Buzz from Home Alone was a little shit. He was a remorseless bully of little Kevin McAllister, nicking his pizza, calling him a 'phlegm wad' and blaming all of his misdeeds on his defenceless sibling. And that's before you factor in that shocker of an 80s brush cut that he called hair.
Now let's turn our attention to one of the most famous scenes in the original Home Alone movie, where Kevin picks up a photo of Buzz's girlfriend and has a jolly good laugh at how ugly she is. Hmm, seems the younger McAllister's being a bit of a dick now, taking the piss out of some poor kid's appearance.
Credit: Home Alone / 20th Century Fox
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Director John Hughes made a career in the 1980s by making movies that told us that it was what was on the inside that counted rather than appearances - each one of them was a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal at the end - and it turns out that he applied similar standards on set as well as in Shermer, Illinois.
Devin Ratray, who played Buzz - and has a name so American that you'd have to invent it if it didn't exist - recently told Yahoo that the photo wasn't a girl at all.
"[The producers] decided it would be unkind to put a girl in that role of just being funny-looking," Devin explained.
"The art director had a son who was more than willing to volunteer for the part. I think if he had known it would become the highest-grossing family comedy of all time, he might have had second thoughts about it."
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So there you go. Another cinematic mystery cleared up.
While we're here, let's put it out there and say that despite being a little shit, Buzz ain't all that bad. Let's remind ourselves who the real baddies of this film were: not the Wet Bandits (who were burglars, sure, but useless at it) or Buzz (who was a dweeb and mean, but his brother Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, was smug and smart-arsed to the last).
No, the real bad guys are the bloody parents who forget their kid and go all the way to Paris, before losing him again the next year. I mean, fuck's sake.
And while we're righting Christmas movie wrongs like Buzz being the shittier McAllister brother, can we just all bear in mind that The Grinch didn't actually hate Christmas, he hated the people in Whoville - which is quite reasonable when you think about it.
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Also, just because Die Hard is set at Christmas doesn't make it a Christmas movie. By that logic, Rocky IV, Brazil and L.A. Confidential are all Christmas movies. Which they're not. Rant over.
Words: Mike Meehall Wood
Featured Image Credit: Home Alone / 20th Century FoxTopics: Christmas, Film, Entertainment, TV and Film, US Entertainment, Home Alone, macaulay culkin