Macaulay Culkin Tears Up Over 'Home Alone' Mom Catherine O'Hara's Loving Support

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00:00 Thanks for having me.

00:02 Don't tell me what to do.

00:06 Alright. Fine. Fine.

00:08 First, I'd just like to thank everyone for coming.

00:13 I just...

00:20 There's so many people that I love.

00:22 And to feel that love back is just amazing.

00:26 So, thank you.

00:28 [applause]

00:34 Catherine, Natasha, thanks for all your kind words and your stories and stuff.

00:41 You made my kid's dad, their papa, look good.

00:49 And the most important thing to me is also that their papa understands that he wasn't always his papa.

00:55 Like, there was... He also used to be a kid too, you know?

00:58 Thank you, Steve Nissen and Anna Martinez and the Walk of Fame committee for honoring me in this way.

01:06 I feel such esteem from this whole thing.

01:12 There's a couple people I want to single out today.

01:18 Michelle Bega.

01:24 We've worked together for like 20 years.

01:26 Everything from just general publicity to trips to Disneyland and, you know, just dealing with my pizza band.

01:33 Remember that?

01:35 You just always work so tirelessly for me.

01:40 So, thank you.

01:42 I love you.

01:45 Next, I'd like to thank Emily Gerson Sainz.

01:48 There you are.

01:52 The first time I met Emily, I was 13 years old.

01:55 And I had one foot out the door of Hollywood.

01:58 And she just stuck around.

02:03 And she stuck around and she stuck around.

02:06 I probably quit more projects than I've actually done with you, to be honest.

02:13 To be fair.

02:15 But, you know, you stuck around and you stuck around and you stuck around.

02:19 And so, just thanks for sticking around.

02:25 Thanks for believing in me and my family.

02:28 I love you so much.

02:30 But you're my family.

02:32 And I love you.

02:35 I wish Max was here.

02:37 But I know he is.

02:39 Also, I want to give my love to Ken Weinrib.

02:44 Hi.

02:46 It's not so remarkable that I've had a lawyer since I was 10 years old.

02:50 It's the fact that I've had the same lawyer since I was 10 years old.

02:53 So, yeah.

02:55 You're my friend.

02:58 You're my advisor.

02:59 You're my family.

03:02 And just thanks for always looking out for me.

03:05 I love you.

03:07 Yeah, lastly, but not leastly, I'd like to thank Brenda.

03:15 [Applause]

03:20 You are absolutely everything.

03:22 You're my champion.

03:28 You're the only person happier for me today than I am.

03:32 You're not only the best woman I've ever known, you're the best person I've ever known.

03:38 You've given me just all my purpose.

03:42 You've given me family.

03:44 You know, and after the birth of our two boys, you've become one of my three favorite people.

03:50 You're somewhere in there.

03:53 But I love you.

03:56 I love you so much.

03:58 So, yeah, to wrap things up, and in the spirit of the holiday season, I just want to say,

04:04 Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.

04:07 [Applause]

04:11 Well, I have a little speech to make about you.

04:14 So pretend you're not here.

04:17 After Home Alone opened, I went to see it at a Saturday matinee in a theater packed with shiny, happy children and their parents.

04:28 And it was thrilling for all of us.

04:30 But at one point, I saw two boys get up out of their seats, so not wanting to leave the movie.

04:35 But after having already sucked back their giant sodas, they really had to go.

04:39 So they started running up the aisle, and then suddenly panicked that they might miss something great.

04:43 They turned around and looked back at the screen, and one of them said, "It's okay. No, it's just a mom."

04:49 And they kept running.

04:51 I say, "Bright boys, Bright boys, Home Alone was, is, and always will be a global, a beloved global sensation."

05:01 The reason, the reason it's that, the reason families all over the world can't let a year go by without watching and loving Home Alone together,

05:10 is because of Macaulay Culkin.

05:13 Yes, yes, he had a most excellent script and a wonderful director,

05:20 but it is Macaulay's perfect performance as Kevin Macalester that gave us that little every boy on an extraordinary adventure.

05:32 I know you worked really hard, I know you did, but you made acting look like the most natural thing in the world to do.

