Gus/Del (John Candy) was the Devil! (Christmas Special)

the thing that i love most about star wars is the unbelievable consistency of the skywalker family skywalker men are all just like whiny just whiny guys all of them kylo he's just like a whiny emo guy he's exactly what luke would have turned into if luke had been like raised by um raised by sith well he was raised by luke even though he's han's son oh that's true weird right what a great sequel trilogy they just they they took our favorite characters that had already been ruined by the prequels and they just ruined them more that's as good of an intro as any what are we talking about today well it's certainly not star wars hey uh merry christmas and happy holidays and merry christmas yeah happy holidays this is the last episode we're gonna release this year so hey so today we're talking about a christmas movie we're talking about home alone a 1990 film written by john hughes and directed by chris columbus we are also talking about a movie that

much to my surprise is not a christmas movie called uncle trains and automobiles wow a 1987 film that was written and directed by john hughes and is in fact the quintessential thanksgiving movie as we yeah as it turns out i just don't understand like i thought the stakes were he had to get home for christmas if it said he has to get home for thanksgiving it's like i don't care it's just thanksgiving you can have it the next day everyone gets friday off too yeah i mean why is he living in a different city than his family he works he's like a big businessman he's a rich guy i don't know move your family out there you weirdo yeah what's wrong agree he's a bad parent he's like kind of a jerk in general which uh not as terrible as john candy but i mean that's what makes it a good movie so you would consider it a good movie well i would consider parts of it to be humorous i think our our parents generation would consider it a good

movie but they also liked yes Chevy Chase yeah no but that's exactly what I was about it's a very Chevy Chase-esque movie that's exactly what I was about to talk about so in the 80s there was this like a stream of these movies coming out where it's it's a similar tone I guess similar characters where basically the main character is a total jerk and bad things happen to him but also bad things happen to everyone else and that seemed to be like a staple of comedy in the 80s i'm not sure why it's funny but i i will say as i watch these movies i find that when this sort of character is played by steve martin it works better than when this character is played by like chevy chase or john candy and that is because i think steve martin he can play the jerk because he plays the straight man and he played the jerk in the jerk which who was not the straight man of that movie right yeah also well it's not that much of a jerk but anyway it was mistitled and possibly

miscast i guess well i think it's that steve martin is genuinely just a nice guy and so when he plays a jerk he's playing a character like he's fed up right chevy chase is a jerk and you're Like, what a jerk. He's just playing himself. It just doesn't feel as, like, unbelievably disgusting when Steve Martin plays that kind of character. Here is the theory. Yeah, lead us in. What's this all about? What's the theory here? John Candy's character from Home Alone, Gus Polinsky, is not only the same person as Del Griffith from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Okay. But he is literally a devil who torments lost parents on the road, particularly around the holidays. Well, that took a sharp left turn there. I could buy that they're the same person because we know that Dale from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is like a drifter. Like he's actually homeless. And I wouldn't put it past him to con people and use a false name and also travel around with a polka band because he travels around, right?

So that makes sense to me. Um, him being the devil, like he, yeah, okay. Okay. He does grow horns and wear a devil costume at one point. We'll talk about that. All right. I'm starting to be convinced. That's the biggest evidence. This is interesting. Okay. So this theory has its beginnings in a Reddit post by Reddit user Drew Gar. And also there were a few comments that I took some notes from one by Exodus 0000. And it's that in Home Alone, when the mother, Mrs. McAllister, is trying to get home and she's stuck in Scranton, she says, I would sell my soul to get home tonight or something to that effect. And John Candy looms up behind her. Immediately, he perks up and looks at her and then quickly shuffles over. He didn't care what else she was offering. But as soon as she said the word soul, he's like, well, now that I can get my hands on. Yeah, he was listening to her the whole time. But once she says, sell my soul, he's like, all right.

She was trying to pawn off her freaking wedding ring, like everything in her purse, first class tickets for a different day. Like she was bargaining with everyone there. And John Candy didn't even notice her until she said, okay, I'll sell my soul. Right. And then how this relates to planes, trains, and automobiles is just that they are both written by John Hughes. So it is conceivable that they could be in a shared universe as the writer myself. You know, it's always my own headcanon in the things I write, even if they're produced by different companies that I would want them to be in the same universe, even if I don't outright say it. I watched Plane, Trains, and Automobiles as a kid. I remember virtually nothing about it except the one scene where John Candy turns into a devil. That's all I remember about that movie. It's like a traumatizing scene. That scene's pretty scary. It's really scary, dude.

Or funny, I guess. No, it's not funny. So now that we know sort of the broad details of this theory, I think we're going to start with planes trains and automobiles just because that's a thanksgiving movie so it comes first chronologically speaking so the first thing i want to say about planes trains and automobiles is just like oh whoa they got kevin bacon to play guy across the street who wants a taxi that's so weird i was like what why is he racing kevin bacon in the middle of traffic why does kevin bacon have no lines like he didn't even have a speaking role was it a cameo or was kevin bacon just that much of a nobody back then like i thought i don't know i have no idea how that happened steve martin's character in the movie planes trains and automobiles his name is neil page when it starts out he's already in some sort of hellish situation he is stuck in a meeting that board meeting was actually hilarious i really love his unbelievably fat like stupid

looking boss who looks just so like authoritative just reading something in complete silence in the middle of a meeting with all these managers like in there wasting their time and then he puts it down on the table and sighs and then he picks it back up again and reads it some more and he looks up at them and opens his mouth and then he shakes his head and reads it again this is the whole board meeting no one says a word it's so good did you see the after credits scene no so the after credits scene is that boss still sitting in that boardroom with a turkey dinner in front of him still staring at those two pictures they're like these two different versions of an advertisement oh that's great i wish i'd seen oh my gosh how did i miss that that's amazing what a great call he literally had someone bring him in a turkey dinner on thanksgiving but he's gonna be in the office alone still staring at those two pictures he's gotta stare at those pictures i mean if he

