Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Travel nightmare inspires one of the funniest movies ever made
The late writer/ director/ producer John Hughes was born February 18, 1950 in Lansing, Michigan. He’d be celebrating his 75th birthday this month. Video Days kicks off its inaugural month with a retrospective of ten of the filmmaker’s pictures.
PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (1987) would be a classic if it was one quarter as funny as it is and settled for being the best movie set over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Focusing on the journey two men undertake to get home, as opposed to exploring holiday rituals, it does arrive at a gratifying explanation of what the festival of plenty is about. It’s an energetic road movie, mining the pitfalls of travel and the things that can go wrong for terrific comedy. The performances, some by actors popping up for only one scene, are a delight, and the movie—one of the funniest ever made—is as laugh-out-loud now as it was in 1987.
In his early twenties, John Hughes worked as an advertising copywriter for the Chicago firm of Leo Burnett, where in his third year, he became responsible for a big account in New York City. This required air travel once a week for presentations. According to recollections by his former boss, Hughes had an 11 AM meeting in Manhattan the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Planning to return to Chicago on a 5 PM flight, a winter storm shut down LaGuardia Airport, forcing the writer to spend the night in a motel. The next morning, most of the flights home were canceled because Chicago was blanketed under stormy weather. The plane Hughes got on was diverted to Des Moines, then Denver. Unable to choose whether he’d be stranded or not, just where, Hughes headed to Phoenix, where at least it was warm. He made it home on a Monday, missing the holiday weekend with his wife and kids entirely. Keeping him company on at least part of Hughes’ odyssey was a traveling salesman who knew all about these snarls.
Hughes was known to knock out the first draft of a script in days, getting to work after dinner and binge writing until 4 AM. Second unit director and associate producer Bill Brown claimed that Hughes pitched him Planes, Trains and Automobiles–based on his Thanksgiving travel ordeal–on a Wednesday in what would’ve been in the summer of 1986. Hughes wrote a script over the weekend and Paramount Pictures–where Hughes had a two-year, first look deal and his mentor Ned Tanen was studio president–agreed to move forward on a Tuesday. The plan was for Hughes to produce and his protégé Howard Deutsch to direct, as his follow-up to the Hughes-written and produced Pretty In Pink (1986). When one of the filmmaker’s idols, Steve Martin, expressed interest in playing uptight family man Neal Page, Hughes got interested in directing. He wrapped She’s Having A Baby (1988) in December 1986 and several weeks later, was in Buffalo, New York commencing principal photography on Planes, Trains and Automobiles, with John Candy as Del Griffith, the travel companion from hell.
Paramount scheduled Planes, Trains and Automobiles for Thanksgiving 1987. One hurdle to accomplishing this was an 85-day shooting schedule, an unusually long production for a comedy with two actors and no elaborate special effects. Buffalo stood in for the flyover of “Stubbville,” Kansas, while the train breakdown was filmed in Cherry Creek, New York. St. Louis Lambert International Airport is the transportation hub Neal hikes across after losing his rental car. With the exception of location work in New York City, the rest of the film was shot in the Chicago area. While Hughes wrote tight, economic scripts, he was known to rewrite them constantly, and to encourage actors to go off-book. When editor Paul Hirsch, who cut Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) for Hughes, in addition to Carrie (1976) and Star Wars (1977), began work, Hughes’ assembly ran three hours forty-five minutes. Hughes started lopping off sections of film. First to go was a subplot in which Neal’s wife (Lalia Robins) believes her husband is inventing his travel delays to cover for an affair. Her character’s relief in the final scene of the finished film is due to meeting Del Griffith and realizing Neal was telling the truth.
Many scenes started sooner and ended later, including Del telling Neal about the shower ring business on the plane, then eating and discussing airline food. In the Wichita motel scene, the men order a pizza and Del stiffs the delivery boy with a cheap tip. This would’ve clarified who breaks into their room and robs them later. The highway patrolman played by Michael McKean had a longer scene in which he explains the men have overshot Chicago and are driving recklessly in Wisconsin. Initially, Neal discovers Del neglected to take out insurance on the rental car he booked with Neal’s credit card and then trashed, so he punches him in the eye. This would’ve explained why Candy’s character shows up with a shiner toward the end of the film. Hughes and Hirsch cut an entire movie–an hour and fifteen minutes–out of the movie, getting it down to two and a half hours. By the end of August, Planes, Trains and Automobiles was running closer to two hours. Hirsch thought they had the funniest comedy of all time on their hands, but when test screenings commenced in early September, the reaction was poor, with walkouts.
By the fourth screening, the filmmakers had isolated the problem to the characters, which the test audience found unlikable, specifically, that Del was taking advantage of Neal by never paying, and Neal was allowing himself to be suckered. This was remedied by restoring a scene at the train station in which Del asks for Neal’s address so he can repay him for the tickets. This left the climax to fix. As written and shot, Neal parts ways with Del for what he thinks is the final time, only to arrive by train at his suburban station to find his travel partner waiting for him, having taxied ahead. Del begs Neal not to abandon him and after the men convene to a diner, opens up about his misfortunes. Candy’s monologue was drawing snickers. Restoring footage of Steve Martin on the train reminiscing about his character’s travels and reaching his own epiphany about Del, the climax was recut to suggest Neal returned to the train station for him. Other than clarifying his living situation and the whereabouts of his wife, Del’s backstory was now left up to the viewer’s imagination. Opening November 25, Hughes’ cut of Planes, Trains and Automobiles ran a tight, economical 93 minutes.
One of the delights of the movie, the first written, produced and directed by John Hughes to earn an R-rating (due to the scene at the car rental in which Neal lets loose with the word “fuck” nineteen times) and his first to feature adults in the lead roles, is how clearly defined Neal and Del are as characters, and given excellent writing, how great Steve Martin and John Candy are as those characters. Neal is a salad and bottled water man, while Del is a hot dog and beer guy. Neal doesn’t know how to open up. Del doesn’t know when to shut up. The movie preceded Fox News and the identity politics between blue and red states, but a less instinctive writer might’ve had Neal and Del arguing over whether to watch a documentary or bass fishing on the motel TV. Class divisions are left up to the viewer to interpret and the movie is funnier for it. Neither man demonstrates much survival skill–in the film’s most inspired moment, Neal imagines Del is the devil, hell bent on killing them–giving the strangers something in common and making their cooperation more vital than either is willing to admit.
In addition to casting Steve Martin close to the urbane, first class traveler he really was, Hughes got what was then and might still be the best performance from John Candy, giving the actor the challenge of not just playing another clown, but a sad clown. Instead of Del being a pest, Hughes understands there’s loneliness behind his friendliness. The great chemistry between Candy and Martin has as much to do with their finesse for sketch comedy–Candy being a veteran of Second City Toronto and SCTV, Martin a sketch comic and one of the all-time great hosts of Saturday Night Live–as it does the clear contrast in their personalities. The film is at its funniest when it goes broad, with Hughes continuing his trend of stinging big comic moments with dramatic music, but cataloging nearly everything that can go wrong with holiday travel makes the film specific and relatable. In the end, Planes, Trains and Automobiles even speaks about what makes Thanksgiving unique from other holidays, forcing Neal to acknowledge what he has as opposed to what he doesn’t, and empowering him to act.
Video rental category: Comedy
Special interest: On The Road
I loved this movie! Thank you, Joe, for the backstory in what all happened to get this movie made… Always fun reading your analysis and insights. Peace! CPZ.