Macaulay Culkin Tears Up Over 'Home Alone' Mom Catherine O'Hara's Loving Support
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00 Thanks for having me.
00:02 Don't tell me what to do.
00:06 Alright. Fine. Fine.
00:08 First, I'd just like to thank everyone for coming.
00:13 I just...
00:20 There's so many people that I love.
00:22 And to feel that love back is just amazing.
00:26 So, thank you.
00:28 [applause]
00:34 Catherine, Natasha, thanks for all your kind words and your stories and stuff.
00:41 You made my kid's dad, their papa, look good.
00:49 And the most important thing to me is also that their papa understands that he wasn't always his papa.
00:55 Like, there was... He also used to be a kid too, you know?
00:58 Thank you, Steve Nissen and Anna Martinez and the Walk of Fame committee for honoring me in this way.
01:06 I feel such esteem from this whole thing.
01:12 There's a couple people I want to single out today.
01:18 Michelle Bega.
01:24 We've worked together for like 20 years.
01:26 Everything from just general publicity to trips to Disneyland and, you know, just dealing with my pizza band.
01:33 Remember that?
01:35 You just always work so tirelessly for me.
01:40 So, thank you.
01:42 I love you.
01:45 Next, I'd like to thank Emily Gerson Sainz.
01:48 There you are.
01:52 The first time I met Emily, I was 13 years old.
01:55 And I had one foot out the door of Hollywood.
01:58 And she just stuck around.
02:03 And she stuck around and she stuck around.
02:06 I probably quit more projects than I've actually done with you, to be honest.
02:13 To be fair.
02:15 But, you know, you stuck around and you stuck around and you stuck around.
02:19 And so, just thanks for sticking around.
02:25 Thanks for believing in me and my family.
02:28 I love you so much.
02:30 But you're my family.
02:32 And I love you.
02:35 I wish Max was here.
02:37 But I know he is.
02:39 Also, I want to give my love to Ken Weinrib.
02:44 Hi.
02:46 It's not so remarkable that I've had a lawyer since I was 10 years old.
02:50 It's the fact that I've had the same lawyer since I was 10 years old.
02:53 So, yeah.
02:55 You're my friend.
02:58 You're my advisor.
02:59 You're my family.
03:02 And just thanks for always looking out for me.
03:05 I love you.
03:07 Yeah, lastly, but not leastly, I'd like to thank Brenda.
03:15 [Applause]
03:20 You are absolutely everything.
03:22 You're my champion.
03:28 You're the only person happier for me today than I am.
03:32 You're not only the best woman I've ever known, you're the best person I've ever known.
03:38 You've given me just all my purpose.
03:42 You've given me family.
03:44 You know, and after the birth of our two boys, you've become one of my three favorite people.
03:50 You're somewhere in there.
03:53 But I love you.
03:56 I love you so much.
03:58 So, yeah, to wrap things up, and in the spirit of the holiday season, I just want to say,
04:04 Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.
04:07 [Applause]
04:11 Well, I have a little speech to make about you.
04:14 So pretend you're not here.
04:17 After Home Alone opened, I went to see it at a Saturday matinee in a theater packed with shiny, happy children and their parents.
04:28 And it was thrilling for all of us.
04:30 But at one point, I saw two boys get up out of their seats, so not wanting to leave the movie.
04:35 But after having already sucked back their giant sodas, they really had to go.
04:39 So they started running up the aisle, and then suddenly panicked that they might miss something great.
04:43 They turned around and looked back at the screen, and one of them said, "It's okay. No, it's just a mom."
04:49 And they kept running.
04:51 I say, "Bright boys, Bright boys, Home Alone was, is, and always will be a global, a beloved global sensation."
05:01 The reason, the reason it's that, the reason families all over the world can't let a year go by without watching and loving Home Alone together,
05:10 is because of Macaulay Culkin.
05:13 Yes, yes, he had a most excellent script and a wonderful director,
05:20 but it is Macaulay's perfect performance as Kevin Macalester that gave us that little every boy on an extraordinary adventure.
05:32 I know you worked really hard, I know you did, but you made acting look like the most natural thing in the world to do.
