Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Daniel Stern's Marv-elous talent Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 15:07:21 EST Message-ID: Lines: 120 \SE D;LIFE \HD Daniel Stern's Marv-elous talent \SH For 'Home' bungler, slaps just part of the shtick \BY Gary Arnold \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT CHICAGO CHICAGO - Wouldn't a press junket for "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" be more appropriate in the Big Apple? The film's distributor, 20th Century Fox , thought so, but then the Daniel Stern factor came up. He's directing his first feature, "Rookie of the Year," in Chicago under Fox auspices. Getting away for a weekend would have been impossible while he guides "Rookie" through another four weeks of shooting. So Chicago it was, since a "Home Alone" press conference without Daniel Stern is just about Bunthinkable. As Marv, one-half of the bumbling burglar team thwarted by Macaulay Culkin's kid hero, Kevin McCallister, in "Home Alone," Mr. Stern has become a modern comic fixture. He and his scruffy, sawed-off sidekick, Joe Pesci's Harry, were cast as slapstick whipping boys - and absorbed a level of far-fetched punishment customarily reserved for hard-luck cartoon characters. John Hughes, who created the roles, is so pleased at the Stern-Pesci encore in the sequel that he's toying with the idea of spinning Harry and Marv into a comic vehicle of their own. "I think I can take them anywhere around the world," he enthused. "Joe and Danny are approaching some heroic dimension of stupidity." Daniel Stern's role in the "Home Alone" success story gives it an agreeable local resonance. He grew up in Bethesda and still returns with some frequency to visit his parents, who have three grandchildren to dote on as a reward for nurturing Dan. Now 35, he got off to a great start as a young character actor by playing distinctive roles in "Breaking Away" and "Diner" at the end of the 1970s. The one-two punch of "Home Alone" and "City Slickers" in recent years lent box-office credibility to his exceptional skills as both an ensemble player and a comic soloist. As a performer, he exults in the solo turns provided by "Home Alone," where he can perfect such extremes of experience as Marv reacting to a tarantula on his face, getting conked by bricks, struggling to retain his balance on a gooey floor or taking enough voltage to kill an ordinary mortal. "It's all fun," he says. "My career, if I step back to examine it, would be just about where I'd want it. 'Home Alone' was such a great commercial success that my awareness, or familiarity, or whatever, went way up. 'City Slickers' did no harm, and now I'm back in 'Home Alone 2,' with millions looking forward to the way Joe and I take a beating. At the same time, directing episodes on 'The Wonder Years' served as a nice, systematic way of preparing for the feature, which has me swamped." Asked how kids reacted to him in person after "Home Alone," Mr. Stern replies, "At first, they're just kind of awestruck by my greatness." When the laughter subsides, he explains, "They're amazed that I could appear to take all that punishment and still be there, in one piece, talking to them. They want to know how the stunts are done. Did that hurt? How this or that little thing was performed. I'm a bit like Elvis, surrounded by admirers in the 4-foot-tall set." Mr. Stern takes considerable delight in the concluding slapstick sequences contrived for the "Home Alone" films. "There are a lot of scenes to shoot, but it's fun in this intense, demanding way," he says. "I like to make falls look genuinely funny and unique. Make faces that are outrageous and yet believable in outrageous circumstances. For me and Joe and, of course, the stunt men, who are doing the stuff that's exceptionally dangerous, these scenes are the backbone of the work, the payoff." Mr. Hughes hadn't informed him that a Marv & Harry farce was percolating somewhere in his scenario kitchen, but the idea had some appeal. "I think Joe and I get more of a relationship going in the new movie," he says. "For instance, when Macaulay is supposedly heaving bricks at my skull and scoring direct hits all the time, Joe's character is yelling, 'I dare you to try that one more time!' Harry never takes a hit himself. That division of labor kind of solidifies the relationship, gives you a funny balance: he who mouths off and he who gets hit." Part of the professional challenge is to make slapstick pain and chagrin look spontaneous, time and again. "There's a certain fear factor that needs to be overcome," Mr. Stern reveals. "Even though you're not getting plunked by real bricks, a cardboard object with some mass is bouncing off your head many times a day for several days. For an actor the discipline becomes part of the fun. You train yourself not to anticipate the next hit - while having something a little different or surprising in reserve for your next reaction to taking that hit." After reading the "Home Alone" screenplay, Mr. Stern went to unprecedented lengths to campaign for the role of Marv. "I met Chris [Columbus, the director] and read a scene for him," he recalls. "It went well. I thought he was great. He said he really wanted to work with me. Still, I wanted the part so much that I did something I hadn't done before. I made a videotape for Chris: me dressed up as Carmen Miranda and dancing . . . no, no, I'm just kidding. It was me doing a few scenes from the 'Home Alone' script for him. The opportunity was that good, and I was that enthused." At the press conference, Mr. Columbus confided that watching Daniel Stern do his stuff as Marv was one of the most pleasurable aspects of the "Home Alone" experience, from his point of view. "Danny is one of the funniest guys I have ever met," he says. "His body language is extraordinary. When he pretends to be electrocuted, for example, his entire body takes on some comic life of its own. He's the best I've seen since Dick Van Dyke was in his prime. "The night we shot those high-voltage scenes, I could not control myself while watching him. He prolongs everything so beautifully, takes such a wonderful long time to take a punch or assimilate electric current. You can't get that sort of thrill anywhere else: watching performers emerge with this great stuff after hours and hours of waiting around. Then your pleasure is magnified when the best moments work for the audience, too." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. 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