doesn't who will no i mean like i said it's a very hellish situation at the beginning for neil page because he wants to get home his plane leaves at six and he's gotta fly back to chicago yeah so you say it's a hellish situation at the beginning it's a hellish situation for him it gets worse Throughout the entire movie. I'm just saying that they establish a tone early on where he is going down the elevator to catch his flight and his friend creepily leans forward to him in like a weird shot that isn't intentionally like creepy and says, you'll never make the six. And raises his eyebrows all creepily because he's trying to make the six o'clock flight. Yeah, but you think it's like the six, six, six. Yes, actually. So this plane leaves at 6 and arrives at 6.45 on his ticket. Now, that's two sixes we have right there in a row. Do we ever get a third six in this movie? No. Well, let's see. What?

So when he's out trying to catch a cab, he trips over Del Griffith's luggage. Now, Del Griffith is played by John Candy. We don't quite meet him at this point, but he trips over his giant luggage. His head falls right in front of the tire of a moving car. he almost gets his head crushed and not that's not the last time this happens in this movie del steals the taxi that he just bribed some guy into giving him he paid him so much 75 yeah that's not to pay for the taxi that's to pay for another guy not to take the taxi it's actually neither one of them really has any right to right i'm like geez just just get in the taxi and this guy can't stop you you don't need to pay him so the thing about del is he is the devil and his name is del now if you take the vi out of devil you get del and what is vi it's six six you're right there's our third six oh my gosh well so the third six doesn't exist the plane leaves at six arrives at

six and he flies on it with del who is missing the six from his name because he is the devil i gotta i just have to clarify for our audience that his name you might think that it's dale d-a-l-e because that's how everyone pronounces it it's actually del d-e-l yeah so uh yeah i mean it works you would think it might be with two l's like the computer but no it is literally if you took the vi out of devil you get his name so crazily enough when neil arrives at the airport at 5 58 and is trying to catch his six o'clock fight this is actually in the film right at the five minutes and 58 second mark wow that's pretty cool dude you know some some editor was like piecing together clips in a back room was like oh this is perfect like someone knew that that might depend on your version of the movie yeah yeah i think i think it does depend but he still somehow thinks he can get on this flight and i guess he's correct because he does but like

nowadays if you arrived at 558 or six o'clock flight you're not getting on it's 87 i want to ask you a little bit about john candy's character's motivations You say that he's tormenting traveling parents. I was under the impression that he was trying to get their souls. He is a devil who specifically torments bad parents who are on the road because he was a bad parent who was on the road. Okay, I get it. And that is his punishment. Okay. And I think that kind of fits in with some of the backstory we know about him from both movies, Home Alone and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Okay, so he doesn't want anything from them. He just wants torture. I wish I could say that he really wants their souls. I think as a devil, he'll take a soul if he can get one. Right. But he never gets like Steve Martin to sell his soul. I know. That's the thing. I couldn't. In fact, he constantly indebts himself to Steve Martin.

That's exactly what I was about to ask you. Because in this movie, starting from right here on the plane, but then throughout the rest of the movie, he's constantly offering things to Steve Martin. Like if Steve Martin accepts one of his offers, does he get his soul by some like quid pro quo? Yeah, and I was going to get into that, is that he constantly tries to make deals with Steve Martin, where it seems like he's giving something to Steve Martin. But really, Steve Martin's giving something to him. But in the end, Steve Martin gets nothing, and Steve Martin is the one who always pays for it. It's never his soul, but it does feel kind of like a deal with the devil in that he's always the one on the losing end of it. Right. When Neil first meets Del, Del is reading some sort of strange erotic novel called The Canadian Mountain. Yeah, pretty cool guy. The cover is all red, kind of looks a little satanic.

Whoa. And perhaps that, you know, seems like just a coincidence. But like in films, they often pay attention to what colors are associated with people. And Del is often associated with the color red, as I will point out as we go through it. Like the very next scene, when Neil gets bumped from first class down to coach for no reason. The flight attendant says to a different first class person that he can go ahead and choose any seat he wants. I love that. That was a good seat. Which means they can't be full in first class. Like, she was just being a jerk. She just didn't want to give him his first class seat. And when Neil goes to coach to sit down, half of the seat backs, not all of them, but like a checker pattern of half of them are covered in red, like a red fabric. And Del is sitting in one of the ones that is red. And he says, is this a coincidence or what when he sees Neil sitting down next to him?

I feel like whatever this supernatural entity is, he did something to make it so this flight attendant would not let this guy into first class for no reason and seat him right next to Del. I guess he's going to Chicago as well. He is. He's going to Chicago. But then once he gets there, he just sits down in a train station. He's not doing anything there. That's because he's the devil. Exactly. He's the devil who tore his traveling parents. That's the only conclusion I could come to is that he's not going there for any reason other than Neil. He's going there for Steve Martin. So Del Griffith sells shower curtain rings and honestly seems to do pretty well for himself. Yeah, anytime Neil's not there. Have you ever been like, I need to buy new shower curtain rings? I have, but I've never needed to buy them from a salesman. I go to the hardware store. They picked something so innocuous and stupid that like there would never be a salesman for

this item. Because he made it up. He's the devil. It's a dumb job. he purposefully pixies like polka king of the midwest what what is that exactly that's not a real job so del immediately takes off his shoe and sock to wave that sock directly in neil's face and then they get grounded because of bad weather and neil can't find a motel because they're all booked because everyone's grounded starts describing to him exactly what's gonna happen yeah and then it does del tells him here's what's gonna happen you're not gonna be able to get a hotel. You're not going to be able to get a flight out. You're going to end up sleeping on the floor in this airport until tomorrow and still not be able to fly. Why don't you come with me? I already have a hotel and then we can figure things out from there. If Neil had just stayed at the airport and slept here, do you think that the flights would have just gone the next day and he would

