10 Movie Endings Actors Didn't Know Were Going To Happen
1. Neal Goes Back For Del - Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Planes, Trains and Automobiles feels like such a pitch perfect movie that it's tough to believe it was basically a miracle pulled out of an editorial nightmare, with the final cut being whittled down to a tight 92 minutes from an original assembly of three hours and 45 minutes.
Perhaps the most significant post-production choice was to majorly retool the movie's ending. Rather than return for reshoots, Hughes and editor Paul Hirsch ingeniously re-ordered and re-edited existing footage to tell a similar-but-different story.
On a 2019 episode of the Light the Fuse podcast, Hirsch explained that the original shot ending was ridiculed by test audiences.
This ending saw Neal (Steve Martin) find Del (John Candy) hanging out in the train station, having been driven there by a truck driver, before launching into a long, sappy speech about how he tends to attach himself to people ever since his wife passed away.
Neal then pities Del and brings him to his home for Thanksgiving, and test audiences felt that this ending portrayed Del as guilt-tripping Neal, with some even laughing at his climactic speech.
It fell to Hirsch, then, to try and repair the ending without using any new material.
Creatively, he made use of outtakes of Steve Martin riding the train, cross-cut with footage of Del throughout the movie, and reversed a shot of the train exiting the station to imply that Neal had a change of heart and went back for Del.
The original heart-to-heart scene between Neal and Del was then cut down to its most basic components. Collectively, these cuts made Neal seem more compassionate and Del less pathetic, and ensured a feel-good holiday classic was born.