Planes, Trains & Automobiles

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The movie poster for Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Directed by	John Hughes
Produced by	John Hughes
Written by	John Hughes
Starring	Steve Martin John Candy
Music by	Ira Newborn
Cinematography	Donald Peterman
Editing by	Paul Hirsch
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	November 25, 1987
Running time	93 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Planes, Trains & Automobiles is an American comedy movie produced by Paramount Pictures in 1987. It was written and directed by John Hughes and stars Steve Martin and John Candy. Laila Robins co-stars and the film features cameos by Michael McKean, Kevin Bacon, Lyman Ward and William Windom. The movie also features Ben Stein, Larry Hankin, Edie McClurg, Dylan Baker, Bill Erwin and Matthew Lawrence.

[edit] Tagline

"What he really wanted was to spend Thanksgiving with his family. What he got was three days with the turkey."

[edit] Plot

Steve Martin plays the tightly wound Neal Page, a bundle-of-nerves advertising executive. John Candy portrays the innocent, but always skewered, Del Griffith (Director of sales, American Light and Fixture, shower curtain ring division), a shower curtain ring salesman who seems to live in a world governed by a different set of rules from those governing Neal Page's marketing life.

The movie follows the story of Neal Page as he tries to return to his family for Thanksgiving in Chicago after being on a business trip in New York. The journey is doomed from the outset, with Del Griffith interfering by snatching the taxi cab that Page had hailed for himself. The two inevitably pair up later and begin an absurdly error-prone adventure to help Page get back to his home. Their flight from JFK Airport to O'Hare is diverted to Wichita due to a blizzard in Chicago, which ends up dissipating only a few hours after touchdown in Kansas. When every mode of transport fails them, what should have been a 1 hour and 45 minute New York-to-Chicago flight turns into a three-day wild goose chase, punctuated by Neal's occasional declarations to no one in particular that, "You're messing with the wrong guy!".

Neal frequently blows up at Del, blaming him for much of their misfortunes, though mere fate is more at fault. Del in turn regards Neal as pretentious and uptight, while Del is less afraid to be himself. After much heated arguments between the two men, a bond between them forms, and Neal finally manages to overcome his self-centeredness and both men pull together to finally make their way home.

Under the assumption that Del has a wife and family of his own (he frequently mentions his wife Marie and puts a framed picture of her on his various motel nightstands), Neal is taken aback when he later sees Del alone in an empty L train station, after they finally make it back to Chicago. Del tells Neal that he is in fact homeless, and that his beloved Marie actually passed away eight years ago. The bond between the two men strengthens further when Neal invites him into his home for the holidays.

[edit] Reception

The film, the second to pair John Candy and Steve Martin, was greeted with critical applause in 1987, a surprising revelation given the fact that at the time Steve Martin and John Candy were both known as relatively low-brow comedians and John Hughes was considered a teen angst filmmaker. Their attempts at producing an 'adult' comedy resulted in one of the most highly regarded films of the decade. (It now has 97% positive ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and is featured in Roger Ebert's Great Movies collection.) In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 10th greatest comedy film of all time.

[edit] Rating

The film is rated R by the MPAA for a scene including a substantial amount of strong language. In that scene, Steve Martin goes on a tirade against a car rental agent (Edie McClurg) and says "fuck" 19 times in just over a minute.

The scene is dubbed for television, and the rest of the film is family-friendly.

[edit] Releases

The film was released on DVD in 2000, and although there is a three-hour version of the film in the Paramount Studios film vault,^{[citation needed]} the original theatrical version is featured on the DVD in a 'bare bones' presentation.

A known deleted scene of Neal and Del eating airline food, that is commonly seen on the version of the film edited for television, is not on the disc either.

[edit] Soundtrack

The soundtrack to Planes, Trains & Automobiles features a mix of rock and roll, country and pop. The frenetic musical score by Ira Newborn, makes extensive use of the folk song Red River Valley, including a rock and roll version of the song, Red River Rock, performed by British group Silicon Teens. Among other tracks is a cover version of "Back in Baby's Arms", used during the scene when Steve Martin's and John Candy's characters wake up embracing each other in the morning. The song, popularized by Patsy Cline, is performed by Emmylou Harris.

The soundtrack album was released in 1987, but has since gone out of print. Songs featured in the film but not included on the soundtrack album include "(Meet) The Flintstones" (sung on the bus) and "Three Coins in the Fountain" (which Steve Martin's character tries to sing on the bus) and "Mess Around" by Ray Charles, the song John Candy's character is listening to when he plays "air instruments" while driving; swerving and puffing cigarettes, while Steve Martin's character sleeps. An additional track by Steve Earle, "Continental Trailways Blues", was composed for the film, but was not included on the soundtrack album. The song is included on the 1996 compilation, Ain't Ever Satisfied: The Steve Earle Collection. Not included in the soundtrack is the song Everytime You Go Away performed by Blue Room at the end of the film.