have gotten home like two days earlier? Neil's situation in this movie is exactly Mrs. McAllister's situation in Home Alone. Yeah, it is exactly the same. And she continually makes decisions trying to get home instead of just waiting for the next flight which caused her to be more and more delayed and have more and more difficulties and in the end she finally does get home literally moments before the rest of her family gets home because they waited for the next flight one of the main staples of deals with the devil is there's an ironic tragedy at the end and her ironic tragedy isn't that tragic but it's that she didn't need to sell her soul or her wedding ring she could have just waited. And I'm thinking if Neil had just waited at the airport, he would have been the rest of the family. He would have gotten a flight and gotten home, you know, right when he was supposed to. Right. This is really the first time he makes a deal with the devil. And it is

the thing that sends him off on this huge journey. And immediately he gets in like the taxi cab from hell. Satanic things all over this movie because Del is the one who chooses this cab. He knows the Yeah, he knows the driver. Cap driver's name is Doobie, spelled with two O's and two B's. Wow. Doobie. So it says Doobie's Taxiola on the side, but if you look even further back, it says Chariot of Sin. Wow. Neil, you sinned and now you're about to pay the price. The inside of the taxi is just wallpapered with porn. Also like a dried scorpion just like glued to the ceiling. The driver turns around and winks at Neil when he's like staring at the port. From the front of the car, you can see that it has two metal poles sticking up from the front bumper. And each one of them has a glowing devil head on each one of the metal poles. It's also got just like massive hydraulics. Oh, this guy tripped out his taxi.

I believe that Del knows other like traveling road devils who torture people. And Doobie is one of them. Duby is spelled with two B's and they arrive at Eden's Braidwood Inn. Eden spelled with two D's. Wow. Which is, I don't know, kind of weird. Lots of repeated letters here, except for Endel, which should have repeated L's. Okay, so here's the deal that he made with Neil. Everywhere is booked, but I know a guy who runs a motel. So I know I can get a room and I'll make sure that you get one. But you pay for the cab fare to get us there. So Neil is the one paying to get them there. Now, apparently this wasn't what Neil was thinking, but my thought was that Del was going to pay for the room and they were always going to share one because they know that all the rooms are booked. So if he can find Del a room, there's not going to be a second one. No, it's one room. They probably thought there would be double beds, I think.

But regardless, Del says all you have to do is pay the cab fare to get there. It really seems like Del was the one who was going to pay for the room. But for whatever reason, Neil is the one who pays for the room. Well, Neil pays for the room. He gives them the card and then Del gives him a card too. The idea is that when they get there, they're both going to buy their own rooms. Neil's card gets scanned. So he's the one paying for the room. It doesn't get scanned. They take like an engraving of his card. Old fashioned scanning. Del gives the guy his card, but there are no rooms left. So he doesn't end up paying for anything because Neil already paid for it. So their cards get switched because Neil accidentally picks up Del's card and then Del gets Neil's. Well, OK, I had one one thing that I was going to say. Originally, the shooting script, the script that they brought to the set and were like the actors were rehearsing and they started filming was 145 pages, which is a two and a half hour comedy.

Yeah. No one makes a comedy that long and no one should. And this this comedy is already longer than it should be. And then also, of course, you know, having Steve Martin and John Candy, Hughes encouraged them to ad lib as much as they wanted. The first cut of Planes, Trains and Automobiles was four and a half hours long. Release the Hughes cut. No, no, listen, it exists. So eventually Hughes trimmed it down to three and a half hours. And that is his director's cut. What? And he showed it to director Chris Columbus. He's seen the three and a half hour planes, trains, and automobiles cut. Poor Chris Columbus. Exactly. I bet that felt a lot like Steve Martin on this long, torturous road trip. Hughes being John Candy, Hughes being Del. Hughes is John Candy. And Chris being Neil. This is like, oh, you want to show me your movie? He's like, all right, sit down. We're going to watch my movie.

Immediately, John Hughes takes off his shoe and his sock and starts waving it in Chris's face. fills beer all over the couch and tells him to sit in it all right on the very next scene dell gets them a ride from gus's son owen owen's introduction scene was pretty good and his wife is so cool i really like i wish the movie was about owen's wife she doesn't say a word but i would watch the owen and his wife movie i totally would i was just sitting there like wishing it was about them and like she's got such a cool costume design even though she doesn't say a word and he's like get your lazy bum out of the car and pick up their luggage and they're like she's holding a baby he's like she's short and skinny but she's strong her first baby come out sideways she didn't scream or nothing you can't deliver a baby sideways it's not possible anyway i would totally watch a movie about owen and his family you gotta make the sequel dude i gotta ask one more thing

It just struck me as odd that Neil, a man with assets, cannot arrange any travel on his own. Why would he submit to riding in the back of a pickup truck as they freeze? Doobie's taxiola, that's what they took. Exactly, like it just, I thought it was weird that he couldn't find a better option than this and was just like, well, this is my life now. Like, is that not how credit cards worked back then? Like, could you not use a credit card in a taxi maybe? Like, maybe you had to have cash and he didn't have cash? I think that might be the case. If we're to judge by how he, quote unquote, scanned the credit card at the motel, then yeah, if the guy doesn't have like a weird facsimile machine. Which I guess he would have to because those taxis definitely weren't like connected to a network. Oh man, the world must have like sucked. As we can see from Neil's experience. So they get to the train station, and visually speaking, there's an interesting shot at the train station where it shows just a single shot of Del.

