He’s like, all right, it’s game time. And then now he’s putting that plan that he hashed, all these things, all these pitfalls he put up and obstacles for these two guys. That’s when it’s actually going into action. And I think the main, the main reason I say it is the action part of it, that, that term is like, now it’s actually executing on, on the plan that he came up with.

Adam: Let me track through a little bit of what you just went through as far as, I want to catch another angle of it with Mama McAllister. Because her hero’s darkest moment in Fall of the Heart Wall is, is all in the van with John Candy. She says, I’m the, I’m a terrible parent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he gives her that consoling advice. So it’s a similar scene to Old Man Marley and Kevin. They get, there’s someone that they can confide in and confess to. And maybe have an understanding with, except I think that John Hughes deprives us of her fall of the heart wall until the moment she gets to embrace Kevin. She still feels unsettled talking to John Candy in the van. She doesn’t have that moment of realization until the very end. Like he delays that part for her. There’s sort of a mirroring of somebody, there’s a character that they share confessionals with.

And one gets a hero’s darkest moment in a fall. And the other one just gets a hero’s darkest moment, but feels unsatisfied with the shitty advice that John Candy gives her about kids are resilient. You know, they, you know, he started talking after two weeks after we left him in the funeral home. Like, it’s like, she’s like, Oh God, I’m not the worst parent ever. So she has a little bit of an understanding, but it’s also its own campfire scene. If you imagine, imagine taking the same people and moving the setting to a desert with a campfire. And everyone else is asleep. And just these two are up chatting.

Devin: Oh, absolutely.

Adam: It’s the same environment, same environment. And so, and that, and the same thing with the church and the candles, it’s these variations on that. That’s why Devin and I love the campfire scene. I do. Because just the feeling of it is the confessional one-on-one intimacy. Awesome dialogue. And there’s always something beautiful that you, yeah. And you learn about a character. You learn something and they learn something as a reveal. My goal refocused after that, because they both have those things and the threshold, the re-choosal of the quest. I labeled it as this, and I’ll explain that transitioning into movement five. The goal refocused as soon as their convo is done, old man Marley and Kevin, the church bells chime 8 p.m.

They herald the coming act three. Like Kevin has to get home now. It’s important. And so as he’s, I love this too. This is a beautiful. This is a beautiful payoff to a very subtle setup. As Kevin’s running home, all the automatic lights that Harry has counted and shown to Marv earlier pop on as he’s running past them. And I’m like, oh, it’s so simple and subtle, but I love it. I absolutely love it. Like you could have just run home, but they expanded the story world by doing that. You know? Mm-hmm. So for me, the retreat. The re-choosal of the quest, the crossing of the fourth threshold, is him literally crossing the threshold of his house, locking the door, and proclaiming in his kingdom, this is my house, and I have to defend it.

That’s him re-choosing the quest. To me, putting the plan into action, this is the key event to the movie to me, because it’s probably one of the most and best putting the plan into action events I’ve seen. And maybe we’re clarifying or semantics wise, but I’ll explain what I mean. I mean by this, and you can tell me what your thoughts are. There’s two plans happening. Kevin’s got a plan. He has to defend the house. But the how of this will be the biggest mystery. And they bait you with this setups for a domino effect of payoffs. We don’t know what he’s gonna do with all this stuff. And meanwhile, the Wet Bandits, their plan is to rob the house.

And they think he’s gonna be, it’s gonna be easy, you know, because he’s a kid. They’re gonna crowbar their way in, take what they want. Their plan is clear too. One’s gonna defend, one’s gonna invade. Very clear. Now, it gets more complicated than those two ever dreamed of, because we’ve learned Kevin is quite savvy. Kevin’s setting up the traps, whether you want to classify this as putting the plan into action or not. I’m just tracking through how this works. So he sets the traps. These are great setups, because we don’t know what will happen with them. Every shot is a mystery, is a question, which is why this is one of the greatest climaxes ever.

So we start to get really pumped up. We see the map, which, by the way, is the way Macaulay Culkin drew himself. The map plan. Did you know that?

Devin: No. That’s good, though.

Adam: They had him draw the map, which is kind of cool. We see the micro-machines with the missiles turned up. We see water on the steps, the door handle trap, the tarantula as this little objective observer, the hot iron on the door, the watering the basement steps, painting tar, arming a shingle with a nail. You’re like, what is going on? But every time you get a different shot, another question happens in your brain.

