He’s not the first member of Hollywood to say this about Donald Trump. Director Chris Columbus of “Harry Potter” and “Home Alone” fame fears that the president might deport him if he cuts his iconic cameo in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” I’m sure you remember the scene where he directed Kevin McCallister to the lobby. At the time, Trump owned the Plaza Hotel.
It's a typical Hollywood liberal whine fest, though I’m not sure it’s serious. He said this in April. These people deal with actors regularly, so they can pick up on some tricks to sell whatever to the masses. In this lesson, it’s regret over the cameo. Columbus has made beaucoup bucks over his career, so he can say whatever he wants. I doubt this cameo keeps him up at night. It’s like a two-second scene (via The Guardian):
Film-maker Chris Columbus says he has come to regard Donald Trump’s cameo in his movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as “an albatross” that he wishes to remove.
But, Columbus added, he fears the president’s administration would deport him if he followed through with nixing the scene from more than 30 years ago.
“It’s become this curse,” Columbus told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview published on Monday. “It’s become an albatross for me. I just wish it was gone.”
[…]
Trump, best known at that time as a real-estate development tycoon, “did bully his way into the movie”, Columbus told Business Insider, describing how the cameo was on top of a fee. He claimed Trump told him: “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.”
In late 2023, less than a year before he became president for the second time, Trump went on his Truth Social platform and accused Columbus of lying. He said Columbus’s team was “begging” him to make a cameo and that it ended up being “great for the movie”.
[…]
According to Columbus, his instinct was to cut the cameo and regrets that he changed his mind after viewers at a screening in Chicago “cheered … and cheered and … thought it was hilarious”.
“I never thought that was going to be considered hilarious,” Columbus said, referring to the seven-second scene in which Trump gives star Macaulay Culkin’s character directions on the Plaza hotel. “It’s become this thing that I wish … was not there.”
Well, tough s**t, Chris. It’s there. It’s iconic. It’s the greatest presidential cameo in history.