Former child actor Macaulay Culkin has lent his support to fans’ call to replace a cameo in his film ‘Home Alone 2’ by Donald Trump – a mere real estate tycoon at the time – with an adult version of Culkin himself.
On Wednesday, the now-grown child actor tweeted his support for “digitally replacing” Trump’s brief appearance in the sequel to his hit ‘Home Alone’ with an image of Culkin himself as a 40-year-old.
Sold.
While Culkin replied “Sold” to a fan’s suggestion that Trump be replaced with an adult Culkin, he also seemed partial to a fan-created version in which Trump was erased entirely, leaving an odd-looking man-shaped cutout in the footage. The former child actor applauded the Trumpless version with a “Bravo.”
Bravo.
While Trump made a habit of allowing film crews to shoot in his buildings in return for bit parts in their movies, ‘Home Alone 2’ director Chris Columbus acknowledged in an interview last month that the scene was saved from the cutting room floor because screening audiences actually cheered for the familiar figure. Of course, Trump hadn’t yet gone into politics and was merely known as the larger-than-life businessman behind ‘The Art of the Deal’ at the time.
Trump has essentially become persona non grata in Hollywood and the media following last week’s invasion of the Capitol by his supporters, and various Trump-hating factions have yet to make up their minds who should replace him in those film cameos. A Change.org petition to have him replaced by President-elect Joe Biden had fewer than 500 signatures as of Thursday afternoon, despite the author’s impassioned plea to “save Christmas” by removing Trump from “this Hollywood classic.”
Trump fans and foes alike weren’t particularly keen on digging through decades-old films to excise the twice-impeached president from them, however.
Very… Stalinesque. pic.twitter.com/eDrxvDmjlF
People are starting to drag themselves down to his level of Ridiculousness. pic.twitter.com/uRMonKxSHW
“We need a cabinet department dedicated to removing everything offensive from all media everywhere to make sure this doesn’t happen again!” one user snarked, calling for a “Ministry of Truth” to cleanse cinema of undesirables.
Many saw it as a slippery-slope move, particularly given the number of prominent Hollywood figures who have been disgraced by #MeToo revelations and other scandals.
And we better throw a bunch of biographical info in the screen about everyone in every movie for no reason at all.
Let’s not whitewash our past by deleting corrupt statements of our past. We should confront & remind ourselves that Hollywood allowed this form of sneaky propaganda, while cloaking itself as benign entertainment.
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