Chris Columbus, the director of the iconic film Home Alone 2, finds himself at a crossroads of nostalgia and regret as he reflects on Donald Trump’s cameo in the beloved holiday classic. This reflection comes in the midst of many other Trump-related controversies. These are his major ongoing legal battles and blunders on immigration while he was in office.
Columbus’s wishes on removing Trump’s cameo have been reinvigorated by recent events. He started out hoping to eliminate Trump’s section entirely. After the night’s horror-comedy test screening in Chicago met with laughter and applause from the giddy audience, he let it go. Yet he’s the first to tell you he’s sorry that he made that choice. It’s turned into this monster that I would … wish and hope … wasn’t so,” Columbus said. He continued, “It’s turned into an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”
The complexities of Trump’s involvement in the film industry extend beyond Columbus’s reflections. We’re pretty sure that, during his time as a real estate developer, Trump completely stiff-armed his way into Home Alone 2. He wielded his newfound influence to score himself a cameo appearance in the Plaza Hotel. Columbus wickedly maintained, “I am not kidding. I would never mislead a non-actor into making a film. To our surprise, we ended up meeting this amazing enthusiasm and outreach for getting that Plaza hotel.
Just as Columbus wrestles with the weight of his legacy, Trump’s present political and legal reality is fraught. Just last week Trump went after former Secretary of State John Columbus for, you guessed it, lying on Truth Social. We know that Trump is in major legal trouble at this very moment. One high-profile example is a $20 billion defamation lawsuit against CBS News for their editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
Beyond these legal battles, Trump’s administration was rightly criticized for its increasingly brutal and indiscriminate approach to deportations. Reports indicate that officials mistakenly deported a man living in Maryland—a U.S. citizen of Italian ancestry—to a mega-prison in El Salvador. This incident is yet another example of the growing list of extremely controversial actions taken during Trump’s presidency. Most alarmingly, it covers the arrest of tenured academic intellectuals who defended pro-Palestine demonstrations.
As a last point, Columbus’s complaints about Trump’s cameo reflect wider public sentiment. In 2019, Trump supporters voiced their displeasure when a Canadian television cut of Home Alone 2 removed the scene featuring Trump. The director went on to note that they had already made a case for digitally eliminating Trump’s cameo. This discussion began to really pick up steam after Home Alone actor Macaulay Culkin announced his support of the idea in early 2021.
Just as Columbus looks back on his work today, and what it means looking back at Trump in Home Alone 2. Tavernier in serious mode as he gets ready for his lifetime honor at the 68th San Francisco International Film Festival on April 26. He waits on tiptoe to accept such an homage. Along the way, he wrestles with the difficult legacy of an iconic film associated with Trump.