Ryan Reynolds and Colin Hanks have teamed up to honor one of the best actors we lost too soon, with the documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.” Hanks knew the Canadian comedy legend personally as a child and directed the doc, which is now streaming on Prime Video. It recounts the remarkable life of the comedy great, who passed away in 1994 at the age of 43. Among the esteemed contributors to the project are Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and Dan Aykroyd, who was a friend of Candy and appeared alongside him in several movies. Actually securing his involvement, however, proved to be tricky at best.
/Film’s Ethan Anderton attended a Q&A following the Chicago screening of “John Candy: I Like Me,” where Reynolds recounted how he managed to get the “Ghostbusters” star on board for the doc. Evidently, both Aykroyd and Bill Murray were “impossible to get,” or rather, they were almost impossible to get because both actors wound up appearing in the film. In Aykroyd’s case, however, Reynolds actually had to wait for the legend to contact him. “No one knew where he was. No one,” he explained. “I finally get a call, because I guess word got out that I was looking for him, and all I get is this [in a voice imitating Dan Aykroyd’s quick, succinct speech patterns], ‘Ryan, it’s Dan. Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do, kid. You come up here. You have dinner with me. You spend the night. In the morning, you do the interview, and then you get the f*** out.'”
According to Reynolds, Aykroyd actually picked him up at the airport, likely because, as Reynolds put it, “I think he didn’t want me to know where he lived.” But not only did Aykroyd pick him up, he did so in one of the Lincoln town cars from the 1997 comedy “Grosse Point Blank.” “One of my favorite movies of all time is ‘Grosse Point Blank,'” explained Reynolds, “[…] I said, ‘Dan, is this the car from ‘Grosse Point Blank?’ and he went, ‘Yeah. I got five of ’em, kid, for 50 grand, from the movie.’ So I was in f*****g heaven.”
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John Candy: I Like Me wouldn’t have been the same without Dan Aykroyd
John Candy’s Chet Ripley sitting at a bar next to Dan Aykroyd’s Roman Craig in The Great Outdoors – Universal Pictures
Having Dan Aykroyd lend his own recollections of the man to “John Candy: I Like Me” was really essential. The actor provides several touching personal insights throughout the documentary, but arguably his best contribution comes from the audio of his eulogy at Candy’s funeral, which plays over an opening montage and sees Aykroyd celebrating his friend as a “titan of a gentle, golden man” who lived “as full a life as any human can live.”
The pair first worked together on Steven Spielberg’s under-appreciated 1979 effort “1941” (a critical flop that was actually a chaotic comedy masterpiece) before Candy appeared as parole officer Burton Mercer in Aykroyd’s legendary 1980 comedy “The Blues Brothers.” In 1988, the pair finally co-starred in a movie, fronting Howard Deutch’s “The Great Outdoors,” in which they played antagonistic brothers-in-law forced to share their lakeside summer vacation together with their families. One of the best John Candy movies, “The Great Outdoors,” wasn’t immediately beloved by critics, but Candy and Aykroyd’s on-screen chemistry was undeniable, and it’s a blessing we got to see the comedy greats together before Candy passed away in 1994. As such, it’s a good thing Ryan Reynolds achieved the seemingly impossible by tracking down Aykroyd and making sure he was able to contribute to the documentary — or rather, it’s a good thing Aykroyd tracked him down.
“John Candy: I Like Me” is now available on Amazon Prime Video.
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