We’ve all been concerned about Macaulay Culkin for a long time now (maybe beginning around the moment he got married to Broadway actress Rachel Miner at the tender age of eighteen–or maybe it was when he was sleeping over at Michael Jackson’s). And so, it’s entirely possible that his latest project expresses a certain cry for help rather than an ability to satirize the retrospective absurdity of the plot to Chris Columbus’ John Hughes-written Home Alone.
Writer-producer Jack Dishel (known also for, among other things, being in the bands Only Son and The Moldy Peaches, as well as marrying Regina Spektor) sets the concept of his new web series, :DRYVRS, around the premise of him being an on-demand car service passenger (a comedically inverse notion). With Macaulay Culkin as the first driver in the debut episode, we get a rare glimpse into an alleged parody of his frazzled mental state in the semi-character of Kevin McCallister. Appropriately, the stage for such preposterousness is set in Los Angeles, with Dishel getting picked up by Culkin near the corner of Electric Avenue in Venice Beach. When Culkin confesses he’s filling in for his wife in the driver’s seat and doesn’t really know how to drive, Dishel offers to commandeer the car.
As Dishel glances at him from the rearview mirror, Culkin’s frenetic state, augmented by an unlit cigarette in hand, magnifies when the backing music to Home Alone starts playing in the form of his ringtone, prompting him to screen a call from his mother. When Dishel jokingly remarks, “That’s ice cold, dude.” Culkin glares back at him and retorts, “You think that’s ice cold? How ’bout this? It’s Christmas time. It’s fucking Christmas. And your whole family, right, goes on vacation. Whole family. And they forget their eight-year-old fucking son. Their eight-year-old son. All by yourself in the house. For a week. I had to fend off my house from two psychopath home invaders. I was just a kid. I mean, I still have nightmares about it. About like this bald weirdo dude chasing me around, talking like he was Yosemite Sam. ‘I’m gonna pull your fingernails out. I’m gonna get you, you little scamp.’ They don’t even curse. Callin’ me like ‘louse’ and shit like that.”
The jarring cuts during this monologue add to the traumatic effect Dishel and Culkin wish to convey with his story. And although he may be trying to embody the mental state of a grown-up Kevin, it’s clear that somewhere in there, Culkin is using :DRYVRS as a means for his own catharsis, capped off by the conclusion of the episode in which he screams in the same iconic (though now much creepier) manner as Kevin during the shaving cream bathroom scene of Home Alone. Hopefully, this gives him some kind of peace with the burden of a role that no other (not even as Michael Alig in Party Monster) has been able to hold a candle to.
