Blast from the Past, 11-23-05

John Hughes' Best Ever

Francis Ford Coppola once said about Apocalypse Now that his movie wasn't about Vietnam. It was Vietnam.
John Hughes could say a similar thing about Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It isn't about Thanksgiving. It is Thanksgiving.
Very few movies, outside of the Lifetime, are made about Thanksgiving. Rarely do they become as popular as Planes has. Home for the Holidays is more remembered for the revelation that Robert Downey Jr. is stoned in every scene. The Ice Storm was more about families with Thanksgiving as a backdrop. Planes is all about Thanksgiving.
The movie's two characters are complete opposites. Steve Martin plays Neal Page, a marketing executive who has it all. He has a nice house in surbaban Chicago, a beautiful wife, three sweet little kids, and a nice job that allows him to have over $700 in cash in his wallet, along with a Diner's Card and a Neiman Marcus card. Neal Page has it all.
John Candy plays Del Griffith, a shower curtain ring salesman who spends more time on the road than he would like to admit. He literally lives out of his suitcases. The $200 he has in his wallet is his life savings and he must resort to selling shower curtain rings in a rouse as earrings to ignorant and simple women in a bus terminal when that money is stolen.
The two meet by a series of events that lead them to become good friends over the course of 48 hours. Del takes Neal's taxicab from him as he haggles with a lawyer over it. When the airline bumps him to coach, he is seated next to Del on the airplane. When Chicago O'Hare Airport is snowed in, they arrive in Wichita, Kansas, where the two become almost inseperable, much to Neal's chagrin at the beginning.
This being the most traveled day of the year in America, everyone can appreciate the hell Neal and Del endure as they try to make it from Wichita to Chicago. Neal and Del share a hotel and a hotel bed together and find themselves closer than they want to be. There is also a crucial scene in which Neal rants about all of Del's problems. Hughes keeps the camera on Candy as we see the hurt set in his face. Del might be irritating, but no one