\n<\/p>\n
\n\tOn screen, John Candy was often the gregarious life of the party. He smoked and drank through a game of racquetball in \u201cSplash,\u201d he charmed a household of unruly kids with his free-spirited ways in \u201cUncle Buck\u201d and annoyed the living hell of Steve Martin with his constant stream of chatter in \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles.\u201d But \u201cJohn Candy: I Like Me,\u201d a new documentary about his life and career that kicks off the opening night of the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, shows the private turmoil behind the comedian\u2019s affable facade.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere were real, serious, traumatic experiences that formed John and made him who he was,\u201d says Colin Hanks, the film\u2019s director. \u201cHe was an incredible human being and a kind, loving, generous spirit. But all of those qualities were coping mechanisms for a tremendous amount of pain and sorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tChief among the issues that Candy battled with was unresolved grief he felt after his father died of heart disease\u00a0at age 35 when the actor was 4 years old. That gave Candy, who would die at age 43, a sense that he was on an accelerated timeline.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThis idea of borrowed time combined with the nature of show business, which is go, go, go, go, moving at the speed of opportunity. Those things came together to create this perpetual motion machine for John that made things incredibly hectic and stressful and added to that general sense of anxiety,\u201d says Hanks. <\/p>\n
\n\tHanks says he related to his subject\u2019s struggles to make sense of the death of a parent, since his mother, Samantha Lewes, died from lung cancer at a young age. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI understand this ticking clock,\u201d Hanks says. \u201cMy mother died at 49. I\u2019ll be turning 48 in November. I always look at 49 as a marker for me in my life. I have zero doubt it was the same way for John.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tProfessionally, Candy seemed to be unstoppable during the 1980s and early \u201990s, making hits like \u201cStripes,\u201d \u201cSpaceballs\u201d and \u201cCool Runnings\u201d with everyone from Bill Murray to Mel Brooks to Doug E. Doug. But the filmmaker whose sensibility seemed tailor-made for Candy\u2019s was John Hughes, who worked with him on six movies, including classics like \u201cUncle Buck,\u201d \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles\u201d and \u201cHome Alone.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThey were both real, genuine people that never lost sight of that even after they became famous,\u201d says Hanks. \u201cIn show business, you\u2019re part of a traveling circus. You meet a lot of different people, and when you find a kindred spirit, you hold on to that, and you spend as much time with them as you can. You work with them as much as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn interviews, Candy, who struggled with his weight for much of his life, had to deal with the press making rude comments about his size. Hanks\u2019 film contains many instances where interviewers essentially call Candy \u201cfat\u201d to his face, leaving him trying to smile good-naturedly. It\u2019s shockingly cruel. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cYou look at interview after interview and horrible things are being said and questions are being asked in incredibly insensitive ways,\u201d Hanks says. \u201cIt\u2019s tough to see how uncomfortable John was in almost every clip. And he had good reason, because some of the things that people said were disgusting and would not be tolerated today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tTo make the documentary, Hanks interviewed Candy\u2019s co-stars and friends \u2014 a group that includes Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O\u2019Hara and nearly the entire galaxy of the 20th century\u2019s greatest comedians. Even three decades after his death in 1994, they talk about Candy with tremendous love and admiration. Hanks, whose father, Tom Hanks, co-starred with Candy in \u201cSplash\u201d and \u201cVolunteers,\u201d had his own memories of the late actor.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s through kid glasses, because I knew him when I was young, but even as a child he made you feel like your opinions mattered, your feelings mattered, you mattered,\u201d Hanks says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On screen, John Candy was often the gregarious life of the party. He smoked and drank through a game of racquetball in \u201cSplash,\u201d he charmed a household of unruly kids with his free-spirited ways in \u201cUncle Buck\u201d and annoyed the living hell of Steve Martin with his constant stream of chatter in \u201cPlanes, Trains and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4955,11680,2107,5712,1171,8369,262,446,2894,11681],"class_list":{"0":"post-19070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-candy","9":"tag-colin","10":"tag-director","11":"tag-doc","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-hanks","14":"tag-john","15":"tag-night","16":"tag-opening","17":"tag-tiff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}