John Wilden Hughes Jr. was an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He began his career in 1970 as an author of humorous essays and stories for the National Lampoon magazine. He went on in Hollywood to write, produce and sometimes direct some of the most successful live-action comedy films of the 1980s. He directed such films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, She's Having a Baby, and Uncle Buck; and wrote the films National Lampoon's Vacation, Mr. Mom, Pretty in Pink, The Great Outdoors, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Dutch, and Beethoven.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a 1987 American comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by John Hughes and starring Steve Martin and John Candy, with supporting roles by Laila Robins and Michael McKean. It tells the story of Neal, a high-strung marketing executive, and Del, a good-hearted but irritating salesman, who become travel companions when their flight is diverted, and embark on a three-day odyssey of misadventures trying to reach Chicago in time for Neal's Thanksgiving Day dinner with his family.