So color me surprised when I checked my daily podcast downloads this morning and saw that Macaulay Culkin was featured on the latest episode of WTF with Marc Maron.
For those of you under thirty, allow me to provide some background: back in the early 1990s, Macaulay (or Mac as he's generally known by) was the biggest child movie star in the world and perhaps the biggest one since Shirley Temple. In 1990 he was in a Christmas movie called Home Alone and it was one of the biggest hits of that decade. It made him a movie star -- for a while -- and he appeared in the movie's successful sequel a couple years later plus another successful movie called My Girl. Then he made a bunch of other movies that most people didn't see. And then, by the late 1990s, he vanished.
Until the early 2000s when he came back -- sort of. He did an off-Broadway play and some indie movies. Then ... he vanished again. And, since then, he's basically been absent from popular culture.
What's Mac been doing? That's what he talks about in this podcast episode. It seems that he just lives on his movie money and travels and hangs out. He talks about his complicated family life and the fall-out with his father who used to manage his career. It's a fascinating, if somewhat sad, story.
And, bizarrely, yours truly, yes Mr NYC himself (i.e. ME) is a small, very small, part of Mac's story.
Back in the late 1980s, as a young child, I was a student at the School of American Ballet (SAB). I was one of small cadre of boy students. I was there for about four years and appeared in the New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center for three years. My last year there, and the last time I was in The Nutcracker, Mac had just joined SAB and we were in the same Nutcracker cast. We "worked" together for about three months. We didn't become friends (I found him annoying, he was always running around, seemed completely unable to focus) but we muddled through. I strongly remember his very large family hanging around as well as his father who, later on, he had an epic falling out with. They all seemed very noisy.
After that Nutcracker year, I left SAB and didn't give this kid (like the others) a second thought. So, as you might imagine, it shocked me when, a couple years later, he popped up in this movie Home Alone (I didn't realize he acted and danced) and overnight became a sensation. It was a surreal, fun-house experience to see this. And, this morning, listening to this podcast, it was equally surreal to hear him talk about his time in The Nutcracker of which I was a part.
I certainly hope Mac is happy and wish him well. I'm also so glad that I never got into show business and walked away from the mentally and emotionally punishing world of of child performing. It's not a surprise that he hasn't had a normal life when he certainly didn't have a normal child hood. It'd be interesting to talk with him again and, who knows, maybe I will.
But it's strange when a small part of your childhood literally pops up one morning on your phone.
Oh the times we live in.
For those of you under thirty, allow me to provide some background: back in the early 1990s, Macaulay (or Mac as he's generally known by) was the biggest child movie star in the world and perhaps the biggest one since Shirley Temple. In 1990 he was in a Christmas movie called Home Alone and it was one of the biggest hits of that decade. It made him a movie star -- for a while -- and he appeared in the movie's successful sequel a couple years later plus another successful movie called My Girl. Then he made a bunch of other movies that most people didn't see. And then, by the late 1990s, he vanished.
Until the early 2000s when he came back -- sort of. He did an off-Broadway play and some indie movies. Then ... he vanished again. And, since then, he's basically been absent from popular culture.
What's Mac been doing? That's what he talks about in this podcast episode. It seems that he just lives on his movie money and travels and hangs out. He talks about his complicated family life and the fall-out with his father who used to manage his career. It's a fascinating, if somewhat sad, story.
And, bizarrely, yours truly, yes Mr NYC himself (i.e. ME) is a small, very small, part of Mac's story.
Back in the late 1980s, as a young child, I was a student at the School of American Ballet (SAB). I was one of small cadre of boy students. I was there for about four years and appeared in the New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center for three years. My last year there, and the last time I was in The Nutcracker, Mac had just joined SAB and we were in the same Nutcracker cast. We "worked" together for about three months. We didn't become friends (I found him annoying, he was always running around, seemed completely unable to focus) but we muddled through. I strongly remember his very large family hanging around as well as his father who, later on, he had an epic falling out with. They all seemed very noisy.
After that Nutcracker year, I left SAB and didn't give this kid (like the others) a second thought. So, as you might imagine, it shocked me when, a couple years later, he popped up in this movie Home Alone (I didn't realize he acted and danced) and overnight became a sensation. It was a surreal, fun-house experience to see this. And, this morning, listening to this podcast, it was equally surreal to hear him talk about his time in The Nutcracker of which I was a part.
I certainly hope Mac is happy and wish him well. I'm also so glad that I never got into show business and walked away from the mentally and emotionally punishing world of of child performing. It's not a surprise that he hasn't had a normal life when he certainly didn't have a normal child hood. It'd be interesting to talk with him again and, who knows, maybe I will.
But it's strange when a small part of your childhood literally pops up one morning on your phone.
Oh the times we live in.
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