What’s that for? What’s he doing there? It’s one of the greatest setups for a climax ever. And it just keeps going. The zip line, right, from the roof to the tree, super gluing Saran wrap, wheeling a cart with a fan full of feathers, planting glass, planting the Christmas ornaments, stringing up the paint cans. Again, the tarantula walks by the string. It’s just this great series of setups. And then, ding! Sustenance, this little mac and cheese dinner. And to me, that’s putting the plan into action because as soon as those guys come into play, they start coming in and he has to abandon his dinner. It’s go time. Don’t get scared now, right? This is it. Don’t get scared now. The rest of it is just an epic showdown. It’s all showdown to me. It’s one of the greatest, like, prolonged showdowns ever. I was labeling it maybe differently than you, but I’m sure we see the same.

Devin: My only difference is I like to… Especially that campfire. So the campfire scene melding into this rechoosal of quest for me is, of course, this is all opinion. But I like when the rechoosal of the call happens after this fall of the heart wall. Our hero is a new character. We’ve seen this growth in him. And he says, you know, whether it’s this campfire scene that kind of melds into the rechoosal of the quest. There it is. For me, it’s the developing of a plan isn’t putting a plan into action. So for me, we’re because of the notion or the nature of this type of story, this kid that we’re following and all the setups that Hughes has done, you know, with the shoot, with the gun that goes off and how the shoot works and all the things that we’ve talked about in the last episode.

That we’re actually getting to see a lot more than we usually… Usually would with a plan going into what the plan is going to be. A lot of times we’ll get a lot of, a lot of stories. We’ll, we’ll get a little bit like, oh, all right, here’s the plan. Everybody huddles in and we don’t get it. So everything’s going to be surprise for us. Everything still is a surprise for us. The way that they shoot this and the way that it’s written. Cause we don’t know exactly like what you just described. You, we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen with this nail and the shingle.

It, nail and the shingle is put on the stairs. We understand probably what’s going to happen, but we don’t understand the extent of it. And so putting the plan into action for me is literally initiated by the chiming of the nine, the nine o’clock chime of the clock. I don’t know if I can say clock.

Adam: So he’s about ready to eat his mac and cheese and the clock strikes nine.

Devin: Yep. That’s for me is like, boom, game. Like you said, game on. And even he says, game on, let’s do this. Now let’s put that plan into action. Okay. The plan that I have in place into action.

Adam: So this is where I would differentiate it. I would say there are two, there are two, this event is split. This is when the wet bandits putting the plan into action happens. But the only thing I would say as, like I said, opinion as well, and, or, or me mentally thinking of it is when the montage of Kevin setting the traps and getting prepared and all that stuff, when he unrolls that design, when he unrolls that design, he’s already created the plan. Him building the traps to me is him putting that plan into action. Okay. And when they show up, it just transfers over and the Wet Bandits start, quote, putting their plan into action.

And when he, his plan just unfolds as they try different entrances. But to me, the blueprint of him doing it, he’s already, he’s already laid out that plan. And so him putting the plan into action is him just building the traps. So, it may be semantics, but that’s how I think of it in my, you know, breakdowns. In either event, StoryOsophers, no matter what way you think of it, you’re breaking it down in different ways. You’re getting the same result. And I would say what Devin is talking about is right. Most of the time, the planning stuff, whether you know what the plan is or not, happens at the end of movement four.

And movement five is the action that person takes to implement said plan, putting the plan into action. So, a lot of times, you know, people say, we need to figure this out at the campfire scene. And we don’t hear or see a plan. Or like the montage. That, you know, we see of Kevin doing all the traps. We don’t get that information. They’re just entering into a house of horrors. We don’t know what Kevin’s got planned. But for some reason, and brilliantly so, John Hughes decided to show us all of the setups for every trap that’s going to happen in a montage. And then we just get to watch the, and enjoy the unfolding of all of that.

So, no matter where you want to clarify it. Or put it in the order of it, that’s, the result is the same campfire-wise is generally when they come up with a plan because it’s, quote, refocusing the goal.

Devin: I get what you’re saying, too.

Adam: Yeah, we put it in different places, but we’re talking about the same baiting of structure for the climax to come.

Devin: And I think something goes wrong, we underestimate the antagonist. Clearly, well, clearly for me, it’s, we just underestimate the antagonist. We underestimate the entire pain threshold and the willingness to withstand what Kevin’s throwing at them. That’s how I, we underestimate the antagonist in this, in this way. Because I, that to me is the, was the only really underestimation that I could identify.

