The “Home Alone'' series features comical and brutal exchanges between Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, and the thief duo Harry and Marv. Culkin was reportedly bitten on the finger by Joe Pesci, who played Harry, during rehearsals.
During a Q&A at a Home Alone screening event in Rosemont, Illinois, Culkin recalled rehearsing the scene in which Harry threatens Kevin.
“He was trying to scare me, thinking it would help with the thief-victim scheme, like, 'I'm going to intimidate this kid.'”
It's a very histrionic approach, but while rehearsing the scene where Harry threatens to bite off Kevin's finger, Pesci accidentally goes too far and actually ends up biting Culkin's finger. “He still has the scar from that,'' Culkin said, but Pesci didn't react much to the accident.
“I looked at his face and I didn't see Joe Pesci look scared because he said, 'I just bit a kid!' “That's what I felt like.”
The strong-faced Pesci can be seen both threatening to threaten the child and remaining unfazed even after he actually bites the child. Pesci has said in the past that she purposely didn't get along with Culkin on set so that it wouldn't be obvious on screen that she and Culkin were friends. This probably means that he made no compromises in playing the role of the villain.
By the way, in the scene in Home Alone 2 (1992) where Harry's hat burns due to Kevin's attack, his hair was actually scorched and he was burned. It seems Pesci didn't make it through unscathed either.
▼ “Home Alone” article
Source:The New York Times