Planes, Trains and Automobies (1987)

QFS No. 129 - The invitation for November 22, 2023
John Hughes is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers and, I dare say, one of the reasons I wanted to become one myself. The only reason we haven’t selected one of his movies yet is that I have seen basically all of them – especially the ones he directed. There are a few he wrote that I haven’t yet seen, but truly it’s hard to remember a time when I hadn’t seen a John Hughes film.

While he wrote and produced a ton, he only directed eight movies.** Most of those eight have withstood the test of time and to talk about Hughes is to talk in superlatives. There might be no better movie about ditching school and having a dream day than Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) – easily one of my favorite films of all time, one that takes on a mythic status for kids who grew up near the city of Chicago. The Breakfast Club (1985) is class struggle as told through high school and has never been topped. Sixteen Candles (1984) is a defining movie of the 1980s coming-of-age subgenre and Weird Science (1985) is a true teen boy’s dream film. Uncle Buck (1989), though perhaps on the second tier of his work, is one of the great John Candy performances of all time – topped only by this week’s selection.

And that’s only his directing work. He produced a ton of films and also wrote ones he didn’t direct, including National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) – probably the most quoted road-trip movie of all time – and Home Alone (1990), which exploded across the screens when it came out and remains arguably one of the greatest Christmas films ever made.

Which brings me to this week’s selection. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of those films that, when you came across it on television back when we used to channel surf, you had to just sit down and watch it. It sucks you in. A prefect odd couple road trip movie, set just before Thanksgiving with two men trying to get to Chicago in time for the family dinner. Steve Martin as his strait-laced uncomfortable best; John Candy in a performance has depth and heart that undergirds the sweet annoying comedic veneer. Consider that this and Midnight Run (1988, QFS No. 64) came out within one year of each other – two classic odd couple road trip films that are up there with some of the great comedies of all time. Well, that’s pretty terrific.

John Hughes was great at setting up a finish line, a destination or an event that the film was building up towards. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off it’s the end of the school day. In Some Kind of Wonderful (1985) directed by Howie Deutch, it’s the prom. In Vacation, it’s getting to Wally World. Here, it’s Thanksgiving, just over the horizon, Chicago as the film’s Oz. Hughes was a master of mainstream storytelling, but with depth and heart. He just knew how to make his comedies feel somehow meaningful in a bigger way but simple and grounded. I once worked with Howie Deutch, one of his long-time partners, so I have a few fun stories I remember that I’ll try to share in the film chat.

So watch (or rewatch for the 523rd time) Planes, Trains and Automobiles and join us to chat about it. I have two extra tickets to go see it at the New Beverly on Tuesday, so hit me up if you want one. This is going to be a great one to see with a crowd.

It’ll be our last group chat for a couple weeks, so I hope you’ll be able to join on Thanksgiving Eve and discuss what we’re grateful for – which hopefully includes the work of John Hughes. See you then!

*Low bar, I know. I can’t think of an actual “Thanksgiving movie” but this one comes close, even though I’d call it a buddy picture-road trip movie more than a Thanksgiving movie. Scent of a Woman (1992) could arguably make the same claim, but that too is a sort of road trip movie over Thanksgiving weekend. 

**This surprised me, given his outsized influence on the 1980s in general and my childhood in particular.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes

Reactions and Analyses:
I have seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) so many times it’s virtually impossible to remember a time when I didn’t know every word of the film. Not only because I love the movie, but also I grew up in a time when it would rerun on television quite a bit, and when it did I was powerless but to sit down and watch it. But I had never seen it in the theater before – I would’ve been a tad too young in 1987 to see this one when it came out – so when it appeared on the New Beverly calendar during Thanksgiving week, I had to take the chance to see it. And since we hadn’t selected any of John Hughes’ work for QFS, an opportunity for an in-person viewing for an online discussion was one we couldn’t pass up.

At its core, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a story about class. Hughes says it himself in this terrific oral history of the making of the film published by Vanity Fair November 2022:

I like taking dissimilar people, putting them together, and finding what’s common to us all. Part of the point is there are a privileged few who operate between New York and Los Angeles or London and Paris. But if something screws up and they get off the exclusive track, it’s someone like Del Griffith who knows how to get them home. What kept the movie going was the opposites—two dissimilar guys. If it weren’t for a storm, someone like Neal Page would never meet a guy like Del.

We see this in so many of his films, most notably The Breakfast Club (1985), where students from different social classes are forced to meet and work together. It struck us in the group that there is no current filmmaker filling this role as it pertains to class divisions, at least no one that comes to mind. And definitely no one doing it as authentically as Hughes – perhaps Harold Ramis and John Landis come close. Frank Capra is the one who probably came closest to Hughes forty years earlier. The Capra comparison is probably most apt, though I’d argue that Hughes seasons his happy endings with a little bittersweetness whereas Capra I’d say applies a little syrup.