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Adam: We’ve talked about this in different conversations in previous episodes, but sometimes the showdown, even though it’s Climax Part One, ends up being the entirety of the climax. I was just gonna say this, yeah. Because it’s so epic. So, after putting the plan into action, I think we’re literally into the showdown for the rest of the thing. It’s him versus them. So, to me, that comes before, it starts at least before we even get to something goes wrong and enemies gain ground. And so, something goes wrong for me.

Devin: Happens almost simultaneously to putting plan into action. Or, well, for me, putting plan into action.

Adam: Something goes wrong for me is during the showdown when Marv grabs his leg and he uses the tarantula. Yeah. And enemies gain ground is when they’re following to the Murphy’s house. And Joe Pesci says, no, no, no, that’s what he wants us to do. I got another idea. And Kevin thinks he’s coming through and he’s gonna get up to the stairs and boom, he opens the door and they’ve got him. And the breakthrough moment is sort of a reversal. Like he’s not anticipating this stuff to happen. His plan’s gonna work and they’ve thwarted him. And then the now or never of the climax is just old man Marley saving the day.

Yeah. And so those two moments of enemies gain ground, break through, and now or never happen in like three minutes, four, three minutes. It’s very short. And the whole climax is this epic showdown with a couple, you know, something goes wrong, but it’s basically Kevin’s triumph the whole time until he gets a pant leg caught.

Devin: I would then also reverse underestimate antagonist to underestimate protagonist in this regard. So it’s actually the underestimation is from the wet bandits are underestimating this kid. That’s really good, dude. And then enemies gain ground. I would, I have, after you just went through that analysis, I would probably agree because I had showdown. I didn’t really break it up. The three-part climax. I didn’t have a, really have a breakthrough. I had a clear now or never moment. And then the showdown I had was basically up until now or never. And then I had enemies gain ground as Marv grabbing, grabbing Kevin’s leg.

Adam: Yeah. So let’s do, let’s do this for a second, because what you said is really interesting to me. We underestimate protagonist really clever because when I was thinking about this, I wrote a note that literally said to look how much screen time after Kevin says, this is it. Don’t get scared. Now we don’t see him for almost seven minutes straight, straight before he cheers. When Joe Pesci, you know, puts his hand on the doorknob and burns his hand. Right. There’s a whole chunk of time where we are just with the wet bandits. So we literally start the climax with them. So changing that to, we underestimate the protagonist now makes more sense.

The enemies gain ground. Imagine let’s take the climax from the perspective. Of the wet bandits instead of clever Kevin, because we’re not feeling pretty much anything from Kevin. Our emotional connection is with the wet bandits experientially as they go through his traps. Right. So enemies gain ground breakthrough. The breakthrough for them is going. No, no, no. That’s what he wants us to do. Marv. Right. I got a better idea. If you start to look at the fact that he built the climax from there, it makes way more sense because Kevin’s basically just out of the picture for the most part. Right. And go, yes. And go, are you thirsty for more? Like he just antagonizes them. Right. He’s the antagonist. Yeah. In that framework of the climax. I never thought about this till you just said that we underestimate protagonist. God, it’s so smart. It’s like, and here’s the other thing, as you can hear us discovering on air StoryOsophers, the take, don’t be afraid to take these events and flip them on their head to find out what’s going on.

Find something new. Because you can always, I mean, look, that’s a great way to view this last 25 minutes of a movie, of this movie, is from the wet bandit’s perspective.

Devin: Then it changes everything too, because the approach of the innermost cave for them is they’re getting closer to, usually the, the protagonist is trying to get past something or get into something and.

Adam: And they are too. That’s exactly what they’re trying to do.

Devin: Yeah, attain something. And so that’s what the wet bandits are doing. They’re trying to breach the cave. They’re trying to get into the cave. So it’s, everything is kind of reversed in that way. It’s so brilliant.

Adam: Yeah. And it’s such a clever observation on your part. That’s really cool that he structured it like that. But then once again, look at the, I mean, like we said, John Hughes is a genius. Yeah. He changed the perspective on that. We literally are going through the whole thing. Like, as soon as Marv steps on that nail, we go, like, we feel the nail in the foot. Do you know what I mean? We feel all of the. I know. We’re laughing at them, but like, even, that’s my other favorite part. It, it ranks above everything else. Yeah. Like he just got stuck there with Kevin almost getting hit by the van and going.

