DALE HAWES

By: Dale Hawes

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   As noted in my biography, in the early 1990s I worked on the first two Home Alone movies as a stand-in and photo double for Daniel Stern who played Marv the burglar. I have a few stories from that experience that I thought people would find interesting.

 

   Let me start by explaining what a "stand-in" dose on a movie set. A stand-in is someone who resembles the actor playing a specific role (same height, build and coloring). His job is to stand in the actors place and go through the actors blocking while the crew set up the lights and the camera for the shot to be filmed. The stand-in is in place of the actor during set up so the actor is free to go over his lines or get his makeup touched up or get instructions from the director and such. Once the crew has the shot sufficiently set and are ready to begin shooting, the stand-in steps out and the actor steps in and now the actual filming can begin.

 

   On the first Home Alone, I worked as Mr. Stern's stand-in because his main stand-in couldn't come into work that day. The scene I worked on was when Kevin lured the burglars up the staircase of his house so he could smash them in the face with paint cans tied to a rope from the balcony rail. All the interior shots of the McCallister house were built on a sound stage. This was done because, if the camera or one of the lights needed to go where a wall was, you could just move the wall out of the way. I never knew that about movie sets before that day. As I watched them film, I actually didn't think the movie would be very funny because I thought the slapstick was sophomoric and immature. Boy was I ever wrong! I miss judged the comedy because filming a movie is a very slow and meticulous process and I was not able to see the timing of the gags while on the set. Also, I was shocked to discover that filming could take so long. That particular bit took 13 hours to shoot. I never worked so long before in my life and I thought the day would never end.

   I was particularly impressed with the stuntman who stepped in to do the actual falling down the stairs. They put pads on their knees and elbows then took flying leaps down the stairs with no fear. The paint cans didn't hurt anyone because they were made of foam. When the stuntman slipped and fell on the micro machines strategically placed on the floor by Kevin, they scratched the wood floor every single take. A set painter would step in after the director yelled "Cut!" and touch up the scratches on the floor so it looked fresh for the next take. I thought the stuntmen were wild and crazy and by far the most fun people to be around on the set. I also discovered the glass ornaments Daniel Stern stepped on were made of candy glass. Candy glass is a substance that looks and brakes just like glass but it's made of sugar so it can't hurt anyone. I was actually able to break one in my hand by clenching it in my fist. The shattered ornament looked brutal in my hand but I had no cuts at all. I thought that was so cool. The bit when Marv stepped on the ornaments was shot the previous day so I didn’t see that being filmed.

 

   The following may explain the roll of a "photo double" on a movie set;

   The first time I was working as the photo double for Marv was when they were filming a "cut in” shot for scene in the Murphy House across the street. In this scene Kevin's mother was calling the Murphy's to see if they could check on Kevin, not knowing the burglars were robbing the house at the time. This is an important scene because it's how the burglars learn Kevin was in fact home alone. Now the "cut-in" shot I worked on was a second unit shot. This means it was not shot by the main crew during principal photography but by a smaller crew with the actors photo double. The reason for this is because for these shots, we don't see the actors face. The shot we are talking about is Marv's POV (point of view) shot of the phone/answering machine as Kate MacCallister is leaving the message, then Marv's hand comes into frame to pick up the phone which leads into the next shot of Marv's face as he's telling Harry what's happened. Since it was a second unit shot we did not shoot at the same location the actors were in when they shot the actual scene. In fact the set I walked into was literally nothing more than an end table dressed with a phone, a Rolodex and other small things. Even though they only photographed my hand I was still so stoked that any part of me was getting filmed by a real 35mm motion picture camera.

   If you look at the shot carefully in the finished film, you will notice that the handwriting in the Rolodex is much like the handwriting of a 5 year old. This is because it's my handwriting. Whoever set the end table never thought to fill out any of the Rolodex cards and when the cinematographer noticed this, he demanded that the card should be filled out for realism. Since that was not the job of any of the 4 of us on the second unit and this was a union shoot, no one wanted to be the one to step on someone else's toes and get in trouble with the set people who were nowhere to be found. So being too young to know better, I volunteered to fill out the card in my bad handwriting. Actually the shot is so quick I don't think anyone ever noticed.

