Inside you there are two wolves, and one of them is John Candy

A lesson from "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" on the two wolves fighting for the steering wheel of your life. Happy Thanksgiving.

Hi. Sorry, I haven’t checked in lately. Had a wonderful week with my family in Los Angeles, and it’s our busiest season for branded partnerships at BroBible right now. I'm thinking through next year’s goals.

But I wanted to get this down before I throw the turkey on the smoker later today.

Like a lot of y’all, every Thanksgiving Eve, I watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. John Hughes movies are like green bean casserole and mashed potatoes to me. They are pure comfort food. But during this year’s screening, the epiphany hit me during the plane scene, right after the taxi wild goose chase to LaGuardia.

Steve Martin’s character, Neal Page, just wants to stew in silence, reading his magazine. “I really want to finish this article,” he says, brushing off the stranger next to him. “A friend of mine wrote it.”

Del Griffith, played by the late, great John Candy, however, isn’t having it. He extends a hand and unknowingly delivers the line that defines the tension of the entire film: “The last thing I want to be remembered as is an annoying blabbermouth... You know, nothing grinds my gears worse than some chowderhead that doesn’t know when to keep his big trap shut.”

This is where it hit me: We have all been Neal, too tired to explain what we do for a living. But we have also all been Del too! We’re curious about the stranger next to us, desperate for connection, and eager to share our identity, even if the other person clearly doesn’t care.

We all think we’re watching a buddy comedy about two strangers.

But I’m starting to realize we’re actually watching a documentary about the two wolves fighting inside every one of us.

Wolf #1 is Neal Page (Steve Martin).

This is who I have to be from 9 to 5. Neal works in marketing. He has a schedule. He speaks the language of “brand lift” and “KPIs.” He wears the suit. He is high-strung because he believes that if he just manages the itinerary perfectly, he will win.

I spend a lot of time and mental energy trying to be Neal Page. I feel it in the pressure I put on myself to hit goals, and I suspect many others feel this way, too.

We all start the year with a Neal Page itinerary. Goals and projections. We convince ourselves that if we just double down and grind hard enough, we can force the world to make sense.

But sometimes the board got flipped. It doesn’t matter if you work online, or you’re a parent, or a project manager: Sometimes life can feel like we’re all playing an endurance sport on a minefield. I hear it all the time when people talk about the stuff that stresses them out. You can hear it in their voices.

Culture is noisier and more fragmented than ever. The old, reliable highways we drove for years are crumbling beneath our wheels, and we’re all a little unsure of what’s being built next.

Many are working harder for less. We are all trying to maintain a tight, professional grip on a steering wheel that disconnected miles ago in a game that feels rigged to win. It probably was.

That reality breeds a nasty case of impostor syndrome. It leaves you feeling ineffective.

The Climax of the Internal Battle

The movie's real tension is perfectly captured in the early motel scene, where Neal snaps and shows some true colors. He rips into Del with the fury of a thousand frustrated creative directors:

“You know, everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You’re a miracle! Your stories have none of that... And by the way, you know, when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”

That is exactly what the “Professional” wolf screams at the “Creative” wolf every single day. Have a point. Be optimized. Discriminate. The Neal Page inside me hates the messiness of the Del Griffith inside me. He thinks the anecdotes are a waste of time. He thinks the wandering curiosity is inefficient. He values precision because he values other people’s time. He has to… he’s in advertising.

But Del doesn’t fold. He takes the hit, looks Neal in the eye, and delivers the line that stops the bleeding:

“I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. ‘Cause I’m the real article. What you see is what you get.”

He’s not going to apologize for being himself. Neal Page might have the itinerary, but Del Griffith is the one who actually gets them home.

Wolf #2 is Del Griffith (John Candy).

Del is who I actually am. I’m sure many others relate to him, too.

Del sells shower curtain rings. He’s a traveling salesman who treats a $2 piece of plastic like a museum artifact. That is exactly the energy and hustle a lot of people bring to their careers: You drive the miles, you pitch the widget, and you try to convince the world that this little loop is the only thing holding the room together.

He is a master salesman. Take his stroke of genius in St. Louis. Broke and desperate, he doesn’t give up. He has a “wonderful idea.” He takes those mundane shower curtain rings and sells them as high-fashion earrings to teenage girls. “This is an autographed Daryl Strawberry earring...” It’s a hilarious pivot.

Every digital salesperson worth their salt has had this moment: You take the thing that isn’t selling, you repurpose it, you give it a new story, and suddenly—boom, it’s magic. Businesses do it all the time for survival. It’s alchemy.

He’s a bumbling, fumbling, long-winded, happy-go-lucky weirdo that strangers avoid taking the middle seat next to him because they worry he might smell like a Carl’s Jr Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger. He drags a giant trunk filled with his entire life around crowded airports. He is messy.

We mistakenly think Neal Page is ambitious because he wears a suit and has a sharp tongue. But Del Griffith has the stamina. He knows how long a drive it is between Wichita and Stubberville because he’s probably done it before. He was built for this life. He got that dawg in him.

Neal Page, however, has never left the advertising bubble between Madison Avenue and a client dinner. He lives in a world of upgrades and town cars, convinced that the rest of the country is just a “demographic” to be targeted in a pitch deck. He thinks he runs the world because he has the strategy, but he’s just a tourist in it.

Del is the one who accepts that the rental car is on fire, the roof is melted, and the gauges are gone. But puts on his gloves, grabs the wheel, and says, “The radio still works. Clear as a bell!”

