“I wish I had more bad things to say about him,” Bill Murray says in the opening moments of the documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.”
It has always been hard to find a negative word about Candy. The great Canadian comedian and actor not only radiated a warm, down-to-earth friendliness in movies like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Uncle Buck” and “The Great Outdoors,” he was that way off screen, too. As Mel Brooks says in the film, “He was a total actor because he was a total person.”
“John Candy: I Like Me,” directed by Colin Hanks and produced by Ryan Reynolds, is a tribute not just to Candy the actor, but Candy, the man. On Thursday night, it premieres as the opening night film of the Toronto International Film Festival. For a beloved Canadian icon like Candy, whose nickname was “Johnny Toronto,” the setting could hardly be more fitting. To reference Candy’s cameo in “The Blues Brothers,” it’s an occasion that calls for orange whips, all around.
“I can’t tell you the amount of meetings we had about when the movie can be made, and maybe we can do this festival or that,” Hanks says. “And I just kept thinking in the back of my mind: Well, this is a gigantic waste of time. It should just be at Toronto. Period. The End.”
“John Candy: I Like Me,” which will debut on Prime Video on Oct. 10, is a kind of cinematic eulogy for Candy, who died of heart failure at the age of 43 in 1994. Long ago as that was, “I Like Me” is the first feature documentary to tackle Candy, who might be even more popular three decades after his death.
“Part of me hates the fact that John maybe never really saw how beloved he was,” Reynolds says. “He left something really lasting. He died of a heart failure and ironically the thing he left behind was his heart. That’s the thing that stays.”
Hanks, Reynolds and Candy’s children, Jennifer and Chris Candy, spoke in interviews before the TIFF opening about the making of “John Candy: I Like Me,” the title of which comes from one of Candy’s most memorable lines from “Trains, Planes and Automobiles.” But it also serves as a guiding ethos to the documentary.
Candy, who grew up in working-class Ontario and whose father also died young, had his own long-range struggles with that loss. He also, through a people-pleasing smile, dealt with the sometimes insensitive way his size was discussed in the media. Says Reynolds: “He was self-effacing his work, but not self-loathing. He didn’t make a sport of punching down, not even on himself.”
“He left, but he did leave us some tools to get through this,” says Chris Candy, 40, speaking alongside his 45-year-old sister. “That would be through the way he raised us and also saying it’s OK to talk to someone if you have heavy feelings.”
For the Candys, “I Like Me” is an extremely emotional experience but one they’re grateful for. They have each navigated their own way through an upbringing marked by their father’s loss. It was years before Chris could visit his father’s grave site or rewatch his movies. Once he did, he was astonished at his father’s talent.
For Jennifer, her father’s movies helped carry her through grief.
“I jumped in and watched everything. All through college, I made sure I had the whole DVD collection,” she says. “For me that was a constant reminder to hear his voice. We had cassette tapes of his ‘Radio Kandy’ show that I would just listen to all the time in the car during high school.”
Hanks, whose directorial work includes the 2015 documentary “All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records,” wanted to find a thread for the film that went beyond tribute. To him, the movie is about drilling down on what gave Candy such an everyman quality. What made him, to millions, like their Uncle Buck. Hanks experienced Candy’s effect firsthand as a child visiting his father, Tom Hanks, on the set of “Splash.”
“I have vivid memories of visiting on set. He was just one of my parents’ friends, someone they worked with,” says Hanks. “He had a way, even as a kid, of making you feel incredibly important.”
“I had been on the periphery of the most intense fame you can have, as well as a much smaller version myself,” adds Hanks. “It is an adjustment. It is hard to navigate. Not that it’s not amazing and great, but that idea of how much you can actually give of yourself to people.”
Reynolds, born and raised in Vancouver, has been a fan of Candy’s since growing up watching “SCTV” reruns. His fondness for Candy, in many ways, has been an influence throughout his career.
“I feel like in the bigger movies I’m always either Del Griffith or Neil Page, from “Planes, Trains,” says Reynolds. “I tend to really fluctuate back and forth between those guys.”
As his own fame grew, alongside with his ability to take some authorship of his films, Reynolds has populated his movies with references to Candy. Easter eggs adorn the “Deadpool” films. In one moment, he utters the “I like me,” albeit in a much different context. Reynolds had the prop department make a mug with the same quote. A Chrysler LeBaron appears in the background of another scene. He even licensed the book “The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains” so it could make a cameo in all the “Deadpool” movies.
“I like having him around,” says Reynolds. “I feel safer. I feel better. I also feel maybe just a skosh more honest.”
“John was a good person when nobody was watching, and I think that’s an increasingly scarce resource these days, in an age where everything is not only seen, it’s perfection,” Reynolds adds. “It’s like an epidemic. All we see is perfection and curation. Nobody wants to try anything new because nobody’s willing to suck at anything.”
For Jennifer and Chris, “John Candy: I Like Me,” awash in memories of their father,” is a kind of time capsule that, like their dad’s other movies and radio show recordings, will be long treasured.
“I’m fortunate that I will always have this,” says Chris. “And I love it for that.”