   People often asked me, why didn't they just use the real actor for the shot instead of me? The answer is to conserve on time. Believe it or not, it took a few hours to shoot that 5 second shot. The first unit can't spend that kind of time on a simple cut in. Especially because in this shot you can't even see the actors face.

   Despite the fact they only photographed my hand I had to show up on the set in the full Marv costume.

 

   I also stood in for the character Officer Balzak played by Larry Hankin. In this scene Kevin's mother is calling the police department for help and gets shuffled around from the police to family services and is finally connected with Officer Balzak. This was the only time I heard the whole crew laugh out loud after the director yelled, "Cut!". I had no idea what happened on this on take that was so funny because the crew was blocking my line of sight when they were filming. It wasn't until I saw the movie for myself that I saw the donut fall out of Larry's mouth and get stuck on the receiver of the phone. When I saw the movie I could finally share in the laugh too. You may be interested to know that the donut bit was never planned. It was a happy accident.

 

   The film production built all their interior sets for the movie at New Trier West High School in Northfeild, Illinois (a few miles north of Chicago). The school was available because, at the time, it had closed due to declining enrollment. They converted the two gymnasiums into sound-stages and built the set for the first and second floor of the MacCallister house in the main gym along with other floating sets. In the smaller gym, they built the basement of the MacCallister house and the airplane set and more floating sets. The set for the Murphy house was built in the school's swimming pool so it could be flooded as per the calling card of the "Wet Bandits". I'm sorry to say, I have no memory of the set for the Paris hotel room or the MacCallister's attack set.  A good example of a ‘Floating Set” is the police station scene with Officer Balzak. This was a very small set made up of little more than office partitions. So, a Floating set is something small and easy to put up and strike. The police station set was in the smaller gym as well.

   One day during lunch, I wondered through the MacCallister basement set. I was taken by how complete the set was. The paint had cracks in it, just as if it were old and had been painted with several layers over the years. There was spider webbing on the shelves and even thick layers of dust on the windowsills. I never could have imagined that so much detail would be put into a movie set. It amassed me.

   There was a wide hallway between the two gyms that also accessed the swimming pool. This hall had a little lounge set up and it's where we all spent our downtime. Macaulay Culkin was not famous at the time because the movie obviously had not yet come out so I was able to talk to him a lot. I liked him and found him intelligent for his age. To give you an example of how smart he was and how dumb I was: He challenged me to a game of chess. I told him I didn't know how to play. He then offered checkers and I agreed. He won. I was 19 years old and he was 8.  Another game I remember playing is scooter racing. The production had scooters for the kids to play on and one day I challenged Kieran Culkin to a race around a hallway that circled a courtyard. The unusual thing about the race we proposed was that we would go in opposite directions so no one could know who was winning until the end. I won that match but we both got in trouble with the makeup department because he got all sweaty just before he had to shoot a scene.

    You actually may have seen the outside of New Trier West High School in the movie "Uncle Buck" with John Candy. It's the same school that Uncle Buck drooped his niece off, then his old car backfired and filled the air with black smoke.

 

   Speaking of John Candy, my very first day working on Home Alone was on location at the old Meigs Field in Chicago. Meigs Field was a tiny airport for small plains located on Northerly Island off the shore of Lake Michigan. The scene they were shooting that day was when we meet Gus Polinski played by John Candy who offers Kate a ride to Chicago with "The Kenosha Kickers". I was just a background extra that day but it was my first day ever working on a movie set and I thought it was cool to see John Candy and Catherine O'Hara in the flesh. P.S. I have no memory of meeting the extra everyone claimed may be Elvis Presley.

 

   When Home Alone 2: Lost in New York started production I was lucky enough to get hired as Daniel Stern’s main stand-in for the Chicago leg of the production. Most of the New York scenes for that movie were actually shot in Chicago. I got the job after being called to a “look see”. A handful of potential Marv stand-ins showed up and the director of photography looked us over for a moment, then pointed to me and said, “He’s fine” and I got the job.

