Entertainment

'Home Alone' director explains how the BB gun shot was pulled off by 'a guy with a paintbrush' for $600

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The hijinks in "Home Alone" are constant as one of the memorable elements of this classic comedy about a boy who is mistakenly left at home while his family is in Paris is all the physical comedy at the end of the movie.

When burglars Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) try to get into Kevin's (Macaulay Culkin) house, they find themselves walking into one trap after another. And because the movie was released in 1990, CGI wasn't much of an option. So, a lot of the painful things Harry and Marv go through were done by stuntmen.

However, director Chris Columbus revealed there's one stunt that was done in a unique way.

The shot where Marv pokes his head into the doggie dog only to be met by Kevin firing a BB-gun at his face was an animated effect.

BB_gun_home_alone_fox
The brief shot of a BB-shooting Marv in "Home Alone" was a hand-painted animated effect.  Fox

"This is a true story, we paid a guy living in his mother's basement in Chicago $600 to hand paint that BB going into Marv's head," Columbus told Insider. "So that was an animated effect. A guy with a paintbrush in a basement for six frames hand-painted a BB. This was an $18 million film, so, for our budget, I'm pretty happy how it turned out."

Though Stern never had to feel the BB in that scene, he did turn out hurting himself anyway.

"I got a bloody nose when I had to stick my head through the doggie door," he told The Hollywood Reporter back in 2015. "I had to pull my head out quickly, and I clipped my big-a-- nose on the door thing."

Here's how the BB-gun shot sequence looks in the movie:

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Jason Guerrasio
Jason Guerrasio
Jason Guerrasio is an award-winning entertainment correspondent at Business Insider and has covered various aspects of the film industry for over two decades. On the site, his reporting can range from what's going on behind the scenes at some of the biggest companies in Hollywood, colorful interviews with some of the most well-known names in entertainment, and exploring the darker side of the industry.In 2020, Jason received the New York Press Club award and Los Angeles Press Club award for his story on the rise and fall of MoviePass. It has since been made into the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash."Previous to BI, Jason was the managing editor at Filmmaker Magazine, one of the leading publications in the independent film industry. He's also written for numerous publications over the years, including Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vulture, Variety, and indieWire.Popular ArticlesMary Carole McDonnell built a true-crime empire. Then the FBI came for her. Growing up Marvel: The tormented life of Stan Lee's child, JC LeeA bullet. A legend. A lie. Bufford Pusser killed his wife, authorities say. What happens to his legacy now?