Joe Pesci peeking his head in the door with the blow torch. And just standing there going. It’s so stupid but I love it.

Devin: Why you dressed like a chicken? Why you shake your shoes off?

Adam: Why’d you take your shoes off? Why you dressed like a chicken? It’s so good. I love this. It was so. But they, do they, they. Yeah. Just cut back and forth between these two guys. I have to say it’s one of the greatest slapstick, hyperbolic storytelling climaxes. It’s so fun. But they literally like cut back and forth. Here’s a little bit of him, a little bit of him, a little bit of him, a little bit of him.

Devin: Like we were talking about off air too that Daniel Stern was not supposed to. He passed up the role because I think it was something like a pay issue. And so they had another, his name was Daniel too, but they had another guy that was just a bigger, all around, like bigger kind of fatter guy. But you can’t picture this movie without the short, stocky Pesci, and the tall, lanky Stern as the wet bandits. You can’t, it just can’t be done. And it’s such a classic bad guys scenario. You know? Just like a short, bossy guy and the tall, lanky guy. Just the complete opposites. And like you said, there isn’t enough slapstick comedy that doesn’t do quick cuts to make the impact of the pain or the impact of the physical comedy more intense.

But with Home Alone, they did the wide shot. They did the wide shots and they let the stunt doubles jump up in the air and fall on their back and we see it in full time. There’s no cuts to make it, you know, to have the guy jump up in the air and then do a cut of him falling on the ground from a different angle. It’s like they gave it almost old school filmmaking. They brought that to kind of like what Chaplin would do where it’s just one long shot of some of the, I mean, there are, of course, there’s quick cuts with some of it.

But-

Adam: I was thinking the same thing when I was watching it. Like there’s something when I, because of course when you first watch this movie, for the most part, you’re fairly young. You know, it’s a movie that kids can access. So you’re watching this movie and you don’t really even recognize the fact that there are stunt people. It’s that well seamlessly glued together, you know? You just sort of think it’s the character. Right. And then as I was watching it, reviewing this, I was thinking more and more about the construction of it. And I’m going, gosh, there are so many moments there are stunt people doing ridiculously dangerous and painful things that you literally just don’t realize it’s stunt people.

Because a lot of times you can tell it’s someone stunt, being a stunt. Like even Macaulay Culkin running down the stairs on the sled and flying out the door. That’s not him. Yeah. You know, but you can’t tell. You think it’s freaking Kevin. And it’s the stunts in this were really seamlessly interwoven with the characters. And there’s a lot of it slapstick wise. They had some really funny stunt people. Like seriously. Because some of the falls are so funny, dude.

But Joe Pesci, I read in one of the notes about the making of that Joe Pesci kept saying the F word because he comes from like the Italian movies. And they said, look, just instead of that, say fridge. Say the word fridge. And he would. Yeah, he said he said he actually.

Devin: He said he had to create his own cussing language type of language for it.

Adam: I will say this. He does it so brilliantly. Like, it literally just dances around every curse word, and you can still tell what it is. A kid’s movie like, like, some gibberish stuff. He does it so well.

Devin: Yeah, it’s Looney Tune-y. It’s crazy. The entire thing is like Looney Tune-y. Yeah. And then it’s his, his delivery was with, it’s his, it’s his voice and his delivery. And, but the dynamic between him and Harry and Marv is so good when they’re crawling out the window and Kevin’s in the, Kevin already took the thing to the treehouse. What do you call that thing?

Adam: Oh, the zip line. The zip line?

Devin: Yeah. And he goes, Harry, Barry, get over there before he calls the cops. From a treehouse? That’s my thing. That’s literally my thing for life. He’s going to call the cops from a treehouse, Marv.

Adam: It’s so, he’s so angry. He’s so angry at that point. From a treehouse. He’s going to call the cops from a treehouse, Marv.

Devin: From a treehouse.

Adam: Anyway, so, but those series of traps, we can go through the traps, but they’re, us describing them are not going to be nearly as entertaining as you re-watching them again, because they are a lot of fun. Yeah. But I will say, I learned this little fact, too, about the scene with Daniel Stern and the spider, the tarantula. He was a little nervous. I heard this, too. When Kevin puts the tarantula on his face, he’s supposed to scream out of fear, and he didn’t know how the animal, of course, was going to react. And they told him, spiders don’t have ears. Scream as loud as you want. Just don’t move a lot.

