Early in the new documentary John Candy: I Like Me, there’s an excerpt from Candy’s 1994 funeral. Saturday Night Live alum Dan Aykroyd eulogized his friend and collaborator.
“This is no meager life we reflect on today. This is as full a life as any human can live,” Aykroyd said. “Joy, emotional abundance of spirit, infectious rage, a tinge of Lugosi-like madness — with his bottom reverse-vampire teeth and all — a titan of a gentle, golden man. … There’s a word in our language we don’t hear much any more, but it applies to Candy. The word is ‘grand.’ He was a grand man.”
Candy shined in smaller roles — in movies like Stripes, The Blues Brothers, National Lampoon’s Vacation and Home Alone. But when he starred in the John Hughes films Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck, his combination of humor and heart took center stage — and made him an icon.
Director Colin Hanks assembled an impressive group of Candy’s colleagues for the documentary, which is available on Prime Video. The entertainers featured in the documentary include Steve Martin, Macaulay Culkin, Bill Murray — and many of the comedy greats he came up with in Toronto’s Second City theater and later the TV show SCTV, like Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas and Martin Short.
“I think there’s just something so genuine about who he was and how he performed,” Hanks told Morning Edition host A Martínez. “He always brought something that was human and genuine, even if it was absurd and slapstick. There was still something there behind the eyes. And I feel like that’s why we still talk about his performances.”
John Candy was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1950 to a father with not much time left. He died of a heart condition at the age of 35, leaving behind John when he was just 5.
“When you lose your father at that young age, you have coping mechanisms,” Hanks explained. “And for John, that was eating and drinking and smoking, but it was also hosting people, pleasing people, wanting to entertain, seeking approval.”
Candy developed a reputation in Hollywood for his kindness, but some of that was rooted in his own mortality. “He was under the impression that he was living on borrowed time,” said Hanks. Candy died at the age of 43.
Candy shared the screen with a pre-fame Macaulay Culkin in 1989’s Uncle Buck. When filming began, Culkin was just 8 years old and not equipped to handle his overbearing father. As he said in the documentary, “Even before the wave crested and the Home Alone stuff was happening, it was not hard to see how difficult my father was. It was no secret; he was already a monster.”
Culkin remembered Candy as the paternal figure he needed at the time, checking in on his home life and offering support. “And that’s a testament to the kind of man he was,” remembered Culkin.
Colin Hanks got the same impression when he was a child. His father, Tom, starred with Candy in the film Splash when Colin was seven. “He made me feel important. He made me feel heard. He made me feel seen in ways that, you know, young kids don’t really do. And I cherish that.”
Hanks continued, “People always refer to my dad as the nicest guy in Hollywood. And I just want to scream, ‘Well, you clearly have never heard of John Candy!'”
John Candy: I Like Me is on Prime Video.
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