Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a wildly underrated holiday classic, which is to say that it doesn’t get its own channel for 24 hours straight on a major holiday. But it should, and perhaps Emma Stone recreating one of its iconic moments on live TV will do something to move the needle toward a more just world.
Stone appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote Cruella on Thursday night, and part of the remote interview featured her coaching Kimmel through recreating a scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The bit, which takes place at an airport with a harried Steve Martin trying to get back to Chicago for Thanksgiving. The John Hughes film features a standout performance from John Candy, but Martin losing it on a rental car agent in St. Louis is one of the iconic moments most remembered from the film.
It’s this rant Stone apparently knows by heart, an expletive-filled list of cars Martin’s character is willing to pay for in order to get back to Chicago in time for the holidays after a long series of mix-ups has left him at wit’s end. It’s especially funny considering that Stone was apparently eight when she first learned to use all those f-bombs, but the movie clearly left an impact on her.
Stone’s rant went a bit viral in its own right, but on Twitter it was Martin who hesitatingly called himself “honored” that Stone knew the whole thing.
I’m….honored?
— Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) May 29, 2021
Hollywood can’t help itself when it comes to sequels, so if Martin ever were interested we now know at least one person who would love to get involved in following up the 80s Hughes classic.