05:38 It really was as if we had ambushed the home of this real little boy named Kevin to make a movie,

05:44 and he just went along with it for the fun of it.

05:47 He's the dearest thing.

05:50 Okay, oh, the scene where I had to drag him upstairs to sleep in the attic because he'd misbehaved,

05:57 and he says, you know, he's mouthing off about the family, and I say,

06:02 "Well, you'd be pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you had no family."

06:06 And he said, "No, I wouldn't."

06:09 And I was supposed to say, "Then say it again. Maybe it'll happen."

06:14 And I can't tell you how much that killed me.

06:17 I could not wrap my head around saying something so horrific to this beautiful child.

06:23 Of course, I was not yet a mother at the time, and I had no idea the kind of things that would come out of my mouth with my own two sons.

06:33 Macaulay, a ten-year-old boy, this ten--beautiful, dear little ten-year-old boy was called a superstar, a moneymaker,

06:43 one of the hottest leading young men in Hollywood by the world over.

06:49 How does anyone survive that?

06:51 Well, I believe you'd have to possess a certain quality, a gift that dear John Hughes obviously recognized in you, Macaulay,

06:59 your sense of humor.

07:01 It's a sign of intelligence in a child and a key to surviving life at any age.

07:06 You have, from what I see, you have brought that sense of sweet yet twisted yet totally relatable sense of humor

07:16 to everything that you have chosen to do since Home Alone.

07:19 Macaulay, congratulations. You so deserve your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

07:25 And thank you for including me, your fake mom who left you Home Alone not once but twice,

07:30 to share in this happy occasion. I'm so proud of you.

07:34 God bless you.

07:36 [applause]

07:43 Okay.

07:45 Mac, I'm so proud of you and I'm honored to share in this milestone moment and to be able to celebrate you.

07:52 [clears throat]

07:57 Well, I remember our first meeting at a bar in the Lower East Side.

08:01 It was down some stairs in the back, some random no-name who-cares spot.

08:05 We were about to start filming a true crime film about the Michael Allig murders in the '90s rave scene of underground New York.

08:12 Well, you played Michael Allig. I was playing Brooke, someone in your inner circle.

08:17 We kind of just clocked each other and I remember thinking, "That's my friend."

08:21 And we were from that point on.

08:24 I guess we were about 19 or 20 or something then.

08:27 I don't want to be weird or emo about it, but the truth is that there's a very rare unspoken language

08:33 that happens between child actors who make it out alive.

08:37 Now, granted, you were Shirley Temple and I was Paul Giamatti, but the refrain remains the same.

08:45 "Yes, yes, we did. We had a gift and that was fun."

08:50 But is it really sane to be a fully activated businessman enmeshed in an adult world before the age of six years old?

08:59 Probably not.

09:01 And so we find each other and we instinctively register what a miracle that survival is.

09:09 The true beauty, though, is seeing the adult you've become, the loving patriarch you are to your beautiful siblings,

09:15 and now the deep and loving father and husband that you are.

09:19 Later in life, you so generously and gamely played a role in my first outing as a writer-director,

09:25 a kind of Fellini-esque endeavor wherein I asked you vaguely to play a cipher,

09:31 and to which you and I immediately replied, "Say no more."

09:35 Well, you showed up, you crushed, and I got to watch firsthand, giddy at the monitor,

09:40 your automatic, undeniable, and impossibly magnetic power.

09:44 A screen legend navigating surrealist twists, no problem, as always.

09:50 And later, meaning now, I got to say, nothing makes me happier than to see you existing so concretely on your own terms,

09:58 and with no loss of your underlying eccentricity or absurdist outlook or big picture, big heart perspective

10:06 that sustains us as a community and as a family of artists.

10:11 Sometimes, we would play running charades with your whole family and your pals in the big Soho loft,

10:19 and I think to myself, "Maybe we won. Maybe Mac really cracked it."

10:27 And it makes me happy, real happy, for all of us.

10:32 So thank you for being the one and only. I love you, and you're a king. Congratulations.

10:38 [Applause]

10:45 [Music]

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