Right behind him, there is just a burning trash fire that's just raging right behind him for no reason. It's just there. It's the fires of hell or something. I don't know. Too hard. Also, just another red note, Del's next outfit is a red sweater with a bow tie. Pretty much every costume he wears in this film has red in it. Wow. The train breaks down. I just say this isn't like completely unimaginable. I've been on trains that break down and then you just have to like walk on the train tracks like for a good distance to get to another train or bus that you have to take. Like it happens sometimes. Neil tries to rent a car and it is not there. Do you even know what's going on here? He rented a car from a service that owns a bus. the bus that's owned by the car rental company took him to a lot where they keep their cars and he has a ticket you know with a number for the car he's gonna pick up and the car is not there

and the bus leaves and the company is miles away not just the company every single inch of civilization is miles away like i can explain all of that like all that makes sense to me the thing that was confusing to me is just how the scene occurs it doesn't show him renting the car in the first place. So you're really confused as to how he even got there or what he's doing. But yes. So what happened was he went to an airport because airports have car rentals. Now, this is a different airport than the one where he was grounded in Wichita. And who knows why he can't get a plane there. But those car rental places will have a bus that will take you to a parking lot where the cars that you rent are. And usually at big airports, those parking lots really are like i've been trapped in one and it is hell like okay they're just miles away from everything and if you get left by a bus and you're not at where you're supposed to be or your car isn't there like you're

screwed and you're with your luggage and it really does suck like christina and i had this terrible experience when we got back from japan where like we couldn't find our car and the bus had dropped us off at the wrong spot and we were just like trapped and i was like well maybe if we keep walking this way but it led to like a freeway and like i was like we can't cross that freeway let's go back the other way finally we just found one of the random bus stops and waited until another bus showed up that's the correct decision anyway yeah his car isn't there he goes back he yells at the car rental lady i didn't know this scene existed it's crazy for like a pg film this is where you have identified a misconception that i've carried with me my entire life this is not a pg-13 film and never was this is a hard r-rated film what and it's because of this scene literally only that scene because steve martin drops 18 f-bombs while talking to this clerk and then she

drops one more afterwards and if it wasn't for this scene this would be barely even like pg it's just such a weird decision they must have lost like half their ticket sales because of that back in the 80s the rating wasn't used as much as a marketing device and so like it was more just like you get whatever rating you get and and people didn't worry about that as much and that should be how it is, actually. Yeah, it should be. I believe this scene is in there not because they wanted to get an R rating, but just because John Hughes thought this scene was funny. What John Hughes is trying to do here is tapping into that, you know, core, guttural, emotional anger that people get with these everyday situations. And everyone has experienced a situation where you've been fed up with the cleric at a service desk. I don't know if I have been because I'm a millennial. I do everything online. I don't talk to people at service desks.

Exactly. That's the thing. Well, so he gets into Del's car, which Del has rented with Neil's credit card because Del has Neil's credit card. So my question is, how did Neil rent a car, which we didn't see? How did Neil rent a car without his credit card? You're right. And that's probably why they dropped him off at a place where there was no car. Because they're like, you didn't pay, so you get no car. Why not just tell him that? No, they're a lot meaner than that. And that's probably why he didn't have a receipt, because they never gave him a receipt because he didn't pay for a car. They must work for Dell. That explains everything in this movie. This is all in his head. Like he thought he rented a car. Really, he just got on the rental bus and got off and he never had a receipt. As far as we know, that's true because we haven't seen anything else to say otherwise. Well, because like he could have more than one credit card,

but like he would have noticed that his other credit card was missing. Okay, so they are driving in the car. Why would Neil, Steve Martin, why would he put his wallet in the glove compartment of a rental car? Yeah. Why would you ever put anything in the glove compartment of a rental car? That's just asking to lose that thing. That'd be pretty stupid to lose like 300 bucks in a rental car. I know. It'd be pretty dumb. I'd never do that.

You were in your Planes, Trains, and Automobiles movie. Well, I did whack myself in the face with the car door and cut my head open and basically need stitches but didn't get them and that was thanksgiving dude oh my gosh and the the trip there it actually was horrible because we were all sick and i was puking and we were all throwing up on the plane that was awful dude oh my gosh and then on the way home we had planes trains and automobiles we got delayed yeah and you had to stay in like a communal bed and there was a little kid turning the lights yes yes exactly okay so here there's more to it than that so we got to the airport i think it was the amsterdam airport for this transfer they told us you're gonna have to take your checked baggage with you we'll give it to you and then you check it in to the next plane so we took our checked baggage we checked it into the next plane and then they were like

great your bags are checked oh and the next plane is delayed sorry you're not gonna be able to get on this plane for another like eight hours and so we we basically had an entire day and we're like crap. And we couldn't like leave because our bags were checked. And then the lady at the service desk called us up and she was like, we actually got an opening on a different flight that will get you home and it's leaving in one hour. And if you switch to that flight and give us your tickets for this flight, because this flight's overbooked, we'll give you $200 each. And we were like, what? You'll solve our problems and pay us to do it? Heck yes, we'll do that. And she was like great cool um so where are your bags and we're like oh we checked them already and she's like you checked your bags oh sorry if you checked your bags they're not coming out of that airplane so uh say bye-bye to your 200 each and you gotta wait eight hours you could have gotten your money

back that you lost i know we wouldn't have gotten our money back and we wouldn't have had to wait all freaking day like it was the best like when she told us that we were just overjoyed and then it was immediately just turned to sorrow and we were like if only we hadn't checked our bags like they told us to and then we had to go to that weird communal bedroom in the airport that was like hidden like we had to find it it was a secret door and like with no handle you just had to like push on the wall somewhere and it opened up and for a while we were the only ones who found it But then this stupid other family with kids found it and the kids were just turning the lights on and off nonstop. So we couldn't sleep. Yeah, that was my planes, trains, and automobiles, dude. So they're driving. They're driving the wrong way. Some people are trying to tell them, but they just ignore them. They drive between two trucks.