Yeah. Which is, of course, you don’t want to. Yeah. You never think about it. He was like, oh, yeah. Of course. And so, that’s why he gives that blood-curdling, because he could scream however loud he wanted to.

Devin: Oh, I can’t stand spiders. So, that’s your weakness. That is just, that moment for me is, is the way, have you seen, have you seen, this is a side tangent, but it, it’s fairly relevant. There’s a show on Discovery called Kings of Pain. And have you heard of it?

Adam: Have you heard the show? It’s not, does it sound like my thing? Anything with something of pain, I’m not really interested in pursuing.

Devin: Well, it’s basically these, these two guys, I’m not sure exactly what their, what their professions are, but they’re actually, they’re writing a book, or they’re, they’re updating a book that a guy made in, like, the 60s or 70s of what, what bites, bites and stings of different animals, like, and he did a, like, a book. Like, what the pain meter is, like, one to four pain meter, and then duration, and then damage. It’s like pain, duration, and damage. And then I think there may be a three or fourth measurement.

Adam: That’s actually a cool reference book for writing or something.

Devin: Yeah, it is. So, these two guys now… Are updating the book on a one to ten level, but they go out and find these animals, and, like, one was, like, one of those monitors, like, those dragon monitor, whatever, and they let it bite them. And this one monitor, whatever… Whatever the heck it’s called, bit this guy and wouldn’t let go for, like, 25 minutes. And so, they’re always holding his arm there, and they got all the… They’re trying… And then he’s got this tail, because I guess one of the things is he bites… They’ll bite, and then they use this massive tail to… King Koopa. Beat the crap out of whatever they’re biting, and, like, knock it out. And so, one guy’s trying to hold his tail, and while… And then, so it’s, like, literally 20 minutes, and they finally… Finally, like, he pulls his arm out of it. But he… So, anyway, but one of them was a tarantula. Like, they go find this crazy tarantula, and they aggravated it enough… Crazy one. To bite. Yeah, and then they’re, like, and then they… They found the crazy tarantula. Ah, dude. But watching these… Watching the fangs of these things go into these people, and then watching this… Bringing it all back now, watching Marv Stern take… Put…

Have a tarantula on his face, no matter how domestic that thing might be, that is freaking terrifying. If you’re the actor, it says, by the way, this thing, it won’t kill you, but it could sink some fangs into you that it would hurt. But go ahead and scream. And still, I have to say… Oh, God.

Adam: Their vocal performances, both of them, Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci, dude, brilliant comic performances. His scream is iconic. It is, yeah. It’s just iconic from that scene. And Joe Pesci’s just gibberish, like… Grumbly, like…

Devin: And the escalation of it, too. It’s so good.

Yeah. From a treehouse, Marv! From a treehouse.

Adam: I love it. So, back to the walkthrough. Once Old Man Marley saves them, that’s the now or never moment. That’s when the climax is done.

Devin: Yep, fully agree with that.

Adam: The antagonists have been conquered, so the objective attained is Kevin has protected his house, like he said.

Devin: Yep.

Adam: Even Old Man Marley… Probably his unspoken objective is obtained because he slowly… The interesting plot or arc for him is he slowly realizes that Kevin’s home by himself. Like, it doesn’t occur to him right away, but all these little interactions he has with Kevin buying a toothbrush on his own and him running out of the house and going… I’m not afraid anymore. And no one seems to be there. All these little things have added up to him where he realizes he has to keep an eye on this sweet kid. And that’s why it pays off. So that’s what’s the brilliant part about the now or never climax moment for this movie is the D plot, the D story of this movie, Old Man Marley.

Marley has crept up on us until we go, of course he’s watching out for this kid. And then he clocks him with the snow shovel. It’s a surprise twist for the climax. Really tiny, but awesome. We didn’t expect it. And we literally just got reminded of it right before the climax. Literally, they meet up and there you go. But the objective obtained is he’s protected one little kid who he has a relationship with. Sort of a transference of his granddaughter that he wishes he did. And Kevin has this moment where he’s grown up enough to have taken care of his kingdom. His self. His… Domain, if you will. His personal space. That’s awesome. And the… Kevin gets ready for Christmas Eve. Yep. It’s all this stuff is part of the objective obtained. Like it’s just the aftermath period of the climax. And I would say the journey home…

Like I was talking about before where she’s talking to John Candy in the van and all that stuff. That happens here. That’s when this scene happens. So her movement four stuff, it happens much later in the story than normally would happen.

