Friday's Favorite Advertising Movie: "They're Selling Cosmetics, Not Curing Cancer!":

By: Jessie Bunning
Art Director

My extended family all lived in New Hampshire when I was growing up, and my parents, my sister and I would make annual treks across the country to visit them for the holidays. Each trip, as we waited in those dreaded holiday lines, crushed in with the holiday crowds, wondering if our flights from rainy Seattle to frozen New Hampshire would be delayed, my parents delighted in joking about how much worse our travel could be.

Their favorite, (besides the "fake", where you announce to your over-tired children that all flights are canceled and you actually have to go back home and miss Christmas entirely), was to joke about Steve Martin and John Candy's collective travel mishaps from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

The movie itself is great--two strangers, very much opposite of each other, end up getting foiled by weather and other mishaps as they independently try to travel home to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Steve Martin's character is an New York advertising man, self-described in "marketing." The opening scene of the movie takes place in a fancy corporate board room in Manhattan. The scene is almost complete silence, while a big-time client, the owner of a major lipstick brand, takes his excruciatingly slow and silent time in a meeting right before the holidays reviewing the artwork they've prepared for the brand. Steve Martin has a plane to catch, and each second that the client drags on makes it less and less likely he'll make the flight.

In the elevator after the meeting, Steve Martin says to his co-worker "Two hours of staring at material to decide to reconvene after the holidays. They're selling cosmetics, not curing cancer!"

Although dated (it was released in 1987), it's still a classic, due in no small part to the main actors. Steve Martin and John Candy (R.I.P.!) have great comedic timing and it's fun to see them interact. You can tell they are genuinely enjoying each other! Sure, driving a burned out car at 78 mph on a snowy winter freeway is a bit far-fetched, plot-wise, and the incredibly cheesy embrace between Steve Martin and his wife at the end (set to a synth rendition of 'Take My Breath Away') is borderline uncomfortable (but maybe that's just me?). Also, there is a bonus Kevin Bacon sighting!




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