Thanksgiving Movies: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Planes, Trains & Automobiles is an incredibly popular Thanksgiving movie. JustWatch lists it as the #3 streaming movie for yesterday (11/23/23), and the #1 movie for today (Thanksgiving, 11/24/23). This 1987 John Hughes movie stars Steve Martin and John Candy.

For comparison purposes, here’s how Eraserhead is fairing today. WLBOTT Wonders: Why does Eraserhead even have a “dislike” button?

[Planes, Trains & Automobiles] tells the story of Neal, a high-strung marketing executive, and Del, a good-hearted but irritating shower curtain ring salesman, who become travel companions when their flight is diverted and embark on a three-day odyssey of misadventures trying to get to Chicago in time for Neal’s Thanksgiving Day dinner with his family.
Wikipedia

Ichabod plots out the route for us.
[By Ichabod – File:Map of USA without state names.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8852779]

Curated Trivia (IMDB)

The exterior of their aircraft in flight is a re-use of the 707 flying through the storm from the movie Airplane! (1980), also released by Paramount Pictures.
The Marathon Car Rental scene is exactly one minute long from the time Steve Martin starts his tirade to the time the attendant ends the scene. In that sixty seconds, the “F” word is used nineteen times. The film would’ve easily been rated PG or PG-13 by the MPAA if it weren’t for this one scene.
Only rated PG in New Zealand, even though the infamous “eighteen f-words in under a minute” scene remained intact.
Steve Martin talked in an interview about his late co-star John Candy and his similarities with the character of Del: “Well, he was a very sweet guy. *Very* sweet… and complicated, and so, he was always friendly, always outgoing and you know, funny and nice and polite, but I could tell he had kind of a little broken heart inside him.”
After Del sells some shower curtain rings at the bus station, Del and Neal go for a meal at a diner. In the shot where both Del and Neal can be seen sitting at their booth, there is a waitress and a female customer in the background. Both the waitress and customer are wearing the shower curtain rings as earrings.
When Del says, “Turn me over, I’m done on this side” he is quoting St. Lawrence who made the same joke as he was being martyred by being roasted alive on a grill. St. Lawrence is now known as the patron saint of comedians.
The poster for the film bares a striking resemblance to a 1927 Norman Rockwell painting entitled “The Plot Thickens”.