Columbus also weighed in on one of the internet’s biggest debates: what did the McCallister parents do for work to be able to afford that beautiful Chicago house?
“Back then, John and I had a conversation about it, and we decided on what the jobs were,” Columbus said. Catherine O’Hara’s Kate McCallister “was a very successful fashion designer,” as suggested by the mannequins in the family’s basement. As for John Heard’s Peter McCallister, he can’t say for sure. “The father could have, based on John Hughes own experience, worked in advertising, but I don’t remember what the father did.” He was able to rule out one profession, though, which people online speculated might have drawn criminals Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) to the McCallister home in the first place: “Not organized crime — even though there was, at the time, a lot of organized crime in Chicago.”
