New Documentary Explores the Original Cut of "Uncle Buck"

John Hughes’s 1989 film Uncle Buck has had a particularly fascinating second act. It’s been adapted for television — twice! — and was remade in India in 1991. The film reunited frequent collaborators writer-director John Hughes and star John Candy; that the supporting cast included Amy Madigan, Gaby Hoffmann, Laurie Metcalf and a pre-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin doesn’t hurt, either.

Late last year, Joe Ramoni of Hats Off Entertainment offered viewers a detailed look into a longer cut of Planes, Trains and Automobiles that never saw the light of day. Now, he’s done the same thing for Uncle Buck, which turns out to have been 3 hours long in its original cut.

This new short documentary offers some tantalizing glimpses of what a longer version of Uncle Buck might have included. This included an expanded role for Metcalf’s charactet and a subplot involving Candy’s Uncle Buck preparing more and more bizarre lunches for his nephew Miles (Culkin).

Perhaps the most intriguing subplot alluded to in the documentary involved Uncle Buck fighting a party clown played by character actor Mike Starr while a group of children look on.

The documentary also offers one glimpse of a scene for which almost no other documentation exists — a scene that put Candy on the ice at an HNL game between Chicago and Toronto. Ramoni’s exploration of this scene, and what it might have meant to the film as a whole, makes for fascinating viewing. So too does the documentary as a whole offer an intriguing look into the making of Uncle Buck, how the film as we know it came together and what might have been left behind along the way.