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It’s one of the most beloved and celebrated comedies of the 1980s, headlined by two A-list actors and helmed by one of the decade’s most sought after writer-directors. John Hughes‘ classic, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, with Steve Martin and John Candy, has been required holiday viewing for over 36 years and continues to make viewers laugh out loud today. Martin, known for his outrageous slapstick-style performances in films like The Jerk and All of Me, surprised audiences by playing “straight man” to Candy, the former SCTV cast member who was just starting to forge a successful movie career in films like Summer Rental and Spaceballs.
With Hughes behind the camera, the Hollywood “it” guy who struck gold with Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains & Automobiles was virtually guaranteed to be a critical and box office smash. It became the 29th top grossing film of 1987, and it earned Candy a nomination for Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture at the 1988 American Comedy Awards. So why would a movie written and directed by one of the industry’s heaviest hitters and carried by two powerhouse comic actors feature a seemingly out-of-nowhere, 1-minute and 8-second, dialogue-free cameo by another ’80s icon, Footloose star Kevin Bacon? It’s not as if the film needed a boost of star power to get it over the finish line, and it certainly didn’t need any “stunt casting” to get noticed. What’s the story behind Bacon’s surprising — and hilarious — cameo?
The Cameo Was Kevin Bacon’s Idea
Interestingly, it was Kevin Bacon himself who gave Hughes the idea to cast him in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Hughes was filming this movie and She’s Having A Baby, another picture starring Bacon, at the same time. Bacon so enjoyed working with Hughes that he told the director he would be available for a part in the Martin-Candy film, even as an extra. Bacon was living in Manhattan at the time, so Hughes took the young actor up on his offer when it came time to film on location, and the brilliance of Bacon’s cameo in the movie is part of the brilliance of the film’s entire setup. Steve Martin plays Neal Page, a buttoned up, strictly business advertising man trying to get from New York to Chicago on the eve of Thanksgiving. When he crosses paths with shower curtain ring salesperson Del Griffith (Candy), it’s one comedic catastrophe after another. But it’s Bacon’s appearance at the beginning of the film that foreshadows the disasters yet to come for Neal.
Trying to catch a cab to the airport so he doesn’t miss his flight home, Neal makes a quick exit from a midtown Manhattan meeting. Anyone who’s ever tried to get a taxi in New York City at the height of rush hour, let alone rush hour on the day before a holiday, knows it’s a feat requiring superhero prowess, not to mention a colossal dose of good luck. While frantically searching for that elusive yellow Ford four-door, Neal spots a cab with its “available” sign lit up. That’s when Bacon enters the picture. Credited only as “Taxi Racer” in the movie, Bacon’s character, standing on the opposite side of 6th Avenue from Martin’s Neal, spots the empty cab, then spots Martin’s Neal eyeing the same vehicle. The pair exchange glances that convey “bring it on,” and the mad dash begins. For 30 seconds, Neal and Taxi Racer sprint down the crowded sidewalks, dodging passersby, delivery carts, and other speed-impairing obstacles, intent on being the first to get to the car that will deliver them from the hell that is the New York holiday season. Neal nearly beats Taxi Racer to the prized destination, until he stumbles and falls over a giant gaudy trunk belonging to the bumbling Del Griffith that’s been left in the street. Taxi Racer emerges as the victor, pausing to give Neal a dastardly grin and a “see ya, sucker!” salute before hopping into the cab and riding away. That brief scene is pivotal to the film, because it’s a tone-setting moment, the first in a long series of very unfortunate events that will befall Neal once he becomes entangled with the inept but good-natured Del. Any random actor could have played Taxi Racer, but seeing Bacon in that role made audiences laugh even harder, and it’s not difficult to believe director Hughes knew exactly what he was doing when he cast the fresh-faced kid. The entire scene is, in fact, a wink and a nod to the beginning of Bacon’s 1986 film Quicksilver, about a fallen stock market trader forced to make a living as a bike messenger. In that movie’s opening, Bacon, as a taxicab passenger, urges his driver to race a bicycle delivery man through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Bacon’s cab loses the race to the cyclist (Nelson Vails), who gives a similar “so long, loser!” farewell salute to Bacon’s character as he pedals away.
Bacon’s Character Could Be a Crossover from ‘She’s Having a Baby’
Although shot at approximately the same time, Planes, Trains & Automobiles was released three months before She’s Having a Baby, on Thanksgiving Day 1987. Still, when Bacon’s movie, the story of two newlyweds facing the challenges of their first year of marriage, was released in February 1988, some audiences were convinced that Bacon’s Taxi Racer character was actually Bacon’s character Jake Briggs from She’s Having a Baby. In that film, Briggs is an up-and-coming advertising copywriter who dutifully commutes by train to Chicago each day, newspaper tucked under his arm. In Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Bacon’s Taxi Racer is a commuter trying to get from Point A to Point B, also carrying a newspaper. Taxi Racer is even dressed in the same clothes as Jake Briggs. It can be surmised that the character is Briggs on a business trip to the big city, and, like Martin’s Neal Page, is intent on getting back to Chicago to celebrate the holidays with his new bride Kristy (Elizabeth McGovern). It’s certainly not out of the question that director Hughes would find a way to overlap the two movies in this way. Hughes actually did tie both films together in another scene in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, but viewers needed to be especially adept and have exceptionally good hearing to catch it. In one segment, Neal’s wife Susan (Laila Robins) is alone in bed, watching television, as she waits for her husband to return home. Although the screen isn’t shown, a couple on the TV can be heard arguing. Susan is watching a scene from She’s Having a Baby, in which Bacon’s and McGovern’s characters have a fight about their overnight guests.
Hughes Used Multiple Tie-Ins To His Other Films
And the tie-ins don’t end there. During the closing credits of She’s Having a Baby, John Candy appears briefly as his character Chet Ripley from The Great Outdoors, a 1988 comedy written by Hughes, rattling off potential names for the child that’s just been born to Jake and Kristy. Candy’s is one of dozens of celebrity appearances during the film’s final minutes, a number of them being from actors from previous Hughes films, including Matthew Broderick and Cindy Pickett (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Ally Sheedy and Paul Gleason (The Breakfast Club), and Edie McClurg, famous for her expletive-laden car rental scene with Martin in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Following Hughes’ untimely death in 2009 at age 59, those who had worked with him frequently mentioned how Hughes had considered the casts and crews of his films to be part of his extended family. That Hughes frequently used the same performers in multiple films shows that he was a true actor’s director, and the fact that Bacon, already a bankable star, would be content to make a blink-of-the-eye cameo in Hughes’ film, is a testament to the joy the actor felt in being part of the acclaimed director’s showbiz family.
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