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Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is the greatest Thanksgiving movie ever made because John Hughes understood that the holidays are a struggle of balance, including the one within ourselves. The turkey feast is just a ritual that kicks off the frenetic lengths we go to just to sit at a table with the people who know us best. As Hughes once said about the film, the story is ultimately about the “truth” of who we are when everything else is stripped away.

But sometimes, the movie doesn’t have a Hollywood ending. Sometimes the ‘Neal Page’ voice wins, and you convince yourself that the hustle is more important than the home.

The Moment The Wolves Started Fighting

Growing up, Thanksgiving was predictable in the best possible way every single year. I miss hiking in the woods during the day with my family, then coming back to watch football. At dinner, I sat next to my grandfather at the head of the table. I helped him carve the bird every year. It was our thing. I miss the scalloped oysters at supper, my Grandma’s cranberry sauce, and carving the bird before finishing it all off with her pecan pie. I even miss the homemade pickle tray we’d pass around. Afterwards, we’d flip through the newspaper inserts for Black Friday deals to build a Christmas list on the living room floor. The day was structured. It was perfect.

But nobody warns you about the emotional toil of adulthood — the moment you have to fracture those traditions to pay the bills and put yourself on the path you want to be.

I remember the exact moment the fracture happened. I was a student at Penn State, working as a waiter at the Toftrees Resort. I took the job that summer, and it paid really well, especially on busy football weekends when the town was flooded with alumni. But there was a catch. At the end of the year, the job had a brutal requirement: work two out of three holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s) or get fired. I chose Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Back in the early aughts, Penn State’s football season ended the weekend before Thanksgiving in the Land Grant Bowl against Michigan State. Once the final whistle blew, State College emptied out. Many on the waitstaff just quit right then and there, packing up their cars to head back to wherever home was for the holiday.

I had stashed a bit of cash away from the job… enough to live on and have fun as a frugal college student…. but this is capitalism, baby: who doesn’t want more? I drove home to Chambersburg after my last class that Tuesday to see my family for a fleeting 24 hours. Then, on Thanksgiving morning, I woke up at 4 a.m. in my parents’ house. I drove two hours back to school in the pitch black, winding through the runty, barren mountains of central Pennsylvania, hoping not to hit a deer in the pre-dawn dark just a couple of days before hunting season started.

I arrived shortly after sunrise to work a 15-hour shift, serving Thanksgiving dinner to strangers. The crowd was massive. Some were pricks — the kind who snap their fingers when their bread basket emptied —, but others tipped handsomely, and the host always made sure that we’d get a couple of huge tables to make it worth our while.

Now, I want to be clear: Millions of people work on holidays. Nurses, pilots, first responders. The folks keeping the power grid running. It’s a reality of life, and for many, it’s a welcome routine or just another Tuesday. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and frankly, I’ve always found it distasteful when the “laptop class” looks down on the reality of shift work as if it’s some sort of failure. It’s not. It’s how the world works. There is so much dignity in that labor.

But for me, in that specific moment, not experiencing the annual ritual for the first time, it felt so hollow. It was a “Neal Page” move because I didn’t have to be there. I prioritized the hustle over a tradition I deeply needed. I chose the shift over the soul.

I missed my Grandma’s cranberry salad and pecan pie. I missed carving the turkey with Grandaddy.

I finished work at 10 p.m., exhausted and flush with cash, and drove past a Best Buy where people were bundled up and already lined up for Black Friday doorbusters starting at midnight. I climbed into my cold, empty college apartment with boxes of buffet leftovers, flicked on the heat, and felt a profound, hollow sadness. I had done “what I had to do,” but I felt icky. I missed my family.

That was my first real brush with the toxicity of hustle culture, long before we had a trendy name for it. We are conditioned to believe that grinding while others rest is the ultimate flex—that sacrificing memories and the stuff that makes us human for a paycheck is just the price of admission to adulthood.

In that freezing cold, lonely apartment, I realized that sometimes, the “smart” career move is just a soul-sucking mistake wrapped in a pay stub.

But also,

Just because the math works doesn’t mean the soul agrees. (I eventually quit that job before Christmas, by the way, which I enjoyed at home that year. Even Neal Page has his limits).

The Del Griffith Metric

We think Planes, Trains, and Automobiles ends when Neal finally gets home to Chicago. He’s back in one piece. Now he gets to be the hero walking through the door to his perfect family and his perfect turkey.

But that’s not where it ends.

Sitting on the train, alone, Neal starts putting the pieces together. He remembers the jokes, the quirks, the sadness in Del’s eyes that he tried so hard to ignore. He realizes Del was holding something back.

Neal gets off the train. He goes back. He finds Del sitting alone in the station on Thanksgiving, guarding his trunk—the sum total of his life.“I don’t have a home,” Del admits. “Marie’s been dead for eight years.”

And in that moment, Neal Page does the only thing that actually matters with his clumsy brother-in-arms. He invites Del home.

The result is an iconic Hughes mis-en-scene.

The two wolves stop fighting. They walk through the front door together.

That is the true spirit of the holiday. Recognizing that we are all carrying a trunk full of shower curtain rings, and the only way to survive is to let someone else in.

So this year, I’m judging myself by Del Griffith: Did I keep going when the car caught fire? Did I find a way to laugh about it? And am I thankful for the people willing to ride shotgun with me through it? Because if you make it to the destination alone, you haven’t really won.

It’s an easy answer for me… You betcha.

If your rental car is burning this week, turn up the radio. It’s the only thing that still works.

Happy Thanksgiving, you turkeys.