Trivia / Mac and Me

• Blooper: When Debbie yells after Eric in the infamous wheelchair running down a cliff scene, she can be seen quickly pausing and whispering "Wait" as if Lauren Stanley, her actress, is trying to remember her lines.
• Box Office Bomb: While the budget of the film isn't known to the general public, it made only $6,424,112, which wasn't even good enough to place in the top 100 grossing films of 1988. It limped to an 11th place finish in its opening weekend.
• Colbert Bump: Paul Rudd's adoration of Mac and Me pretty much helped give it the highest profile it had ever received since its theatrical release. Up until Rudd starting subjecting Conan O'Brien and his viewers to the infamous wheelchair scene, the movie was more or less forgotten. Now, it's considered a Cult Classic and one of the most legendary bad movies ever made.
• Creator Killer: Everyone on the movie except director Stewart Raffill and composer Alan Silvestri. Christine Ebersole never took another lead role in a film after this, but has had a prolific career as a character actress and on Broadway, where she's won two Tonys; she would later gain significantly wider recognition as the voice actress for White Diamond in Steven Universe. Plus, Martin Scorsese liked her enough to cast her in The Wolf of Wall Street. Jennifer Aniston also got her start as an extra in the movie and obviously got out unscathed.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: The actor who plays Eric is Jade Calegory, who uses a wheelchair in real life himself thanks to being born with spina bifida. Prior to Mac and Me, Jade Calegory was a former spokesman for the Easter Seals charity for the disabled.
• Follow the Leader: Besides being an E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ripoff, the title of Mac and Me is one word different from an early working title for E.T., which was E.T. and Me.
• Referenced by...: Clyde from Paul mentions that he'd been dreaming of having a space alien best friend since he saw Mac and Me as a kid.
• Stillborn Franchise: The film ends with a bubble appearing onscreen saying "We'll Be Back!" Its reception and reputation have guaranteed that these guys won't be back in any sequel any time soon.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Reportedly, the early drafts of the screenplay had Ronald McDonald as a main character, as a sort of Mentor Mascot for Eric.
  • Originally, the ending included some additional shots which explicitly show Eric being accidentally shot in the back and killed by the officer who trips over his cruiser. These shots were removed for the US cut to instead imply that Eric died when the store exploded, but were included in a Japanese VHS cut discovered by film curator Peter Kuplowsky, who then posted the scene on Twitter.
  • The earlier cut of the film on the Japanese VHS has "Take Me I'll Follow You" as the ending song instead of "You're Not a Stranger Anymore".
  • Kim Basinger and Anjelica Huston were each offered the female lead role. Both declined.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: To quote the director:
  I was hired out of the blue. And the producer asked me to come down to the office. So I did and he had a whole crew there, a whole crew on the payroll. It was amazing. He had the transportation captain. The camera department head. The AD. The Production Manager. He had everybody already hired and I said, "Well, what's the script?" And he said, "We don't have a script. I don't like the script. You have to write the script. You're gonna have to write it quick so prep the movie and write the script on the weekends."

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