When Macaulay Culkin was just a kid, he became one of the biggest movie stars in the world thanks to Home Alone. However, in the mid-'90s, the actor walked away from Hollywood and didn’t make a movie for almost a decade. It’s mostly impossible to know everything we missed out on when Culkin left acting, but we now know one gig that might have happened, which could have been spectacular.
Macaulay Culkin recently appeared on the infamous Hot Ones YouTube show and was asked about the scripts he was sent and the jobs he declined during the period when he stopped acting. He revealed that he had been sent the script for Wes Anderson’s sophomore effort, Rushmore, but he never actually read it. Culkin said…
I was actually pretty good at reading, I was voraciously reading through the scripts, but there was a couple that slipped through. And I remember about two years later, [I was] kind of clearing out the house [and] throwing out the scripts, and I saw the one that I didn’t read was Rushmore. I was like, ‘Oh dang, I probably could’ve done that one.’
To be clear, the fact that Macaulay Culkin, who will be seen later this year in Fallout Season 2, was sent a copy of the Rushmore script doesn’t mean he had a greater chance than anybody else of getting the role. It doesn’t mean with certainty there was any particular interest in him. Still, it’s an intriguing idea. As he says, he probably could have done it.
Rushmore would instead become the debut role for Jason Schwartzman. He wowed critics and audiences with his performance and has continued to be one of Wes Anderson’s regular players. Even Macaulay Culkin says he can’t imagine anybody else playing the role, but he still clearly wonders, what if? He said…
Although, I mean, I can’t imagine anyone but [Jason] Schwartzman doing that for him but, at the same time, like, ‘Oh man, that would have been a ball and a biscuit that one.’
While I certainly can’t imagine anybody other than Jason Schwartzman in the role either, it’s not too difficult to imagine that Macaulay Culkin could have been great in the role of a high school student who becomes infatuated with an elementary school teacher, only to have his mentor, played by Bill Murray, begin a relationship with her. It's the sort of offbeat performance that we've often seen Culkin take on since he returned to acting. A lot of fans are very curious about Culkin's upcoming Fallout role, specifically because he tends to play unique characters.
Somewhere there’s an alternative universe where Macaulay Culkin appeared alongside Bill Murray in a Wes Anderson movie, and I don’t know if the film would have been better, but I would love to see how it would have turned out. It’s a hell of an idea if nothing else.