Two semi-trucks, yeah. For the scene that everyone, if you're like me, remembers from this movie. Yes, this is the main scene of the movie. Half of the movie was this scene. Where like Neil just starts hallucinating. They both turn into skeletons and then he looks over and he sees Del is the devil and he's just laughing maniacally. And he's laughing. You know, sometimes you have a near-death experience and you can see beyond this mortal sphere for just a moment. I think that's what happened to Neil, that he saw Del for what he truly was for just that moment because he was so close to death. I think you're almost right. But I actually had a theory about this movie ever since I was little. I legitimately thought they crashed into the semis and died. Yeah. Like, I legitimately thought that's how the movie went. And that could be. And that the rest of the movie, he's in hell. Right. Yeah, you could make the fan theory argument that they died at this moment and the rest

of the movie is in hell. Especially because none of the movie makes any sense after this. After they get through the semis, which they couldn't have done, they've like dug their fingers into the dash and warped the steering wheel by holding onto it so hard. And then they burn the car to a crisp and it's still drivable, even though it's literally melting all over them and never stops melting like it's i don't mean melted i mean in the process of melting this car is made of bubbling viscous material and they're driving it around and it won't cool down yeah no because they're in hell right where do things never cool down i mean i know i agree with you and that is a good theory you could do you could also do the theory that when he tripped over dell's luggage at the beginning his head did get crushed by a taxi and he's in hell the whole time sounds about right which might be why dell never tries to

steal his soul because he's already dead i don't know yeah neil's able to rent a room with two beds in the hotel room which neil just traded his like really nice watch and 17 to get so like everything he has they just go nuts on like snacks and drinks how are they paying for this stuff i i liked that detail because he's like i already gave him my watch he doesn't have my credit card so it doesn't matter they can't charge us more so like this guy owes us because like presumably that watch was worth like maybe a hundred or more dollars and so like they're just like we're just gonna eat and trash this room because like we're leaving in the morning and they can't charge us more they don't know who we are seems like if this guy did you a favor you should you know leave the hotel in nice condition but no this is punishing him he broke the rules at the very beginning he was like i'm not the manager i can't break the rules and then he

offered him a nice watch and he's like all right i guess i can break the rules but then shouldn't she reward him for bending the rules no because this is the devil he punishes people okay fair enough he convinces you to break the del is the one who really trashes the room right like i mean sure uh neil drinks a lot of the whatever the alcohol they have in there del's the one who backs the car through the wall like that would be so much in damage i was gonna mention that i literally think that del did that on purpose to pay this guy back for not giving him a room we're nearing the point where he's finally about to get back to chicago and they kind of cut to neil's wife every once in a while and she's just kind of like living life and like looking annoyed that he's not home she should be like freaking the heck out she hasn't heard from her husband in like three straight days and he was supposed to be home yeah she's just like irritated

she's just like all she knows is that he shacked up with a stranger in a motel and she was like wait you're sharing a motel room with a with a stranger yeah and then she never heard from him again right but maybe maybe he is dead oh no and she knows it's the sixth sense she's not waiting for anything oh no neil is dead and del already has his soul and he's just torturing him on the road and she's not freaking out she's in denial she's in this that stage of grief all right so they finally make it to chicago neil decides he makes the insane just unimaginably stupid decision to take this drifter home so they get home to his house in chicago which looks exactly like the house from home alone it looks a lot like it it's a little bit smaller it is it's not but clearly john hughes likes this kind of house i have a theory that steve martin neil was dead and he came home to his house really he just haunted his family for a while with dell and they eventually

moved out sold the house to the mcallisters who renovated and put add-ons onto it so that it's bigger. And that's how we get to Home Alone. Okay. Before we really dive into Home Alone, just a few notes about Uncle Buck in case you want to. I watched Uncle Buck because it's another John Candy movie and he plays a similar character and also Macaulay Culkin is in it. So maybe it's in the same universe. Who knows? Except Macaulay Culkin is a kid in a different family and he's related to John Candy in this universe. So it must be different. A few things happen in this movie that indicate that John Candy is some kind of evil devil. The parents in this family have to go away for a few days, so they invite Uncle Buck, played by John Candy, to come watch the kids. And he is inept and bumbling and makes a mess of everything. The oldest daughter of the family makes a comment to her sister. She says, we need boys so they can grow up,

get married, and become shadows. And I think that's the family business. They take souls, right? She specifically takes the souls of men. she turns them into shadows dude uncle buck is arguing with his girlfriend because he is a lazy layabout and his girlfriend has gotten him a job and he doesn't want to do the job so he says if i could think of any way not to come to work tomorrow i would do it the instant after that we hear a heartbeat followed by a flat line the wife of the family's dad had a heart attack the instant he said if i could think of an excuse i would use it and that heart attack becomes his excuse to go and watch these kids so he made a deal with the devil just then he is the devil i don't know maybe this is before he died does he have a kid or a wife in this he has a girlfriend so he might have a kid and a wife later the only kind of wrench in the system is macaulay culkin sometimes kids can act

similar so then later in the movie the oldest sister is making out with a boy and uncle buck he's upset about this he needs to stop it okay so he kind of breaks them up and starts to drive her away in his crappy car and her boyfriend says hey you ever hear of a tune-up buck says and then leans over to the boy and says you ever hear of a ritual killing oh man and then he says if you nod her face like that again you're gonna be one sounds like he dabbles in the dark arts um if this was before he died and became a devil i can see why he became a devil exactly but yeah uncle buck he's he's a strange satanic individual from a strange satanic family with lots of weird stuff going on right i don't know if it's connected it has to be connected because they've got john candy they got macaulay culkin it must be connected right like but it's not john hughes right or is it yep john hughes director writer john hughes so

