What it was really like to live in Home Alone

when director chris columbus decided he wanted to use 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, as the setting home alone, He described the luxurious five-bedroom Georgian home as “hot and dangerous”. This was a surprise to John Abendashien, who owned it.

“I wondered, what does he mean by ‘dangerous’!” Abendashien recalled with a laugh. Independent“I always thought it had a warm-hearted vibe! But when I saw the whole movie for the first time, and the scene where Kevin is preparing to do battle with the Wet Bandits, with the John Williams soundtrack in the background, and the eerie lights coming out of the house, I thought yes, I’ve got the ‘Jeopardy’ bit now!”

home alone Released in 1990, it became an instant hit and topped the box office for three months. In the 35 years that followed, the story of eight-year-old Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) Protecting your home from a pair of dimwitted robbers by any means solidifies its status as a beloved Christmas staple. It is revisited every year by millions of fans, to whom the grand McCallister House has become as familiar as their own homes.

When Abendshien first laid eyes on the property in 1989, he knew it was something special.

“I can’t explain it to this day, but when we went up and looked, it was what captured my heart about the place,” he says. “For one thing I really like the natural light, and the abundance of windows in that house. I just love the size of it. True confession, we bought the house on the shore.”

Abendshien, a health care strategist, bought the home for $875,000. Less than a year later, location scout Jacqueline Buxbaum contacted him to inquire about using it as a location. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,

Abedshion first met Buxbaum in 1983, when he was living in nearby Evanston home alone Screenwriter John Hughes Was shooting for his directorial debut sixteen Candles,

“John Hughes really liked doing his filming in the Chicago North Shore area, I think partly because he grew up there and was familiar with it,” Abendshien explains.

“I think he also liked the community atmosphere. It’s a very lovely Norman Rockwell-ian atmosphere, with tree-lined streets and so on. He liked a confident community setting as his backdrop. He was not a Hollywood guy.”

A few years later, Buxbaum contacted Abendshien again and asked if he would consider letting his Evanston home appear. uncle buckBut by then he was already in the process of moving to Winnetka.

She came to see the new house Columbus, who at the time was also attached to direct Chevy Chase Christmas Vacation,

“Chris Columbus and Chevy obviously didn’t have a good partnership,” explains Abendashien. “Chris survived, and John Hughes said: ‘Hey, I’ve got another project for you. It’s perfect for you.'”

When Columbus and his crew arrived to begin shooting home aloneAbendashien and his family initially moved out. However, after realizing that it would be more convenient for them to stay on site, they moved back in.

The house was so large that they could have several rooms to themselves while filming continued. “I called it our ‘movie cave,'” says Abendshien. “We had a very large master bedroom, a sitting room with a fireplace, a study, and a few other rooms. The place was bigger than the apartment my then-wife lived in in New York.”

This gave the family the unique experience of watching a film being made in their own home, and also got a chance to get to know the cast and crew.

“The only restriction was that if they were filming exterior, we couldn’t go through the windows,” says Abendashien. “It took me back to my Army days when I was crawling under the window like a GI!”

He continues: “I get a little emotional thinking about the cast and crew, because they became our movie family. Dan Stern, who played Marv the Prankster Wet Bandit, is a prankster in real life. He loved hanging out with kids and having fun with them.

“Joe Pesci was more serious, but a very nice, kind guy. Catherine O’Hara, oh my God, she’s the quintessential mother. She took my six-year-old daughter under her wing, and they became very close.”

When Abendashian attended the film’s premiere, he felt as if he knew the characters on screen personally. Of course, many of the fans who saw it saw it too – and some felt like it was their home too.

As soon as the film was released, Abendashian had to fight off fans flocking to the house and press his face against the windows to peek inside. To this day, hundreds of visitors come to the house every day, often resulting in road closures during holidays to deal with severe traffic.

“Sometimes you felt like someone was intruding on you,” recalls Abendshian. “It was like living in a fishbowl.”

Those who peeked inside might have been surprised. the interiors are painted home alone He was extremely influential after the film became a hit. Before the film, the most popular paint colors in America were mauve, denim blue, light turquoise, and light pink.

After the film’s release, paint manufacturer Benjamin Moore noted that his biggest sellers soon became deep Arroyo Red and Forest Green. The interior decoration of the actual house was not festive.

“When they started putting up red and green wallpaper during the holidays, it hurt my eyes!” Abendshien laughs. “They assured me it was just temporary. They put it on a thin foam board mounted on the walls, and it came off without any damage.

“When filming began we had just completed our interior decoration, in very plain, subtle art deco colors. Production designer John Muto explained that the story could be told through visuals, so I accepted that the wallpaper decoration was right for the film, but it’s not something I could live with if they left it that way. My preference is a little more subtle.”

Abendashien says that as overwhelming as the amount of attention the house received at first, she felt she had been blessed. He sold the property in 2012 for $1,585,000, but he has fond memories of his time there.

He has just written a memoir, no more home aloneMet the fans who came to watch the film and told about his many experiences.

“There was a time when I would go out, I would just stick a fake smile on my face, maybe wave to people, and go about my business,” he says. “But then I got to a point where I started interacting with people and realized how much joy it was to be there for them. In fact, that joy was contagious to me.

“I talked to them about why, for Pete’s sake, they literally came from all over the world to see a house! The conclusion I came to is that at a time when politically we are a very polarized society, comedy brings us all together. The film relates to people of all backgrounds and all religions. It was a real education for me, and very uplifting.”

John Abendsien’s ‘Home But Alone No More’ now available