 

   This next chapter is about the location outside of Duncan's Toy Chest where the burglars recognizes Kevin standing at the curb on a busy New York street. The street was actually shot on LaSalle St. in Chicago in front of a building called The Rookery. The most interesting things I remember about that location actually happened at night when filming the scene of Kevin spoiling the robbery. I remember the scene when Kevin through the rock through the display window. They rigged these devices around the edge of the window that used many tiny explosive to thrust a little hammer into the glass of the window ensuring it would shatter. When Mac through the rock for one take it bounced off the window leaving no damage at all. However, one take when Kevin's stuntman through the rock, the shattering was spectacular. For the teeter totter gag they had a crane extended over the stuntmen with a winch to pull Harry’s stuntman into the air as the Marv stuntman jumped out the window and onto the teeter totter. Another crane with a single bucket was extended over an old car for the shot when Harry fell down onto the car. I really don't know how that stuntman had the guts do that stunt. He stood in the bucket which was a little over 10 feet off the ground then he simply fell backwards onto the car below. The car had been gutted and the roll bar had been removed so he only had the cars roof, thin layer of metal, to break his fall. Like the store’s display window, the car’s windows had combustible charges to insure the glass would shatter on impact. So, the stuntman fell backwards, landed on the car and the glass shatters. The Director yells, "Cut" and not one person moved or spoke for a long moment. No one knew if the guy got hurt. Finally the stuntman sat up and everyone cheers. The poor man was spitting glass out of his mouth as he got off the car. Stuntman are amazing.

 

   One of my fondest memories of working on Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was working at the old Uptown Theatre on the north side of the city of Chicago. They used the lobby of the theater as the interior of Duncan's Toy Chest. This old movie palace was so humongous that the entire toy store set fit in the lobby and you never even saw the ceiling because it was 50 feet high. The theatre had been closed and falling apart since the early 80s'. During the buildings life it was a vaudeville, a movie theatre and a live music venue. It has served as a venue for the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stone and others. The last performance was the J Giels band in 1981. With the exception of the lobby witch was renovated, painted and dressed for the movie, this building was old moldy and falling apart. The paint on the walls was peeled, the plaster was cracked and had water damage and the dust was unreal. I loved the building because it was an endless laborite of hallways and rooms and had 3 balconies to explore. Rumor has it that there were secret tunnels in the basement that Al Capone used to escape from the famous Green Mill bar next door or to store fronts across the street but I never found the tunnels myself. I can say that there were multiple layers of basement and the projection booth was so high that the frame that held the old arch light for the film projector sat at a 45 degree angle because the floor of the auditorium had to be about 40 feet below. I would later learn that the Uptown Theater was the 2nd biggest theatre in the United States (second only to Radio City Music Hall in New York City) Joe Pesci's stand in and I both fell in love with the building because we both loved old buildings. We were so sad when that location was wrapped, the production moved on and we could no longer get into the abandoned building. 

   One last thought on, "Duncan's Toy Chest"; While working at the Uptown Theatre I was lucky enough to strike up a conversation with Eddie Bracken who played Mr. Duncan. If you didn't know, he also played Roy Walley in National Lampoon's: Vacation (1983) as well as being very poplar comedy actor in the 1940s and '50s. I'd like to state, I found him to be an extremely nice man, down to earth and very approachable.

