His Take:
For the first time, I’m not using the internet to at all to help me write this article because I want everything to come from my heart on this one. I’m not even going to fact check or use the internet for grammar or better words, so excuse the spelling and all that stuff.
I don’t remember what the first John Candy movie that I saw was. It was maybe Splash. I just remember that when he was onscreen he commanded your attention. Not because of his size, but because he had a larger than life presence. Again, not because of his size. You immediately focused on him because he was the center of attention and you knew that, given a minute or two, he was going to say something awesome. Think 1960;’s era Star Trek William Shatner, but funny,
One of, if not THE best thing I found about John Candy is that he was genuinely funny. He didn’t have to fall down, or crash through a door, or have a bowl of something dumped on his head to get the laugh, although when he did do physical comedy, you would laugh til you couldn’t breathe, He was “sweet funny”, not mean spirited funny. He didn’t have to insult or berate someone to get the laugh. Whenever he put on outlandish costumes, it made me laugh so hard. I don’t really think there’s anyone to compare him to in today’s world of entertainment, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be fair to. As a comedian, he also broke a few boundaries. He was the inventor or the “how did that guy get a wife so hot?”. Something that’s carried on to this day. He even became so popular that in the late ’80s he had a Saturday morning cartoon where he was the owner and operator of a camp for kids called “Camp Candy”, and a comic bo
The absolute BEST thing about John Candy was that I went to see every new John Candy movie with one of my best friends, Sue. Sue is the best person in the world to go to the movies with because she has a contagious laugh. It was always SO fun going to Roger’s Cinema, and sitting there for 2 hours with her and laughing and having a great time. Honestly, when I look back now on my high school years, about 15% off my memories are seeing movies with Sue, and how much fun that it was.
John Candy played many, many roles in his career. From the relatable guy to Barf in Spaceballs to Uncle Buck, he always made everybody laugh with his sweet, charming delivery and his ability to look ridiculous when dressed in absurd costumes. You might say he had a black belt in comedy. “And the boots to match”
Her Take:
I lied to my writing partner this week… well, I also lied to myself.
I lied to 100% of the people who write this blog this week. We’ll get to that later.
First, in honor of the fact that ‘The Great Outdoors’ was released on June 17th, 1988, we’re thinking about John Candy this week. Sure, that might be the loosest rational to launch from, but here we are, you and I, and we’re doing this. Stick with me, ok?
As I was thinking about what to write, I realized that there’s a chance someone won’t know who John Candy was, much less understand the kind of gushing sentimentality that I’m definitely going to get around to sometime in the next 10 minutes, so here’s your primer.
John Candy was a comic genius who started in children’s television in Canada and was eventually cast on SCTV which was a sketch show based in Toronto was picked up by NBC and shown in the US starting in 1981. He made the transition from TV to movies at roughly the time I was making the transition from childhood to movie-ticket-consumer, and our lives became inextricably intertwined, even though he didn’t know it. With a history of overeating, heart problems, and some cocaine, John Candy passed away in March of 1994. If this is the first time you’re hearing of him, you need to learn more, so start here, but not before you finish reading our blog. (Please?)
Awesome. Here we go…
John Candy is magic to me. He defies explanation, but let me try.
The memories I have are all wrapped up in seeing him on the big screen, popcorn in hand, my friends Jim and Dan on either side of me. Those memories are unblemished by the kinds of worries we carry with us now. We were kids, watching funny movies, and the funniest guy of all was there to make us laugh.
If you’ve never see him, or even if you have, stop what you’re doing and go watch this clip from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.It is, hands down, my favorite 1.5 minutes from any movie I’ve ever seen. For me, in encapsulates everything that John candy could do as an actor. Go back and watch it again. Watch how he tells the story with his movement, notice how he uses his face to convey Every.Single.Thing. he’s feeling and make you feel it too. Oh, and notice how you can’t take your eyes off that big, beautiful soul.
That clip is from the movie that is my first real memory of John Candy - in other words, not something I remember manufacturing after staring at his filmography - and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is definitely in my top 5 favorite movies of all time. I DO remember seeing it at the theater, I don’t remember who I was with, which theater, what time of day… any of that other stuff… I just remember being so caught up in watching John Candy and Steve Martin being funnier to me than any two humans I’d ever seen. And the sweet, frustrated, panicked desperation that John Candy brings to his character, Del, the way he made him a whole a real person, even in the funniest movie I had ever seen, was a testament to his incredible talent.
But here’s where the lying comes in.
YES, I love John Candy, YES, I’ve wanted to write about how watching him up there on the big screen made my life immeasurably more rich, but that’s not REALLY what I think of when I think of the man.
Here’s the real deal: the story is really about something else. It’s about who was in the seats on either side of me when I first saw The Great Outdoors. It’s about the fact that, just before the movie started, my friend Dan said “You know, I heard they filmed some of this movie in Wisconsin.” and my friend Jim said something sarcastic about that, I don’t remember what, just before the lights went down and the trailers rolled. We probably went somewhere after the movie to eat, and drink pop, and smoke cigarettes which we flicked into tiny metal ashtrays on the table, and repeated all of our favorite lines over and over and laughed until our stomachs hurt.
That’s REALLY what I think of when I think of John Candy, not him, but how it felt to be in that moment of time with my two best friends and how good it all was.
Sorry folks, the moose at the gate shoulda told ya.
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