Hollywood loves a good travel movie. Even a third-rate cinematographer can make a gorgeous beach or a breathtaking mountain peak something audiences enjoy looking at. But these movies usually involve people vacationing and taking trips for fun. There are far fewer films telling the story of the working man, the traveling businessman. So we dug deep and found the funniest, most accurate, or otherwise best scenes that involve people working hard out on the road, just tryin’ to make a dollar.
Five years after Vince Vaughn was telling Jon Favreau “you’re so money” in Swingers, the two teamed up again in the criminally underrated Made. The two play wannabe Mafia tough guys sent from L.A. to New York to be the muscle at a money laundering deal. In this airplane scene, they’re supposed to be on call for the boss. But as Vaughn’s Ricky puts it, unless they’re supposed to knock off the pilot, why can’t they have some drinks and relax like gentlemen? It a classic case of a the siren song of free drinks and the luxury of first class that can make you forget you’re on a business trip.
This movie is great for making you feel better about bad business trips you’ve had. No one plays the straight-laced, bury-the-emotion-until-he-snaps white guy like Steve Martin. He’s up there on screen, trying not to stroke out while super-annoying seatmate John Candy blathers about his ridiculous shower ring business, takes his shoes and socks off, and ultimately attaches himself to Martin’s character for three days while he’s trying to get back from a business trip in time for a Thanksgiving dinner.
This is the quintessential business travel movie. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a guy who gets paid to travel around the country and fire employees for bosses who don’t want to do it themselves. He goes on so many business trips he racks up 10 million frequent flyer miles. Along the way he’s learned a thing or two about business travel, like which rental car company is the bestand which hotel has the best treats. Here he explains to a young protégé how to spot the fastest-moving security line at the airport.
If you regularly have to travel for work to a certain place you don’t enjoy, you know how Phil Connors felt in Groundhog Day. The premise of the movie is basically that a guy goes on a business trip to a town he hates, only the trip never ends. And it’s got all the little business travel annoyances in there that probably bug you too: no hot water, inept hotel managers, annoying fellow guests, stupid locals, and bad restaurants. A great scene (shown briefly at 0:55) is when Phil is trying to get home, despite a snowstorm blocking his way that he predicted (as the weatherman) would not hit.
It’s a shame Mystic River had to come out the same year as Lost in Translation. If Sean Penn had not had the performance of his career in 2003, Bill Murray would have easily won Best Actor for his performance as Bob Harris, a bored movie star making commercials in Japan while in a midlife crisis. In this clip he meets Charlotte, a fellow lost soul who shares a few laughs with him. Bob explains that business travel can be a convenient way to take a break from your wife and miss your kids’ birthdays. Having a woman who looks like ScarJo come sit next to you and talk to you at a bar is pretty much the dream of every straight guy ever, young and old.
On 99 out of 100 business trips, you get stuck next to a boor, a jerk, an obese person, a crying baby, or some other fellow passenger who makes you uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why The Narrator (Edward Norton) talks to (spoiler alert) himself on planes. You have to hand it to him: Tyler Durden is a fascinating conversation partner. After Tyler explains why airlines want us pumped full of oxygen in case of an emergency, The Narrator shares his theory that the people you meet on an airplane are just like everything else associated with travel: single serving.
The majority of this film is Tom Hanks running around on an island talking to a volleyball, and yet it works, partly because Hanks is so great and partly because everyone has had the thought at some point: What would life be like on a deserted island? Hanks’ character Chuck Noland travels around the world getting FedEx locations up to par. In this scene, he and his girlfriend have to celebrate Christmas on the tarmac before he jets off to catch a flight to an emergency job. After he basically proposes, he walks away, calling, “I’ll be right back,” a heartbreaking line for us viewers who know he won’t.
Even when you’re a famous musician jetting around playing rock shows to screaming fans and partying with groupies, a concert tour is really one long business trip. And familiarity breeds contempt, even in business relationships, as the guys of the band Stillwater find out. As the group begins to fear they may be killed in a plane crash, they start saying what they’ve really been feeling about each other. It’s a hilarious moment of painful truth that changes their lives in a matter of minutes, and it reminds us not to spill our guts to our business partners until we’re certain the plane is going to crash.
Before Robert Downey Jr. rose from the ashes of his career to be resurrected as Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, he was making forgettable fare like Only You in the mid-’90s. Faith thinks she’s destined to marry a guy named Damon Bradley, so she spends the film chasing him around Europe. In the process she meets Peter (Downey), who falls in love with her. When she finally catches up to the actual Damon Bradley, he’s just some traveling businessman on his way to Geneva who sorts everything out for her with five words: “Do you love him? … Good.”
This is a pivotal scene from the beloved Frank Capra movie. George Bailey’s problem wasn’t that he disliked business travel; it was that he never got to take any. To this point, George has been witness to the evils of the money-grubbing Mr. Potter since he was a boy. And yet, when he dangles the prospect of business trips to New York and Europe in front of him, George actually considers coming to work for him. But a simple handshake is enough to make him realize that not even exotic travel, the one thing he’s always wanted, is worth selling his soul for.
