Reel Rundown: Actor-turned-director Colin Hanks brings story of John Candy’s life to the screen
Those who work in the film industry tend to have big egos. This is not just an idle observation. Read most stories about, say, director James Cameron and the evidence is right on the page.
Cameron is, after all, the guy who screamed that he was “king of the world!” after winning the Best Director Oscar for “Titanic.”
Finding those at the other end of the attitude spectrum might seem like a hard task. But Colin Hanks thinks he has accomplished it. And the documentary he directed has the answer in its very title: “John Candy: I Like Me.”
The actor-turned-director Hanks should know what he’s talking about. He is, after all, the son of a man – Tom Hanks – who once was described in a Public Television documentary as “Hollywood’s Mr. Nice Guy.”
But according to the younger Hanks and the large cast of actors whom he interviews – including his own father – the title belongs to Candy, the late star of such films as “Stripes,” “Uncle Buck” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”
Born in Canada, Candy was forced into adulthood when his father died at the tender age of 35. Candy was only 5 at the time of his father’s fatal heart attack, but as Hanks’ film documents, he ended up becoming the family patriarch who “took care of everything.”
Always larger than life, both in his obvious girth and in his buoyant attitude, Candy gradually gravitated toward the performing arts. Though he was hesitant at first, he eventually became a featured player in the Toronto improv-comedy troupe Second City.
Hanks recalls these years and his later starring role in the Canadian sketch-comedy show “Second City Television” through interviews with Candy’s fellow performers, including Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy.
His comic abilities were such that they attracted the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast him in his 1979 comedy “1941.” From there, Candy embarked on a busy movie career, one that saw him playing variations of the same character – a bumbling yet good-hearted man.
The former child star Macaulay Culkin, who starred with Candy in 1989’s “Uncle Buck,” appreciated him particularly as someone who got along well with child performers. “I remember John caring when not a lot of people did,” Culkin said.
Each of the characters Candy played, Hanks tells us, were reflections of his real self, a guy who was always willing to do whatever was asked of him – even to his own detriment.
It is not as if Candy did not have problems. His wife Rose Candy and his two children, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan and Chris Candy, recall how loving a husband and father he was. Yet his final years, which saw him caught between his movie career and being co-owner of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, were a time of “crippling chronic anxiety.”
Added to this was his sensitivity about his weight, which caused him to refuse to take his shirt off for a mud-wrestling scene in Harold Ramis’ 1981 comedy “Stripes.” Still, he knew that movie producers wanted him to keep playing the same character, even as his weight waxed and waned. He eventually ballooned to 375 pounds by his death in 1994, of a heart attack at the age of 43.
Yet in interview after interview, augmented by archival film footage, Candy’s friends and colleagues say only what a good person he was and how much they miss him. Hanks emphasizes that they were not the only ones.
During Candy’s funeral, Levy was riding in a car to the church where the service was being held. And he noticed that not only was there no traffic on the road but that police officers were stationed at each entrance to hold cars back.
“You know you’ve made it,” Levy said, “when they close the freeway for you.”