all right so there's certainly a possibility that it might be part of his shared universe we don't necessarily have any direct proof but uncle buck whatever he is is certainly a creep all right so i watched home alone like a lot of times did you know that there are actually three mcallister families in this movie okay let me think there's the initial mcallister family there's his uncle who likes to show the kids dirty movies and then there is no you got me yeah that's all i didn't know either do you know why they're going to france uh-oh are they visiting the mccallister's in france oh i didn't know that it's so weird totally didn't notice peter mccallister who is kevin macaulay culkin's dad peter mccallister has two brothers one is uncle frank the other is Uncle Rob. Each one of them has their own families. His brother Frank is the one whom we see in this movie. His brother Rob currently lives in France with his wife and three younger kids. Now, this is

the reason they're going to France, because Rob was recently transferred there. Now, Rob's eldest daughter is named Heather. She still lives in the U.S. because she's going to the university. She is the only person who we see in the McAllister house who is not a member of either family, Heather. She's the one who does the head count. What a strange, convoluted situation for them to create and never make clear to us. You probably thought, as I did, that it was Peter McAllister, Kevin's dad, who paid for this whole trip, as he does in the sequel. But it's actually not. Rob McAllister is the one who paid to fly two entire families out to France. The uncle? He paid for the whole vacation. Yeah, the Uncle Rob, who already lives in France, paid for this entire vacation. I thought you meant the other uncle, and I'm like, but they paint him as unbelievably stingy. Cheapskate Uncle Frank never pays for anything.

But, like, Rob is loaded. And also, Rob not only owns a penthouse apartment in France, he owns a house in New York, which is the house that becomes Kevin's base of operations in the second movie. It's Uncle Rob's house. Yeah, that's correct. I blew my mind learning that because at the very beginning when Mrs. McAllister is talking to the cop who is not a cop, it's Harry, she's saying to him like, yeah, my husband's brother was just transferred to France. And so he was paying to have everyone come out for Christmas. And I was like, Frank was transferred to France? That doesn't make any sense. Frank is here at your house. like is he not transferred yet but he's taking you all but like he didn't pay for this like if you get transferred to france i would assume you have a good job anyway so like i just trying to make sense of it to the movie looked it up and found out that there is a third uncle who you

actually do see in this movie because they are at his apartment in one scene yeah and you see uncle rob in the background putting up a tree and uncle rob's wife she is the one who tells uncle frank that they are not supposed to eat the shrimp that he's serving to the kids she's like those are for later for later and he doesn't listen to her and just gives them to the kids anyway like i never knew what that apartment was i assumed it was just a hotel they were staying i still did even having watched that movie weird interesting so many times yeah i've seen the movie a lot didn't know i guess i didn't pay enough attention so i was on reddit recently and you know happened to see a post it was like being an adult realizing that this policeman is the same guy who comes back to rob the house and home alone and it just showed a picture of the you know him dressed as a policeman from the beginning yeah and it had like thousands of votes right and that just

blew my mind i was like how could you watch this movie and not know that the policeman is the man robbing the house later how could you possibly miss that yeah no that's what they're saying they're saying being an adult now i notice details in movies like the policeman is the man robbing the house and everyone's like whoa you're right i never noticed that as a kid exactly they telegraph it so hard they show you the gold tooth so many times throughout the movie he references how he was casing the houses so many times throughout the movie it's an integral plot point that he was casing this neighborhood as a policeman so he could rob the houses so like i don't even consider myself a huge fan of this movie but i have been watching it off and on since i was very young and i always understood that i cannot think of a time in my life where i didn't know that even when i was really young it's like oh gold tooth gold tooth he's the guy it's so clear weird and it

just it struck me as hilarious with them being like oh the things you notice as an adult oh it's the same guy and then you being like the things you notice as an adult actually there's an entire another McAllister family that nobody knows about and I'm like now that should be a reddit post and yet if you post it it would get no upvotes it would get nothing and this one took off everyone's like what to be fair you could say that the husband the dad of the family had a conspiracy to leave Kevin behind because he threw away his boarding pass and then the entire time they're gone he's like just chill don't worry you know we'll get back when we get back he can take care of himself there is a fan theory that i don't really subscribe to that kevin's dad is a criminal like he's like a gangster mafia and that's why he's got so much money wow that proves it people are like and that's why the robbers harry and marv didn't think it was that weird when someone

gets shot and killed in that house but they think i think it was weird and they also stayed there robbing the place yeah yeah i don't think that theory really holds water but there is another theory that uncle frank was the mastermind behind everything yeah and he was paid harry and marv to rob the place yeah yeah and kill kevin honestly that that makes a lot more sense because he he hates kevin it was an article written by someone named rob fee and apparently this article it was written a while ago, took off to the point that just a random rumor started that this was the original first draft of the movie Home Alone had a reveal that Uncle Frank was really the bad guy. Like it's on the IMDb trivia page that that's what the first... But it's not true? Well, there's no proof of it. The only proof is this random article where this guy is clearly just making stuff up to be funny like we do.

Okay. Rob Fee's theory that Uncle Frank is really the bad guy, I kind of think doesn't hold water because he just doesn't have a lot of evidence like just to like show that uncle frank is a guy who wants to steal things he points out the thing that's like he tries to steal the salt shakers on the plane yeah and he's like whoa are these real crystal put those in your purse yes for some reason rob fee who wrote this article was like oh well this shows how bad he is because they're going to notice that those those two salt shakers are gone but they're not going to charge him because he's not the one who paid for the tickets it was peter mccallister who paid for the tickets. So it's going to be Peter who gets blamed. And I'm like, dude, you did not do your research because it is Rob McAllister, the brother you didn't even know existed. You've already caught him in a lie, so you can't believe any of that theory.

