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By Marc Peyser
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What ever happened to the innocence of childhood? Did it die with the conviction of Pete Rose in 1990? The death of "Sesame Street's" Mr. Hooper, in 1982? Or did it survive those traumas, only to succumb just last month to the twin blows of Magic Johnson's blood-test results and the sight of Macaulay Culkin, stung to death by bees, laid out in a little white coffin in his new movie, "My Girl"? For parents dreading the question "Gee, if it could happen to Macaulay Culkin, could it happen to me?"--a few words of advice:
Remind your kids that Macaulay Culkin is not actually dead, only his character, the 11-year-old love interest of young Anna Chlumsky, who plays the daughter of a smalltown mortician. It may help to view Michael Jackson's new "Black Or White" video, in which Culkin looks very much alive, except when he has to dance alongside the other kids. In any case, by the time Culkin meets his end, off camera, you will have sat through one funeral, an embalming and an argument over whether to apply eye makeup to the corpse of a minister's wife, so death will seem pretty routine. The only thing some children may find troubling is that Culkin doesn't come back to life in the picture. Gently explain that sometimes people die in movies and stay dead. You can add that if every child in America goes to see "My Girl" at least five times, the studio will revive him in a sequel.
Consider that some people probably would be happy to see Culkin stung to death. The word in Hollywood is that the star of "Home Alone" may be the first actor to get too big for his britches even before he's had his growth spurt. This is based on a belief that he used his immense clout with Twentieth Century Fox to get a lead role in a thriller called "The Good Son," over the objections of the director, Michael Lehmann. According to an executive familiar with the project, Culkin's father and manager, Kit, linked Macaulay's cooperation on the "Home Alone" sequel to getting the other part. Sam Cohn, Macaulay's agent, says, "Certainly, both movies were being discussed at the same time, but he had committed to "Home Alone 2' last summer." Lehmann, who believed that Culkin was wrong to play a sinister 12-year-old psychotic, left the project, which has been put off until next fall to let Culkin finish "Home Alone 2." His reported salary for the sequel: a cool $4.5 million.
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But Fox executives insist that the studio wanted Culkin for "The Good Son" all along. According to head of production Roger Birnbaum, Kit Culkin saw the script but did not respond for a number of months. Then, as the movie was nearing production with another actor in mind for the role, Culkin announced he wanted the part. The role will be rewritten to make it a cute, sinister 12-year-old. Of course it's not the studio that wants Culkin dead; it needs him alive to make another $507 million (worldwide gross of "Home Alone") from him. But somebody must be spreading those terrible rumors.
"My Girl" is set in 1972, so it's one more chance to see Jamie Lee Curtis (the love interest of the funereal Dan Aykroyd) in a miniskirt. And Chlumsky, a quirkily beautiful 11-year-old gamine making her first movie, is a gem, the next Brooke Shields. Which brings to mind the thought that since Culkin isn't dead, he will most likely grow up, which in the case of Shields was almost as bad for her career. Sooner or later the forces of time will take Macaulay from us; at least, under Aykroyd's ministrations, we can give him a proper goodbye.
PHOTO:Is he getting too big for his britches? Culkin/BENNO FRIEDMAN-OUTMNE
PHOTO:A gem:Chlumsky
MARC PEYSER
The ads call All I Want for Christmas "The comedy that's both naughty and nice," which makes it the first holiday movie to undersell itself When it's nice, it's treacly: Hallie and Ethan are trying to reunite their divorced parents, and the film uses tons of sitcom devices to get them alone together, such as a convenient blizzard. But when the movie is naughty, it's downright offensive. Hallie skips toward her Manhattan town house chirping "Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah" to passers-by. "My teacher says you should always say both things," she explains. "People these days are so sensitive." Sensitive? Not the people who made this movie. An Italian wedding features a greaseball groom and an overfed bride whose face gets smeared with the green and fuchsia cake. In a department store, an Asian employee hawks free samples of Japanese food: "Sushi for every occasion. Sushi for every Caucasian." At Ethan's school dance a girl engages her partners in conversation on her favorite topic: Nazis. "I never believed Mengele was dead," she says gleefully. "He could be right here at this very cotillion!"
Should kids see this kind of tasteless, G-rated trash? Brandon Tartikoff seems to think so. "All I Want" is the first Paramount movie released under the ex-NBC Entertainment chief's watch. Maybe he should hire his old network's standards department to give him a hand.
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