Devin: Yeah. Everything happens a lot quicker for her, too.

Adam: But it seems to be a perfect place. I mean, after that. Her journey home becomes her dark night of the soul. She takes that journey home, road back event. Kevin doesn’t have it, but she takes it, and it becomes her dark night of the soul event. Right, right. Like I said, this resolution just zooms.

Devin: And that happens before her objective obtained, actually. Yeah, for sure. Her road back is moved up before her objective attained.

Adam: Yep. When she hugs Kevin, that’s when she’s like, okay. Because nobody’s advice or counsel does anything for her until she can embrace her kid again, which is every mom. And so I feel like the objective is to be able to, okay, now my heart can be at rest and at peace for her. So he has a really good insight into, the mama bear syndrome for this story. The new status quo is the white Christmas morning, the fresh blanket. And Kevin wakes up hoping his Christmas wish has come true, that his family’s there. And he’s running through the house calling mom, but no one’s there. And then she shows up.

You could, hold on real quick. Yeah, go for it.

Devin: Okay, I was gonna say, you could argue that her fall of the heart wall actually happens. My dramatic presentation is crap.

Adam: Sorry, sorry. And then.

Devin: No, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, you could argue that her fall of the heart wall happens during that campfire scene with John Candy in a way, because she’s saying, you know, like I had this argument with my kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that’s when he’s like, you know, the kids are resilient. But that’s when she’s coming to grips or she’s verbalizing on screen. The moment that she regrets having that moment with the kid.

Adam: He’s just not terribly convinced by him is all. Right, exactly. He’s not the best mentor in the world. But no, that’s a good point. So I would say the new status quo is, the morning when he’s anticipating his wish coming true. And then there’s this lovely little moment where Chris Columbus or John Hughes or both decided to not give it to him. Like he’s wandering around and his hopes get a little dashed until she comes in and she’s like, Kevin, and he hears her voice and they can’t seem to find it. This is why the importance of the big house, they can’t seem to find each other right away.

And then when they turn and finally see each other, it’s almost like a romantic, a romance story where the two love interests who have been kept apart for the whole movie run to embrace each other. Except it’s a mother-son relationship. And he tries so hard to be mad at her.

Devin: He’s like, why’d you leave me? It’s such a great unspoken exchange. She basically just says sorry without saying sorry. Like she doesn’t have to. The new status quo is also just the, when the family comes back and they’re so impressed, well, Buzz is like, I can’t believe you didn’t burn the house down. Oh yeah. And he tells them, I went shopping and stuff like that. And he’s like, what a funny kid. Or what a funny guy. What a funny guy. Which is the weirdest line in the world.

But then he’s got this newfound respect. Yeah. What a funny guy, yeah. And then, so I think that,

Well, he’s going to have a new status with the family.

Adam: Within the family. Yeah. New status quo. Yeah, that’s actually a good point to point out. A good, a new status, a good point to point out. Yeah. We’re doing great here.

Devin: That’s a good point to point out.

Adam: That’s why it’s called the new status quo.

Oh, my God. He does have a new status in the family. And the resolution stuff is sort of, it’s very simple, but it’s all the stuff that we clean up that’s left behind. Even the little thing, like the joke of the, The gold tooth is part of this little resolution event. It’s like, oh, he remembered everything to tidy up at the end of this story. He just remembered everything. And then, of course, it’s such a great way to end this movie, too, as Kevin looks out the window and sees the reunion of old man Marley with his son and granddaughter. And they have a recognized moment with each other of respect and friendship.

And it’s like very warm and touchy. And then all of a sudden you get the, you know, final image, final words of, Kevin, what did you do to my room? And Kevin’s face goes, oh, and we, and of course, once again, the final payoff, the setup was, do you remember when he destroyed Buzz’s room? Well, he never cleaned that up. There’s these great little things that have surprises with them at the end. You know, I just saw the guy who plays Buzz. I just saw a really excellent movie on Netflix. Devin Ratray? Yeah, Devin, of course, you know his name, Devin.

Devin: The only reason, every time I look myself up on IMDb, of course, that guy pops up.

