If there\u2019s a scene that best encapsulates the tragically abbreviated career of John Candy, it\u2019s not necessarily from his time on the sketch-comedy series \u201cSCTV<\/a>\u201d or from movies like \u201cStripes\u201d or \u201cUncle Buck.\u201d It\u2019s a moment in the 1987 comedy-drama \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles,<\/a>\u201d when his reluctant roommate Neal Page (played by Steve Martin) has spent several minutes berating him for his relentless storytelling.<\/p>\n With a lump in his throat, Candy\u2019s wounded character Del Griffith replies that he\u2019s proud of who he is. \u201cI like me,\u201d he says. \u201cMy wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I\u2019m the real article \u2014 what you see is what you get.\u201d<\/p>\n That moment proves pivotal to two new projects that retrace Candy\u2019s life and work some 31 years after the actor died from a heart attack at the age of 43. The actor would have turned 75 this month.<\/p>\n A biography, \u201cJohn Candy: A Life in Comedy,\u201d written by Paul Myers (released by House of Anansi Press on Tuesday), and a documentary, \u201cJohn Candy: I Like Me<\/a>,\u201d directed by Colin Hanks (released Friday on Prime Video), both rely on Candy\u2019s friends, family members and colleagues to help tell the story of his ascent, his success and the void left by his death.<\/p>\n In their own ways, both the book and the film show how Candy \u2014 while not without his demons \u2014 was beloved by audiences for his fundamental and authentic likability, and why he is still mourned today for the potential he never got to completely fulfill.<\/p>\n Explaining why it was still important to memorialize Candy all these years later, Ryan Reynolds, the \u201cDeadpool\u201d star and a producer of the documentary, said, \u201cWhen it\u2019s something people desperately miss, but they don\u2019t know they miss it, it\u2019s a beautiful and rare thing. John Candy is a person that they missed desperately.\u201d<\/p>\n Since his death, Candy\u2019s immediate survivors \u2014 his widow, Rosemary; daughter, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan; and son, Chris Candy \u2014 have weighed the pluses and minuses of sharing his life with audiences and the impact it might have on them (the three are co-executive producers on the film). \u201cIt\u2019s a balancing act,\u201d said Chris Candy. \u201cYou want to live your life and you also want to honor theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, Candy\u2019s children said they were encouraged by documentaries like Morgan Neville’s \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?<\/a>,\u201d about the children\u2019s TV broadcaster Fred Rogers, as well as Hanks\u2019 film \u201cAll Things Must Pass<\/a>,\u201d about the Tower Records retail chain.<\/p>\n Hanks, whose father, Tom, acted with Candy in films like \u201cSplash\u201d and \u201cVolunteers,\u201d said he struggled at first to find a compelling way to tell the story of Candy, who had a seemingly charmed and uncontroversial acting career, first in his native Toronto and then in Hollywood.<\/p>\n But Hanks said he was drawn into Candy\u2019s story by a particular detail: the fact that Candy\u2019s own father, Sidney, had died from heart disease at the age of 35, right before John turned 5. \u201cIt doesn’t take much to think about how traumatic that could be for anyone at any age,\u201d Hanks said.<\/p>\n Chris Candy, from left, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan and Colin Hanks, who directed the Prime Video documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.” (Christina House \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/span><\/p>\n Myers, a musician and journalist who has written books about the band Barenaked Ladies and comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall, said he was drawn to Candy as a fellow Canadian and an embodiment of the national comedic spirit.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re Canadian like I am, you never stop thinking about John Candy,\u201d Myers said. Growing up in the Toronto area, Myers said he and his siblings \u2014 including his brother Mike, the future \u201cShrek\u201d and \u201cAustin Powers\u201d star \u2014 were avid fans of sketch comedy shows like \u201cMonty Python\u2019s Flying Circus\u201d and \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n But \u201cSCTV,\u201d which launched stars like Candy, Catherine O\u2019Hara and Eugene Levy, meant even more to them. \u201cWe watched it from Day 1 and we cheered a little bit harder for them because it was like they were shooting the show blocks away from our house,\u201d Myers said.<\/p>\n Reynolds, who was born and raised in Vancouver, said that Candy\u2019s essential Canadian spirit was crucial to his success as a comic actor.<\/p>\n \u201cIn comedy, Canadians typically don\u2019t punch down,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cIt\u2019s more of a self-effacing humor. Their favorite target is themselves. And John did that. On screen, I felt his willingness and joy in self-effacing humor that never really veered into self-loathing humor.