Happy Thanksgiving, Chicago! Let’s revisit the quintessential movie for today.
In the 1987 film “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” Neal Page (Steve Martin) and Del Griffith (John Candy) are two very different businessmen trying to make their way from New York to Chicago only to be diverted to Wichita, Kan., from where they have a series of adventures that bring them closer together.
The script was written by John Hughes (“Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” and more) who frequently based his plots in Chicago and the suburbs. This story was inspired by a real experience. Hughes, previously an advertising copywriter for Leo Burnett, attempted the same trip but was spectacularly diverted to a variety of cities around the United States.
Many of the movies Hughes wrote were also filmed here.
“I like California but my fear has always been that if I lived there for a couple of years, I would wind up writing screenplays about writers who can’t write screenplays anymore.” Hughes told the Tribune while filming “Sixteen Candles” in Evanston in 1983. “It’s far better for me to be working here, near the places where I grew up, and with the people I’ve known all my life.”
Why else do we still love “Planes?” No remake — yet.
And it’s the perfect appetizer for two modern Christmas classics, which were also created by Hughes — “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989) and “Home Alone” (1990).
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In the 1980s, filmmakers embraced a novel idea: Film movies about Chicago in Chicago …
Hughes spent a good chunk of the 1980s here writing screenplays, and producing and directing movies.
“Even the extras are better here,” he said in 1983. “They’re not so jaded, they haven’t done it 20 times before; so I’ve been getting really natural performances. … When you go on location in Chicago, even the onlookers are thrilled.”
It harkened back to a different time in the city.
Between 1907 and 1918 Chicago was the center of the nation’s film industry. The studios eventually deserted the city for California, blaming it on the weather.
Then, under Mayor Richard J. Daley, filming a movie about Chicago in Chicago was forbidden.
During his 20 years in office, Daley thwarted almost every attempt to make major motion pictures here. He suspected, with good reason, that the cinema would depict Chicago as a town ruled by gangsters.
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In 1976, Daley died, and the fledgling Illinois Film Office, whipped along by its first director, Lucy Salenger, a former television producer, began to aggressively market Illinois as a movie location. Daley’s successors at City Hall, who recognized the economic potential, supported that effort.
When the major film studios began trickling into town, they brought with them almost everything and everybody they would need to accomplish their purpose-from lights to cameras, from assistant electricians to major stars. Early on, however, local officials of the Teamsters union and the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees persuaded studio production heads that they could find willing and relatively inexpensive crews already here and eager to pitch in.
Call it Hollywood-by-the-Lake.
The filmmakers liked what they saw and returned in ever-increasing numbers. Studios filmed seven pictures or television movies here during 1976, six in 1977, eight in 1979. In 1986, 24 major productions were filmed wholly or in part in Illinois, plus 26 individual, hour-long episodes for both the “Jack and Mike” and “Crime Story” television series.
By 1987, the studios longer brought in all their help though local movie production fell off because of a threatened nationwide directors’ strike in June and because several projects were diverted to Canada, where the U.S. dollar bought more. Even so, local filmmaking the year “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” was released generated more than $30 million and provided 15,000 temporary jobs, estimated Suzy Kellett, then the director of the Illinois Film Office. With a staff of eight and an annual budget of $650,000, the Film Office claimed to produce more revenue per dollar spent than any other state agency except the lottery.
… but production for ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ fled the city when snow didn’t materialize.
Ironically, the film about trying to get home to Chicago couldn’t film here.
Do to the lack of the fluffy stuff — which plays a big role in the film — production was moved to New York.
A few scenes, however, were shot locally. Remember the duo carrying Griffith’s trunk in the middle of street and stopping before Page’s two-story brick Colonial? That was shot in Kenilworth. And the motel that Griffith backs his rental car into? That’s in Gurnee.
Gene Siskel’s review: 3.5 stars
“It’s Candy’s first really good character and performance on screen. Martin is funny as usual,” Siskel wrote.
In 2000, Roger Ebert called it “the only movie our family watches as a custom, most every Thanksgiving.” (He also gave it 3.5 stars.)
Critic Johanna Steinmetz, who gave the film 3 stars, found the plot to be a refreshing take from Hughes.
“Sure, it’s hinted, these men have personal problems. But ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ doesn’t give its adults the Hughes teen treatment of probing the psyche to explain behavior,” she wrote in 1987. “It just chronicles the behavior, tidies up a bit with explanations at the end and lets us draw our own conclusions.
Audiences loved the film, too, but it had lots of competition
“Three Men and a Baby” topped Hughes’s film in the rankings of top-grossing movies for the Chicago area during its opening weekend.
Other films out at the same time included, “Fatal Attraction,” “Nuts,” “The Running Man,” “Flowers in the Attic,” and “Less Than Zero.”
How much do you know about where Hughes’s films were shot?
Hughes died of a heart attack while walking in Manhattan on Aug. 6, 2009. He was 59.
Since then, his movies have been observed with a more critical eye — especially by Molly Ringwald, who came of age starring in locally filmed “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club.”
Yet for those who are nostalgic, Hughes’s films provide a journey back in time. Take our 10-question quiz to test how well you recognize the homes, businesses, schools and other buildings depicted in Hughes’s films.
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