[edit] Track listing

1. "I Can Take Anything" ("Love Theme from Planes, Trains & Automobiles") (David Steele, Andy Cox and John Hughes) – 3:46
   • Performed by ETA featuring Steve Martin and John Candy
2. "BA-NA-NA-BAM-BOO" (Elizabeth Westwood, Nick Burton & Robert Andrews) – 2:58
   • Performed by Westworld
3. "I'll Show You Something Special" (Desmond Morris, Mark Morriss and Steve Brown) – 3:28
   • Performed by Balaam & The Angel
4. "Modigliani" ("Lost in Your Eyes") (Susan Ottaviano, Jade Lee and Theodore Ottaviano) – 3:53
   • Performed by Book of Love
5. "Power to Believe" (Nick Laird-Clowes and Gilbert Gabriel) – 5:13
   • Performed by The Dream Academy
6. "Six Days on the Road" (Earl Green and Carl Montgomery) – 3:06
   • Performed by Steve Earle & The Dukes
7. "Gonna Move" (Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe) – 3:32
   • Performed by Dave Edmunds
8. "Back in Baby's Arms" (Bobby Montgomery) – 2:02
   • Performed by Emmylou Harris
9. "Red River Rock" (Tom King, Ira Mack and Fred Mendelsohn) – 3:26
   • Performed by Silicon Teens
10. "Wheels" (Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons) – 3:08
    • Performed by Stars of Heaven

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Kevin Bacon plays the man who races Steve Martin to the taxi at the beginning of the picture. During the shooting of PT&A, John Hughes was also filming She's Having a Baby, in which Kevin Bacon starred and interestingly, the latter film can be heard playing on a television in a later scene, even though it was launched into theaters after Martin and Candy's movie.

• Three actors in this film were also in John Hughes' film Ferris Bueller's Day Off: Edie McClurg, who played the rental agent in the infamous "fuck" scene, played principal Ed Rooney's secretary, Grace. Lyman Ward, Neal's co-worker at the beginning of the film, played Tom Bueller, Ferris's father and Ben Stein, who has a cameo as a gate agent, was also featured in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as Ferris's monotonous, boring economics teacher.

• The film is both Steve Martin's and John Candy's favorite performances of their own.

• The shot of the plane that Page and Griffith are riding on near the beginning of the film is a shot of the plane from the movie Airplane!. However, the image has been enlarged so the faux "TA" Airline logo is not visible on the aircraft. Both Airplane! and Planes, Trains and Automobiles were released by Paramount Pictures (and both partly took place in Chicago).

• A quick scene after the credits shows Page's boss still trying to decide which ad layout to use, while his Thanksgiving dinner (including an entire turkey) sits on his desk next to him.

• The song Dashboard by Modest Mouse features a reference to the movie with the line 'The dashboard melted, but we still have the radio'.^{[citation needed]}

• Del's Chrysler Town and Country rental car has the same paint scheme as the "Family Truckster" from the film National Lampoon's Vacation, another John Hughes movie.

• Richard Herd, an actor ultimately best known for his roles as villains in science fiction and military/techno thrillers, makes a brief cameo appearance at the end of the film as Neal's kind-hearted father-in-law Walt

• The film features an egregious editing error/omission whereby, during the scene when Mrs. Page is eating dinner with her three kids, the arm and head of another woman are seen at the bottom of the screen holding the attention of the youngest child (presumably to keep him/her still during the filming of the scene).

• When stuck in Wichita, Ben Stein, the agent at the ticket counter, announces a flight cancellation. In the background on the reader board the destination is listed as "NOWHERE".

• When Neal and Del's credit cards get swapped at the motel, Neal's Diners Club card goes to Del. The card that goes to Neal looks like a Diners Club card but is actually titled Overnighter's Discount Card.

• Because the film's plot derives heavily from the incompetence and/or unreliability of various forms of transportation, there were no airlines or other such firms willing to appear in it. This necessitated the creation of the fictitious Marathon Car Rental agency (complete with logos, uniforms and several hundred cars for the parking lot scene), and the rental of a passenger train and several miles of track to film the railroad scenes. The airline Neal and Del are initially on when flying out of New York is the contrived Mid-Central Airlines; the bus company they use to get to St. Louis is Trans-Missouri (also nonexistent in real life).

• In the film, it is noted that the "people train" does not leave from Wichita. This is true in real life; however, in the film the train leaves from the imaginary town of "Stubbsville", while in real life, Amtrak passenger service runs in Newton, Kansas, a small town about 30 miles north of Wichita.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

• Planes, Trains & Automobiles at the Internet Movie Database
• Planes Trains & Automobiles at the 80s Movie Gateway
• Planes, Trains & Automobiles review by Roger Ebert
• Planes, Trains & Automobiles list of top moments with photos