So, you know, fan theorists out there, that's why you got to be thorough. You got to have credentials. You got to establish yourself, you know. So then when they get to the airport and Mrs. McAllister is calling frantically, she gives her entire list of contacts to Uncle Frank's wife and tells them to go call them on a different payphone and then in a later scene she comes back and she's like we called them all and in this fan theory he says but you can see that even though they called them all that Uncle Frank is in the background still at the payphone talking on the phone who's he talking to he's talking to Harry and Marv but the thing is I watched that scene and even though it is a very busy area where everyone needs a payphone it's true that in the background uncle frank is at that payphone monopolizing it but he's not using it like it is hung up he's not on that payphone like he's just leaning against it so that is completely wrong he's just leaning against

it because they're done making calls maybe he's there to save their spot so they can make more but anyway i mean it's fun though it's interesting to think about but yeah i don't think there's enough evidence. I think the devil theory is a lot more steeped in reality. Yeah, dude, it's going great so far. I assume that most of your evidence from this movie is going to come from when she gets to Scranton Airport in Pennsylvania, right? I have a few other things I'm probably going to say throughout, but I just want to establish that this is a universe where paranormal things can happen. Kevin's mother seems to also kind of, sort of believe that paranormal things can happen because when he wishes, he never sees his family again. Don't say that. She's like, why don't you make that wish again and see if it comes true? I'm like, why would you say that? I think she's just trying to impress on her son the gravity of saying mean things like that.

But then he does say it again and it does come true, which I'm just saying like this sets up a precedent for later when she says, I would sell my soul to get home and it comes true, right? This is a universe where paranormal things happen when you make wishes. We already talked about her a little bit, but we need to talk a little more about Heather. Heather McAllister, the only person in this house who is not actually in either family. She is the one who messes up the headcount. Yeah, and she seems like the worst person for the job. Well, I mean, she's the oldest, so I can understand why they might think she could do it. She has one job, and she's a college student. She's an adult. She should be able to do it. but did you know that she messes up the head count not once but twice what wait so she miscounted the kids because the neighbor kid was there yes but she was going to mess it up anyway they're lucky

they didn't leave behind kevin's sister linny oh and i i rewound this several times when i noticed it just to watch heather counts herself twice oh no she goes one two three pats her own head And then she counts everyone else, skips Linny, and then counts herself again for 11. And of course, she counts the neighbor kid as well. So the actress must have accidentally miscounted, but known that she was supposed to end up at 11. So just counted herself again to be like 11. There are multiple shots. So I think between shots, people had gotten moved around or something. But like Linny is in front. There's like no way she didn't see her, but she doesn't count her. so they're lucky they did not leave behind more kids yeah heather could not do her single job she's a college student she can't even count so here's another tiny little hint on the plane peter mccallister the dad reads a book called nobody's angel which i think is just a little

visual hint that there are no angels in this movie only devils oh and random bit of trivia The author who wrote Nobody's Angel is Thomas McGuane and the actor who plays the dad, John Hurd. Both of these people were married to the actor Margot Kidder at one point. Whoa. Just a random coincidence. So the actor was married to the wife of the person who wrote the book that he was reading in this movie? That's incredible. All right. At the very beginning, Buzz, the older brother of Kevin, tells a story about the snow shovel murderer. Wow. who constantly tries to freak out kevin because when kevin goes to the store to buy a toothbrush he just like takes his bloody hand and lays it down right next to kevin i don't know why he's doing that he knows this kid's afraid of him he's messing with them like i think legitimately he's he's just messing with kevin i think and i have no evidence to support

this but what if he really is a murderer yeah and buzz was telling a true story and they really couldn't convict him. And that's why his family won't talk to him. I always thought that that could be an explanation of why his family is so mad at him because he never says why, but it seems to be horrible enough that he thinks that he's unforgivable. When he first walks up to Kevin in the church, he says, you know, there's a lot of things people say about me. None of them are true. So like, this isn't just a story that Buzz made up to scare Kevin. This is known. And he knows to the point that he feels like when he meets a new person he has to say first thing hey hey i didn't kill those people which to me sounds sounds a little guilty i don't know it's just the old man the old recluse who you know he knows their stories about him and he thinks it's fun to mess with people so he entertains it a bit but right now

he's like actually gonna talk to the kids so he's like hey hey you know the story but i think when you combine that with the fact that his family won't talk to him and he says to kevin he's like you love people but you forget you love them and sometimes you hurt them i'm like oh man what did you do did you murder one of your son's other family members he killed them kind of weird that he hugs him at the end but well you know all right all right so on to yes the scene in scranton so mrs mcallister she gets back to the united states but doesn't get to chicago she gets to scranton yelling at a person behind a desk just like neil page does a lot in planes trains and automobiles She says, if I have to sell my soul to the devil himself, I am going to get home to my son. And right as she says that, as we've already said, Gus Polinski skulks up behind her, played by John Candy. So this comes from the Reddit user who originally posted this theory.

And I don't necessarily think it holds water, but we'll see what he had to say. He says, the Scranton airport is supposedly, according to this Reddit user, at a crossroads. Now the crossroads that he points out are just two airport runways, but they are roads that cross. Anyway, but his point was there's an old legend, and this is true. There is an old legend that you can summon a demon at a crossroads by offering your soul, essentially. You know, maybe they're at a crossroads, maybe not. Regardless, she says she'd sell her soul to the devil. The devil shows up, he takes her in his car, and then he torments her with his clarinet in the truck the whole way. She tries to shove it in her mouth, despite her protest. Yeah, which is gross. She doesn't know him. It's pretty weird. It's disgusting. It's right around here that he tells the horrible story of what he did to his son. Gus Polinsky tells a terrible story to Mrs. McAllister about his son.