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   I did a lot of photo double work for Marv's character on the second film. For example, the hands breaking in and opening the chest full of money at the toy store (for Marv's POV shot) are my hands. Also, the hands that pick up Kevin (during Kevin's close up) after he slipped and falls on the ice while being chased by the burglars are mine as well, just to name a few. But the greatest performance my hands gave never made the film. They shot a whole sequence where the burglars are being taken to jail in the back of a cop car, then they are stopped by a train. Marv just happens to find one of the micro machines they slipped on in the first film, in his pocket. It was a little tank and he uses the gun barrel of the tank to pick the lock of his handcuffs. He then releases Harry and the two sneak out of the car undetected as the police are waiting for the train to pass. The whole scene was cut out of the final film and replaced with a shot of a newspaper headline. I also stood in for the principal photography of that scene and it was freezing that day. I thought my feet were going to fall off. All that work, all that sacrifice, all that time, I tell you, when I finally saw the film, you could imagine how disappointed I was to see the shot of the newspaper. But it's ok. The whole experience was awesome and I got paid for the time either way.

 

   I was invited to the wrap party for Home Alone 2 and I was particularly excited to go because there was a rumor that Michael Jackson was going to be there. This seemed likely because Macaulay Culkin & Michael Jackson's friendship was the buzz in the media at the time. Well, Mr. Jackson never made it to the event but I had an amazing time nonetheless. The only cast members that actually made it to the party were Macaulay Culkin, his brother Kieran and the 2 stand-ins for Kevin. At time I was a very immature 21 year old and as such I found it more fun to hang with the kids playing the street fighter arcade game than with the adults who only seemed to want to name drop and talk about their careers. Playing the game was great because they had a device stuck in the quarter slot so all of you had to do was press the button to continue the game instead of constantly feeding the machine quarters. I never hung out with Mac before except within the extremely protected environment of the movie set so at the party I was shocked at how many people act like a complete ass around a celebrity. Every 2 minutes someone would invade our space uninvited with, "can I have an autograph", "would you come with me", "can I touch you", "if I give you $20 will you say this to my girlfriend" after five minutes of this I couldn't take anymore. People were so inconsiderate and pushy. I finally said to Mac, "Man, this is so annoying!" And with much zeal and a lot of anger he replied, "I KNOW!!!" It was obvious his frustration ran deep. I never before knew how horrible fame could be for someone. I only had to endure it for one evening and I couldn't take it but Macaulay had to deal with it every hour of every day and was only 10 years old. Mac refuses every request from everyone. He did it politely but firmly and I don't blame him at all. People would often ask me if Macaulay Culkin was a brat and I would tell them he was just like any other kid. People have no idea what he went through. I am left to wonder that if Michael Jackson had attended that party, would I have been just as much of a pain in the ass as all the people who approached that poor little kid who never asked to be put in that situation.

 

   The one day I felt very privileged in my position as a photo double was when they called me in for a "pick up shot". A pick up shot is often done after a production has wrapped because in the editing of the film they discover something important is missing and they have to go back and reshoot the missing element. In this case it seems after showing a test screening it was not apparent to the audience that Marv stole coins from the Salvation Army bin using his hand wrapped in sticky tape, so they needed to go back and shoot a cut in. I was surprised to get the call because it had been a few months after production had wrapped and it was already summertime. But I was excited to go. This day was especially exciting for me because this kind of shot would have normally been a second unit crew but in this case, me, a simple photo double was being directed by Chris Columbus the films main director and a bit of a legend in the industry. I had my own folding chair to sit in during my downtime and I had 2 stage hands taking care of my sticky hand, removing the coins from the last take and re-gluing my hand for the next take. It was like being a star. The cast for the shot was me and a photo double for the extra playing the Santa Clause ringing the bell. They had to match the wintertime New York street during the hot summertime in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook. It was shot just in front of the warehouse they used as a soundstage for the second film. They parked a car along the side walk that matched the one in the shot from New York and they had a machine that crushed ice and spit it along the curb to make the sidewalk look like the snow had been shoveled recently. They placed the Salvation Army bin to complete the scene and then I was the star for the day... Well the star for a few hours. Soon they got the shot and then moved on to Jerry Rossetti's bit. Jerry was Joe Pesci's photo double and I never saw what he had to do. But I got to stay and eat lunch inside the warehouse where I saw Walter Matthau eating. What a treat! He was there because at that time they were shooting "Dennis the Menace" at the same soundstage. I love Walter Matthau! It was a great way for me to end the production.

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