Daniel Stern reveals the dark side of '80s Hollywood in a new memoir
Daniel Stern is remembered primarily as the burglar Marv from "Home Alone." The actor recently released a biography in which he talks about using cocaine on the set of one of the films, working with a young Culkin, and a scandal involving violence that he tried to expose.
Daniel Stern is an actor with a vast body of work. His first productions date from the late '70s, but primarily, his role as the burglar from "Home Alone" has immortalized him in pop culture history and brought him significant popularity. One-half of the "Wet Bandits" continues to enjoy recognition. Viewers can watch him on the Apple TV+ series "For All Mankind." Stern also decided to release an autobiography reflecting on American show business. He reveals some powerful stories that show how the industry functioned in the '80s and '90s—quite pathologically, to put it diplomatically.
The "Home Alone" actor was on the brink of overdosing
In the book "Home and Alone," Stern describes his work on the film "Sweet and Sour Highway" (another title is "Crazy Highway"), which hit theatres in 1981. The film was the most expensive comedy ever produced when it was released. Today, such amounts don't impress anyone, but a budget of 30 million Canadian dollars made an impression at that time. Stern played a drug dealer.
"This was 1980, and cocaine was rampant. I had never tried it because I could never afford it, but on this movie, everyone was doing it – the director (John Schlesinger), producers, actors, prop guys, drivers – carrying around little vials with tiny spoons attached, filled with white powder, and whiffing it up all day long." The actor recalls that when filming scenes involving drug use, they used powdered vitamin B-12, but when that ran out one time, they turned to real cocaine.
"At first, I thought, ‘Cool’. But I almost didn’t make it home," the actor recalls. "We did take after take, each time John getting more pissed, and each time me taking a big whiff of cocaine. I finished his first vial, so he gave me his backup. I must have done fifteen hits, one after another, and my heart started racing like it never had before. I didn’t want to die, but I also didn’t want John to yell at me," Stern recalls. As he writes, he couldn't sleep for the next two days.
Working on the set of "Home Alone"
Naturally, Stern dedicates a lot of space to stories from the set of "Home Alone." He recalls, for example, working with Macaulay Culkin, who was "a sweet kid" who nevertheless had a terrible childhood. Stern talks about how, while filming the second part of Kevin's adventures, he took Culkin and his kids to play in the park.
"He was a sweet kid but had lived a very different life than my kids," he recalls. "He didn’t know how to play tag or throw the ball around. He was more of an indoor kid and had a lot of adult pressure on him from show business and parents and such," he notes.
From Stern's book, you can learn what creating show business was like behind the scenes a few decades ago. The "Home Alone" actor talks about this dark side. In 1999, he was supposed to be the star of a new show, "Partners." Stern recalls that the production offered him money to join the team as an actor and an executive producer. Soon, women working on the show started coming to him to confide that the show's director sexually harassed them—Brett Ratner—and actor Jeremy Piven.
Stern confesses that he was instructed to keep the matter quiet. He was told that he couldn't go to the heads of Columbia TV under any circumstances because it would destroy the show, which had a chance of being aired on television. "Partners" never saw the light of day, for which the network blamed Stern, suing him and demanding 30 million Canadian dollars from him for "sabotaging the show." As a result, the issue of women's harassment never came to light, and Stern had to return his salary for participating in the show.
Years later, Brett Ratner was accused by actress Olivia Munn of masturbating in front of her on set. Jeremy Piven, for his part, had to defend himself against accusations of sexual harassment from three women.