This happens after the sequence that Home Alone is known for. After all the traps have happened and the bad guys have been caught. This is after the climax of the movie. So my question is, why is this here? Because it was ad-libbed. The movie is over. What is this? Why did they bother inserting this weird random scene that's not really funny? I know they are playing it for laughs, but it kind of isn't funny. After the climax, as a kid, I always thought that the John Candy parts of this movie were not only incredibly boring. Yeah, they're the worst parts. In my mind, they took up at least like an hour of the movie. Like I swear, half this movie was the mom talking to John Candy. watching again it's barely in the movie it's like five minutes of screen time yeah but i mean shows you what kids are not interested in so mrs mccallister is talking about what a bad parent she is and gus polinsky talks about how all the people in his truck never see their families because they

are on the road all the time yeah the road to hell yeah i think i mean obviously in universe is like because the polka band is so successful but that doesn't make any sense they're clearly not that successful i think that these are souls just like neil from planes trains and automobiles that he is tormenting and keeping on the road with him. These are people that he is torturing, just like he's now possibly torturing Mrs. McAllister. So you think Neil, you know, after he won Neil over in the end, Neil became one of these guys. Yeah, possibly. You know, these are people who are just like Neil. Obviously, none of them is Steve Martin. But because she says that she's a bad parent, Gus tells a story about how he left his son at a funeral parlor with a dead body all day. Wow, what a horrible... His son was fine after seven weeks. And it was after seven weeks that he started talking again, meaning his son was mute for almost two months.

Yep, that's correct. Which is crazy. Like, this really traumatized his kid. And he's like, but he's fine. Kids bounce back. When he first starts the story and he's like, I left my son at a funeral parlor once. I thought it was going to be like, my son is dead. Like, I left him there because he was going to be buried. That's pretty dark. which would be like the darkest and most insensitive way of one-upping this woman. It was like, I left my son at home for a vacation. He's like, yeah, well, my son is dead. I left him in the ground. I just think it's a very random, weird, and somewhat macabre story to be at the end of this movie after everything important has already happened. Yeah, apparently John Candy just came on for one single day of filming as a cameo. it was all improvised, like everything about the funeral parlor story. And that's why the story ended up so dark. And that's why it's probably a little out of place. And they just kind of

put it in at the end. I believe that this devil, Gus or Dell or whatever you want to call him, I believe he was a bad parent who perhaps did leave his dead son at a funeral parlor. I don't know, maybe his son was dead, maybe his wife died. He didn't talk for seven weeks. How dead can he be? I think perhaps he committed suicide after seven weeks, and that's why he was cursed to be this devil on the road who punishes other bad parents. But I think that partway through traveling with Mrs. McAllister, he realizes that she's not such a bad parent or bad person. She's certainly not as bad as Neil from trains, planes, and automobiles. Neil is just constantly yelling at everyone and mean to everyone that he meets. Whereas Mrs. McAllister, she just wants to get home to her kid. She is being a little frantic at some points, but like she's usually trying to be somewhat nice. All right. Like, honestly, the most worked up she gets is that part where Gus notices her, right?

Where she's like, I have to get home. She's being kind of rude to the people behind her in line. So that's probably why he thought she was a good candidate. But then he realizes talking to her that she's really just a nice person and nowhere near as bad as he was. Okay. So you think that like this whole trip was just a huge disappointment for him? Like maybe he's digging, like trying to unearth some like horrible things she's done. He's like, I'll tell you some horrible things that you tell me. But then she just she wouldn't crack. So he's just like, all right, we'll leave her. Yeah, I think so. And he takes her back home and then her family shows up. Ironically, she didn't need to sell her soul to get home. Yeah. And that's the movie. So the last theory that we should probably just mention, we won't talk about it much just because it's so famous is that there is a popular fan theory that Kevin McAllister grew up

to be Jigsaw from the Saw franchise. I think it's kind of a cool thing to think about. I mean, he likes catching people in houses and torturing them. Exactly. So that's the connection is that he sets traps and as he got older, they got more dangerous. So they were arguably pretty dangerous when he was young. I like it so far. What else is there to it? That's it. Right. That's the problem with this that's the problem it's really fun but like there's just you couldn't do an episode on it because there's not enough really evidence to point out okay i think these are cool theories and i think that it fits together surprisingly well just because of consistencies in john candy's characters because he's always this kind of traveling bumbling person who just you know seems to have like some sort of malicious undertones and a tragic backstory and just kind of drifts in and out of people's lives right yeah so it's fun to insert him in

all these different universes and make that connection and you can clearly paint him easily as like some kind of demon right it's fun and the fact that these movies were all written and some were directed by john hughes i mean that just makes it even better right so i think it's a fun theory there's clearly some holes in it why is he doing this does he want their souls no he just wants to mess with them no but i think it's it's always fun to think of things like that especially when it fits so well even if it's clearly not what they intended go ahead watch home alone i mean it's always good in the holidays you can watch planes trains and automobiles too it's got parts that you could enjoy thanksgiving movie but no watch planes trains and automobiles watch home alone have a fun time merry christmas happy christmas ron hope you enjoyed this thanksgiving episode on christmas speaking of happy christmas ron i think in our next episode we're going to be

getting back to our harry potter theories well maybe oh follow us on twitter at popcorn isn't real the music for this episode was provided by christine and make sure you rate leave a review tell your friends if you liked our crazy theories and you want them to you know chat with you about them chat with us and remember the popcorn isn't real