'Home Alone' Director Shoots Down Popular 'Mobster' Theory About Parents

While millions of '90s kids didn’t think too deeply about how big Kevin McCallister’s (Macaulay Culkin) house was in Home Alone, as adults we're obsessed with it. This extravagant house, located in Illinois, recently sold for slightly over $5 million dollars. Seemingly, we’re meant to believe that Kevin’s family is somewhat middle-class, but their amazing house indicates they’re anything but.

So, what did Kevin’s parents do for a living? According to Home Alone director, Chris Columbus, Kevin’s mom, Kate (Catherine O’Hara), "was a very successful fashion designer." This fact alone explains some of the McCallisters' wealth. But, what about Kevin’s dad, Peter McCallister (John Heard)? Was he, as some fans have theorized over the years, a low-key mobster? Was the McCallister house targeted for robbery because Mr. McCallister was secretly a Tony Soprano-like figure?

According to Columbus, speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, the answer is no. This was not a Tony and Carmela situation, because neither of Kevin’s parents were mobsters. "Not organized crime," Columbus said. "Even though there was, at the time, a lot of organized crime in Chicago."

Obviously, an alternate version of Home Alone—in which the backstory was all about Kevin’s family being deeply rooted in the mafia—would be a much darker story. Suddenly Kevin’s obsession with old gangster movies would carry a different weight. As it stands, that “old” black-and-white mobster movie, “Angels with Filthy Souls,” isn’t even a real movie. The footage was created by Columbus specifically for the action of Home Alone. Although it emulates hardboiled movies of the 1930s and 1940s (including a real James Cagney movie called Angels With Dirty Faces) there is no actual movie in existence where someone says they’re gonna “pump your guts full of lead” in that exact way.

So, no real mobster movie in Home Alone, and no metafictional reality in which Kevin’s parents were 1990s mobsters either. What did Kevin’s dad do for a living?

"The father could have, based on [writer] John Hughes's own experience, worked in advertising," Columbus said. "But I don’t remember what the father did." Sounds like all these years later, Home Alone still has some secrets, some of which, may never be solved.