I just saw PT&A for mabye the 40th time on HBO Comedy, and for the first time I noticed something strange when Neal Page calls his wife to say they are stuck in Wichita, I got the vibe that Neal was a former adulterer who got busted, and now his wife is doubting his story. She said something like “That doesn’t make any sense”, then Neil gets frustrated and explains how they had to turn the plane around at Chicago.
This totally changed the way I looked at every following scene with Mrs. Page and/or the Page family.
Is there something there or am I reading way too much into this scene?
Although I did think the exchange between the Paige’s was strange, I always chalked it up to Mrs. Paige being an idiot. “I don’t understand what the snowstorm in Chicago has to do with Wichita.” :rolleyes:
“You dumbass” - Steve Martin’s cut out retort.
But while we are on the movie, I never really got how Martin ever figured out how Candy was a widower. The first memory he has is when Candy says “I like me. My wife likes me”
How does THAT nugget get Martins head ticking that Candy just might not be married to an alive person? Never got that.
I’ve always gotten the impression that Neal just figured it out. As he is riding away from Del while sitting on the otherwise empty commuter train he’s thinking back on everything he’s been through over the past couple days in trying to make it home, and that at a particular point he put it all together and his intuition led him to his conclusion. That, or he realized that Del never called or checked in with anyone at home during their travels.
That’s exactly where he figures it out. He’s riding away on the train and he remembers little moments of conversation. At one point in the film he’d told Del “at least you have a woman to grow old with” and now he remembers that Del’s response to that comment was just a blank stare. He then remembers Del saying something like “I haven’t been home in years”. That was enough for him to piece it all together.