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50 free Planes, Trains and Automobiles trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Planes, Trains and Automobiles trivia questions with answers. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a ninety-minute film that was once nearly four hours long. This quiz covers both versions, and everything around them. There are plot questions - the swapped credit cards, the diverted flight, the broken locomotive, the punched nose in St. Louis - and production questions that fans rarely know: the eighty-five day shoot in upstate New York, the folk song threaded through the score, the closing song Hughes wanted and could not have, and the seventy-five minutes of lost footage that turned up in his archive in 2022. Every answer is written against a sourced account of the film with the sentence that establishes it attached, and difficulty runs from easy to expert. Ideal for a Thanksgiving-week quiz, a film club, or anyone who quotes the motel scene every November.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote and directed Planes, Trains and Automobiles?
John Hughes
He also produced it, and critics treated it as a departure from his teen comedies.
Q 02What is Steve Martin's character's job?
Advertising executive
Neal Page is uptight and desperate to get home; his travelling companion is the opposite.
Q 03What does John Candy's character sell for a living?
Shower curtain rings
Del Griffith is a travelling salesman who unknowingly stole Neal's taxi.
Q 04Which holiday is the pair trying to get home for?
Thanksgiving
The film has since become permanently attached to that week in American viewing habits.
Q 05Which city is Neal trying to reach?
Chicago
He starts in New York two days before the holiday and gets nowhere fast.
Q 06Where is the pair's flight diverted to?
Wichita, Kansas
A blizzard in Chicago closes their destination and strands them overnight in one hotel room.
Q 07What do the two men accidentally swap at hotel check-in?
Credit cards
That mix-up causes considerably more trouble later in the journey.
Q 08What happens to their cash while they sleep in Wichita?
A thief steals it
They wake to find themselves broke, several states from home.
Q 09Where does their train break down?
Jefferson City, Missouri
The passengers are left standing in a field and have to find another way on.
Q 10How do the stranded train passengers continue their journey?
By bus to St. Louis
From there Neal tries to rent a car, with famous results.
Q 11What happens when Neal insults the taxi dispatcher in St. Louis?
He is punched in the face
The rental car he had booked was missing from the lot, which is what set him off.
Q 12Which studio produced the film?
Paramount Pictures
Hughes Entertainment produced alongside it, and shooting ran mostly in New York state.
Q 13How long did the first cut of the film run?
Nearly four hours
Rewrites and improvisation between the two leads generated far more usable footage than a release print could hold.
Q 21Which future star plays the man who races Neal for a taxi?
Kevin Bacon
Ben Stein turns up as a Wichita airport representative, and Michael McKean as a state trooper.
Q 22Which actor plays the state trooper who impounds the burnt-out car?
Michael McKean
By that point the car is charred, roofless and barely driveable.
Q 23Which actress plays the car rental agent on the receiving end of Neal's tirade?
Edie McClurg
He arrives at her desk after an expletive-filled walk across the airport.
Which song plays over the final scene and credits?
Q 14Who composed the film's score?
Ira Newborn
His score leans heavily on the folk song 'Red River Valley'.
Q 15Which folk song runs through the score?
Red River Valley
A cover of the rock and roll version, 'Red River Rock', appears courtesy of the Silicon Teens.
Q 16What did the film take at the box office, against a $15m budget?
$49.5 million
It was both a critical and a commercial success on release in November 1987.
Q 17On which date was the film released?
25 November 1987
That timing put it in cinemas the day before Thanksgiving.
Q 18How long did filming take?
85 days
It began in February 1987, mostly in Batavia and South Dayton in New York state.
Q 19In which state was most of the film shot?
New York
Batavia and South Dayton stood in for a great deal of the American Midwest.
Q 20Which real airport plays the Missouri airport in the film?
Lambert International
Other scenes were shot at a motel in Braidwood, Illinois, and a courthouse in Woodstock.
A cover of Everytime You Go Away
Hughes wanted Paul Young's hit version but the record company refused, even though Young approved.
Q 25Why did the famous version of that closing song not get used?
The record company refused
Paul Young himself wanted it in the film, which made the refusal doubly frustrating.
Q 26How much unseen footage did the 2022 4K release include?
75 minutes
Much of it had been thought lost before being found in the director's archive.
Q 27Where was that rediscovered footage found?
The John Hughes archive
Paramount announced the restored release in October 2022.
Q 28What approval rating did Planes, Trains and Automobiles hold on Rotten Tomatoes in 2025?
93 per cent
The consensus praises the chemistry between the two leads above everything else.
Q 29Which two actors were attached to a proposed remake in 2020?
Will Smith and Kevin Hart
Writing was underway by 2023, but the project reportedly fell apart.
Q 30What had become of the 2020 proposed remake, according to its writer in 2025?
It fell apart
The writer said in 2025 that a script existed but the project collapsed for several reasons.