And in many ways, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is entirely about class privilege. Neal (Steve Martin) can usually skate by with his wealth and status, but right away, his first indignity, is having to take a city bus to the airport. His next one is being denied his rightful place in first class on the airplane. Until his credit cards burn to a crisp in the car fire, Neal is able to rely completely without physical cash whereas Del Griffith (John Candy) has to count every coin and needs to use his wits (shower rings as earrings!) to scrape together additional cash. And it’s upon Del that Neal depends – he sees the benefit of kindness and being content with your true self. And Neal, too, by eventually coming around and seeing Del’s innate kindness, gets Del to finally admit that his wife is dead and he has no place to really go home to.

Neal and Del in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes

The beauty in this film (and perhaps all of Hughes’ work) is that no person is all one thing – Del is not all annoying; Neil isn’t just a jerk. They’re humans, with flaws, but with several dimensions to them (The Breakfast Club does this particularly well… but you can argue that Ferris in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986, is the one Hughes character that’s less flawed than his other characters). And it’s through Hughes’ writing and casting that he’s able to make this happen. Few people humanize and cast “real” seeming people like Hughes can, and for a moment let’s set aside the obvious goofy charm of John Candy in this legendary performance. Look at all the other minor characters in the film – they’re all incredibly quirky but they feel fully real, fully human. Owen who takes them to Wichita (Dylan Baker), Edie McClurg as the rental car agent with probably the greatest button to a scene you can have, long-time character actor Larry Hankin as “Doobie” the cab driver, the hotel clerk (Martin Ferrero), Michael Mckean as the cop who pulls them over – all feel “real” or “real-ish.” Hughes’ world feels like our world because it’s populated by real people. Compare this with, say, the Farrelly Brothers or even the Coen Brothers who rely more upon caricatures and quirk than humanity.

There are so many memorable scenes that come to mind from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, aside from the profanity laden minute-long rant by Neal, which of course is legendary as the only reason the movie receives and “R” rating. The first time Neal talks with Del in the airport. When they’re on the plane together. The first Neal rant in the hotel is so eviscerating and bitterly hilarious that I had forgotten it happens so early in the film. The car burning down and then them driving it, and in particular the scene when they’re pulled over - which is a scene that still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Watching this again, I argued that some of the 1980s cheesiness doesn’t hold up but much - the use of still frames and sappy music in particular. That didn’t bother the rest of the group. For me, this one scene in particular feels definitely of its time: when Neal verbally tears into Del at the hotel, Del is deeply hurt as he takes it in stride. Yet, he’s also self-aware of his personal flaws. At that moment, the music starts and, for my taste, this it’s a bit too much. John Candy is so good, so empathetic in his performance in that scene that for me, the music is unnecessary. Hughes uses it and would definitely be in line with the practices of a mainstream film of the 1980s. The ending montage of Neal piecing together that Del has been lying about his wife and home has a similar feeling of maybe being a touch out of date. Still, it is an effective way of being in Neal’s mind at that time. And the conclusion of the film, though satisfying, lays it on thick. Long live the ’80s!

That is to say, much of the film still retains an emotional gravity, especially given that it’s a comedy. When Neal later in the film is able to pay for a hotel room by bartering his fancy watch, Del can’t do the same (despite having a Casio) and is stuck sleeping in the burnt out car. Neal looks out the window - and again, he’s not just a jerk, he’s just wound up a little too tightly - Neal relents and asks Del to come inside and stay with him. It’s sweet and still pretty moving, given how many times I’ve seen the film.

A final note on my attachment to Hughes - he’ s a fellow Chicagoan. What this meant for me, growing up near Chicago when his movies came out, is that he captured a feeling of the city as a place that felt like the center of the world (with Ferris Buller’s Day Off being the prime example - they literally treat Chicago as their playground and hallowed escape from the drudgery of high school). The city was the center of my world, to be sure, and I was surprised when I got older and found out that Hughes’ movies set in and around Chicago was an outlier, not the norm.

From Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes. I’m required by Chicagoan law to tell you that this skyline is fiction. There’s no view of the Chicago skyline like this off of that expressway in Chicago.

But being from the Midwest more broadly I think informs Hughes’ filmmaking as well. He writes about people that were familiar to him, about people he likely grew up around. It’s dangerous, of course, to generalize about a people of a paritcular region, but I always found that there are some common traits in the people I grew up with: unpretentious, generally kind, would bristle against injustice, and yes, you would run into someone like Del Griffith - chatty, no filter, unable to turn it off, generous to their core. And you’d also find people like Neal Page - prickly, uncomfortable in their own skin, but deep inside are reluctantly kind. Hughes captures these people in all their glory, throws them together, and creates true and earnest portrayals of humans in a way that we need to have return to big screens now and forever.