\u201d<\/p>\n Candy parlayed his repertoire of \u201cSCTV\u201d characters \u2014 satirical media personalities like Johnny LaRue and real-life celebrities like Orson Welles \u2014 into supporting parts in hit films like \u201cNational Lampoon\u2019s Vacation,\u201d \u201cThe Blues Brothers,\u201d \u201cBrewster\u2019s Millions\u201d and “Spaceballs.”<\/p>\n His penchants for drinking and smoking were well-known and hardly out of the ordinary for that era; they rarely impeded Candy\u2019s work and, in at least one notable instance, seem to have enhanced it: Both the documentary and the biography recount how Candy indulged in a late-night bender with Jack Nicholson before rising the next morning to shoot a scene in \u201cSplash\u201d<\/a> where his character fumbles, flails and smokes his way through a round of racquetball.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s his work ethic, right there,\u201d said Candy-Sullivan. \u201cHe showed up and he did the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n Candy graduated to lead roles in comedies like \u201cSummer Rental,\u201d \u201cThe Great Outdoors\u201d and \u201cWho\u2019s Harry Crumb?,\u201d and he found a kindred spirit in the writer and director John Hughes, who helped provide Candy with some of his most enduring roles in movies like \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles,\u201d \u201cUncle Buck\u201d and \u201cHome Alone.\u201d<\/p>\n But offscreen, Candy was contending with anxiety and he was sensitive to people\u2019s judgments about his size \u2014 remarks which often came directly from TV interviewers who thought nothing of asking him point-blank whether Candy was planning to lose weight.<\/p>\n When he and his sister watched archival footage of these interviews in the documentary, Chris Candy said, \u201cIt was, for both of us, uncomfortable. I wasn’t familiar with what he was putting up with and how he would mentally jujitsu in and out of those conversations. He got more and more curt about it as time goes on, and you can see it in the interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n But these psychic wounds didn\u2019t make Candy a cruel or nasty person; he simply absorbed the hurt and redoubled his efforts to be a genial performer.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you’re looking for darkness in the story of John Candy, a lot of it\u2019s just internalized pain,\u201d Myers said. \u201cHis own coping mechanism was radical niceness to everybody \u2014 making human connections so that he would have community and feel like he’s making things better.\u201d<\/p>\n In the early 1990s, Candy seemed to be working nonstop. He appeared in five different feature films in 1991 alone, a year that included duds like \u201cNothing But Trouble\u201d as well as a small but potentially transformative role in Oliver Stone\u2019s drama \u201cJFK,\u201d where he played the flamboyant attorney Dean Andrews Jr. He was preparing his own directorial debut, a TV film called \u201cHostage For a Day\u201d in which he starred with George Wendt<\/a>. Candy also became a co-owner and one-man pep squad for the Toronto Argonauts, the Canadian Football League team.<\/p>\n Eventually, the many demands and stresses in his life came to a head. Amid a grueling shoot for the western comedy \u201cWagons East<\/a>\u201d in Durango, Mexico, Candy died<\/a> on March 4, 1994. He had a private funeral in the Los Angeles area, followed by a public memorial in Toronto that prompted a national outpouring of grief in Canada.<\/p>\n \u201cHe represented the best of us,\u201d Myers said. \u201cHe was a humanity-centric person. He brought vulnerability and humility to his characters, which is not something you usually see in broad comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n Candy\u2019s films continue to play on television and streaming \u2014 both \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles\u201d and \u201cHome Alone\u201d have become year-end holiday staples. But for the people involved in chronicling Candy\u2019s life, there is a creeping sense that the actor\u2019s legacy will not tend to itself, and that the generations who did not grow up with Candy might need reminders of what made him worth remembering.<\/p>\n Hanks recalled a story from the making of \u201cI Like Me\u201d where he and some colleagues were dining at a restaurant where the hostess asked them what they were working on.<\/p>\n \u201cWe said we\u2019re making a documentary,\u201d Hanks said. \u201c \u2018Oh, really?\u2019 she goes. \u2018Who’s it about?\u2019 It\u2019s about John Candy. She goes, \u2018Oh, who\u2019s that?\u2019 No idea who it was. I said, well, have you seen \u2018Home Alone\u2019? Remember the polka guy that picks up the mom and takes her in the van? \u2018Oh, I loved him. He\u2019s great.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Part of his interest in making a film about Candy, Hanks said, is \u201cwanting to showcase the man that people love and remind them why they loved them.\u201d<\/p>\n But there is also the simple pleasure in introducing Candy\u2019s work to people who haven\u2019t seen it before. \u201cIf you\u2019re lucky,\u201d Hanks said, \u201cyou get to hopefully have them go, \u2018God, I want to see those movies. I want to go watch ‘SCTV.'”<\/p>\n Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what\u2019s going on in the wild world of cinema.<\/a><\/p>\n This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/span><\/div>\n