05:38 It really was as if we had ambushed the home of this real little boy named Kevin to make a movie,
05:44 and he just went along with it for the fun of it.
05:47 He's the dearest thing.
05:50 Okay, oh, the scene where I had to drag him upstairs to sleep in the attic because he'd misbehaved,
05:57 and he says, you know, he's mouthing off about the family, and I say,
06:02 "Well, you'd be pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you had no family."
06:06 And he said, "No, I wouldn't."
06:09 And I was supposed to say, "Then say it again. Maybe it'll happen."
06:14 And I can't tell you how much that killed me.
06:17 I could not wrap my head around saying something so horrific to this beautiful child.
06:23 Of course, I was not yet a mother at the time, and I had no idea the kind of things that would come out of my mouth with my own two sons.
06:33 Macaulay, a ten-year-old boy, this ten--beautiful, dear little ten-year-old boy was called a superstar, a moneymaker,
06:43 one of the hottest leading young men in Hollywood by the world over.
06:49 How does anyone survive that?
06:51 Well, I believe you'd have to possess a certain quality, a gift that dear John Hughes obviously recognized in you, Macaulay,
06:59 your sense of humor.
07:01 It's a sign of intelligence in a child and a key to surviving life at any age.
07:06 You have, from what I see, you have brought that sense of sweet yet twisted yet totally relatable sense of humor
07:16 to everything that you have chosen to do since Home Alone.
07:19 Macaulay, congratulations. You so deserve your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
07:25 And thank you for including me, your fake mom who left you Home Alone not once but twice,
07:30 to share in this happy occasion. I'm so proud of you.
07:34 God bless you.
07:36 [applause]
07:43 Okay.
07:45 Mac, I'm so proud of you and I'm honored to share in this milestone moment and to be able to celebrate you.
07:52 [clears throat]
07:57 Well, I remember our first meeting at a bar in the Lower East Side.
08:01 It was down some stairs in the back, some random no-name who-cares spot.
08:05 We were about to start filming a true crime film about the Michael Allig murders in the '90s rave scene of underground New York.
08:12 Well, you played Michael Allig. I was playing Brooke, someone in your inner circle.
08:17 We kind of just clocked each other and I remember thinking, "That's my friend."
08:21 And we were from that point on.
08:24 I guess we were about 19 or 20 or something then.
08:27 I don't want to be weird or emo about it, but the truth is that there's a very rare unspoken language
08:33 that happens between child actors who make it out alive.
08:37 Now, granted, you were Shirley Temple and I was Paul Giamatti, but the refrain remains the same.
08:45 "Yes, yes, we did. We had a gift and that was fun."
08:50 But is it really sane to be a fully activated businessman enmeshed in an adult world before the age of six years old?
08:59 Probably not.
09:01 And so we find each other and we instinctively register what a miracle that survival is.
09:09 The true beauty, though, is seeing the adult you've become, the loving patriarch you are to your beautiful siblings,
09:15 and now the deep and loving father and husband that you are.
09:19 Later in life, you so generously and gamely played a role in my first outing as a writer-director,
09:25 a kind of Fellini-esque endeavor wherein I asked you vaguely to play a cipher,
09:31 and to which you and I immediately replied, "Say no more."
09:35 Well, you showed up, you crushed, and I got to watch firsthand, giddy at the monitor,
09:40 your automatic, undeniable, and impossibly magnetic power.
09:44 A screen legend navigating surrealist twists, no problem, as always.
09:50 And later, meaning now, I got to say, nothing makes me happier than to see you existing so concretely on your own terms,
09:58 and with no loss of your underlying eccentricity or absurdist outlook or big picture, big heart perspective
10:06 that sustains us as a community and as a family of artists.
10:11 Sometimes, we would play running charades with your whole family and your pals in the big Soho loft,
10:19 and I think to myself, "Maybe we won. Maybe Mac really cracked it."
10:27 And it makes me happy, real happy, for all of us.
10:32 So thank you for being the one and only. I love you, and you're a king. Congratulations.
10:38 [Applause]
10:45 [Music]