Adam: He was a supporting role in a movie called Blue Ruin, which is really excellent. I’d seen it a couple times. It’s a sort of a revenge movie, but it’s extreme low budget, shot in Virginia. It’s really, you’d love it. It’s really good pacing. You’re sort of glued to the screen and there’s, it’s literally just images and sounds. There’s not a lot of dialogue because you’re just sort of traveling the journey with one guy. And he plays this friend of the main character who shows up for a few scenes. And I was like, holy, that’s freaking Buzz. It’s interesting. He was good in it too. He was good in Blue Ruin.

Devin: I was watching Nebraska years ago and I was like, oh, that’s, that’s Buzz. Pointed it out last episode. It’s so, it was so well cast.

Adam: I auditioned for that. I auditioned for that movie, Nebraska. For Nebraska? No. Obviously I didn’t get it.

Because you would have seen me in it if I did. I would have known about it, I’m assuming. In the audition, it was supposed to be one actor playing both parts, but I think they cast it differently as two, two twins.

Devin: Oh, I get what you’re saying.

Adam: Yeah. I auditioned for both twins to play, which I was pumped about. I’m like, oh, I would love to do that track, that challenge. Try to make them just subtly different enough to.

Devin: Yeah.

Adam: To register. Like, Armie Hammer does it in The Social Network. He plays the Winklevoss twins, and he does it actually really well. They feel like different people.

Devin: Tom Hardy in Legend.

Adam: Yeah, Tom Hardy played the. Tom Hardy does it in Legend. The two twins, mafia guys.

Devin: They’re pretty good.

Adam: He did pretty well in that.

Devin: There’s actually a new Christmas Carol, like FX is putting out. He’s just executive producing it, but Guy Pearce is in it. Have you seen episodes for that? No. Oh. My God, it looks so dark and creepy and awesome. FX does really cool, awesome stuff. They do. It’s very, it has almost like the same feeling as like a, what’s that series they do? And they change up the concept every year, horror show.

Adam: American Horror Story.

Devin: American Horror Story. God. Just brain dead right now. It’s got the same, I think it has the same like tone to that, but it’s going to be really good. Oh, I see.

Adam: I think Christmas Carol is. Oh, I see. One of the better, I think why it’s interesting is not only is it a Christmas story, which is cool, but it also really taps into human thinking and behavior. Like we must live in the now, the present, but we sort of get hung up on stuff in the past and what we need to be doing for the future. And so having him time travel, especially in a Dickensian time, a Victorian England time, he conceived of this, having him time travel, which is mind blowing. To these different parts of his life.

Devin: Right.

Adam: It’s one of the first, you know, an iconic pieces of self-reflection and an understanding of linear and nonlinear. Time exploration, but I love that story. Then again, I’m a big Dickens guy. I love Dickens.

Devin: Didn’t he write that in like a weekend? Like he was commissioned to write it for some publication or something like that?

Adam: I would imagine something crafted that brilliantly. It took a little more time, but I don’t know for sure how long it took him to write said that thing. Oh, I know he wrote a very quick.

Devin: He did? Yeah, someone, because it was commissioned by like a newspaper or something like that.

Adam: So I’m not that big of a Dickens fan that I, I, apparently I don’t know that. I’m enough of one, but I’m not, and I don’t know that.

Devin: Certainly don’t take my word for it.

Adam: We love spewing out all kinds of information, StoryOsophers, and then let you just figure it out on your own. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you StoryOsophers and even first-time listeners. If you haven’t finished your story this year, throughout season two, commit yourself to writing that story you want to write next year. In 2020, you’re gonna make that happen. Yes. And if, if you’re having trouble, listen to season two again. Let us walk you through some of the events and stages. It took Dickens six weeks, six weeks to write it. Six weeks. That’s, that’s enough time. That’s enough time. That’s a, that’s a while. Yeah, that’s a novella time. That’s not a weekend.

That’s not a weekend. I’m like, he wrote… Like, as soon as you said it, I’m like, I’m a failure! Did you know he wrote that in a weekend? He wrote that in 2020. In 20 minutes. With a pen. Not with a typewriter or a computer. He wrote it with a feather quill pen. It’s all over the internet. He wrote it with a magic marker on the wall of a bathroom.

Devin: Wrote it with a Sharpie. A bunch of tablets they found underneath his… All right.

Adam: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Devin: Merry Christmas, StoryOsophers. See you next year.

Adam: Please subscribe and rate us on iTunes. Follow us on social media. Share with your friends and send us your questions and comments. For additional resources and links to films, series, and books we talk about here, visit our website. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter for updates on story building tools and special offers at StoryOsophy.com.