I was hired to shoot a little Christmas movie—it’s Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern—and then there’s this kid. He’s adorable. He’s not like the classic kid archetypes—super sharp and brainy or dumb and stupid cute—he’s got this innate sort of way of being. The script read like any typical holiday flick.But Macaulay had this presence, and there’s this one gesture in the script, that iconic face-holding scream. I caught it perfectly in a photo, and that shot became the poster. That image became fucking huge. I mean, it’s on billboards every Christmas. It became this iconic image—it precedes me today—seasonal, timeless…and it comes back every single year.I developed a relationship with Macaulay–kind of a funny duo, this celebrity photographer and a child star. When Home Alone 2 came around, they asked me back for the sequel’s movie poster. There’s a scene in the script with this homeless pigeon lady in Central Park. So I get an idea to incorporate a pigeon…and put it on Macaulay’s head.I’m prepping for the shoot and it’s like a week before Christmas. All the prop houses are closed. Eventually I find a prop guy, and he goes, yeah I can get you a pigeon...and I said, great! We get to set, and it’s a great pigeon—I mean, the thing looks really real—it’s perfect. We do the shoot, and I got this kid, pigeon on his head–it’s a whole thing. It was a great shoot. It was fun, the pictures were great, and everyone knew it would make a lot of money—so I decide I’m going to memorialize this pigeon as a little keepsake.I get one of those stuffed swordfish mounts, hot glue the pigeon to it, and hang it up in my studio. A week goes by, and I notice the pigeon is starting to move. Then it hits me—it was never a prop pigeon. It wasn’t even embalmed in any way—this guy just killed the pigeon, and handed it over. All of a sudden I was like oh my god what did I do! I could have just given the most famous kid in America the bird flu with this rotting carcass of an animal on his head. Lucky for me Macaulay was fine…and to this day I don’t think he ever found out about the pigeon.
