Stripes
“My name is Dewey Oxburger, my friends call me Ox. You might have noticed I’ve ah, I’ve got a slight weight problem, yeah I do, yeah I do. I went to this doctor, he told me I swallow a lot of aggression, along with a lot of pizzas (laughter). I’m basically a shy person, I’m a shy guy and he suggested taking one of these aggression training courses, ya know those aggression training courses like EST and those kind of things, anyway it cost 400 bucks! 400 bucks to join this thing. Well I, I didn’t have the money and I thought to myself, join the army! It’s free! So I figured while I’m here I will lose a few pounds, and you got what, a six to eight week training programme here? A real tough one? Which is perfect for me. I’m going to walk out of here, a lean, mean, fighting machine.” John Candy, Stripes
Greg Stillwell was in John Candy’s office when the Stripes script came in, John opened it up, flicked through and remarked “Well I’m getting nearer to the front”, meaning the parts he was being offered were getting a little bigger.
Released in 1981 Stripes was actually in the top five grossing movies that year. Raiders of the Lost Ark was at number one and Superman 2 at number three! A military comedy with Bill Murray and Harold Ramis playing the lead roles, produced by Ivan Reitman and Daniel Goldberg, directed by Reitman. The movie starts by focusing on Murray’s character John Winger, who within a matter of hours loses his taxi driving job, his girlfriend and his apartment and manages to convince his best friend Russell Ziskey (Ramis) to join up for the Army with him.
Conrad Dunn, who played Francis ‘Psycho’ Soyer, shared his memories with me. Dunn had never met any of the cast before, however because of Second City, Murray, Ramis, Reitman and Candy all knew each other so he described there being a bit of an “inner circle”, and John in general was “very jovial”.
Half the movie was shot in Kentucky and the other half in Los Angeles. In Kentucky most of the cast stayed in a small hotel, the Ramada Inn, in a little place called Elizabethtown. However because John was married and had baby Jennifer, John was put up in a small house so Rose and Jennifer could be with him.
The scene where the new army recruits introduce themselves (see John’s quote at the beginning of this chapter) was filmed over an entire day, so Dunn told me that they had a lot of time hanging around in that room and there was time in between setups to chat to everybody.
Dunn reminisced about going over to John’s accommodation, “I do recall there was a big fight and everybody wanted to see it, Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard, and so John was nice enough to invite all the guys over to his house and his wife was lovely, she made a spaghetti and meatball dinner for everybody and we watched the fight. He was fun, welcoming, his wife put on a really nice spread. It helped with the movie as people got to know each other and have a good time, people bonded.”
This was something John would do a lot, hang out with other cast and crew members, throw a party. As a rule it was probably just John being his sweet self, but actually it was also very clever, as people would gel together, get to know each other and that would always translate onto the screen.
One of the classic scenes in Stripes is where the troop are hanging out in a bar and Winger (Murray’s character) convinces Ox (Candy’s character) that he should go into a mud-wrestling ring with a group of ladies. John was actually very unhappy about doing this scene for several reasons.
Dunn said “I think he was a little ill at ease having to wrestle with a woman, I think he was of a generation where you treat women with respect and you certainly don’t knock them around and throw them around so he was uncomfortable and ill at ease.”
John was so respectful of women it would have no doubt felt unnatural and dishonourable having to film this scene, but Dave Thomas also helped me understand the other reasons why John would also be apprehensive.
“I was in the cast in the mud wrestling scene in Stripes. John was terribly humiliated by that fat joke, a big fat guy rolling around in the mud, Ivan Reitman making John do a fat joke. And John hated fat jokes and he wore a shirt because he didn’t want to take his shirt off. People who exploited him as a fat guy kind of pissed him off, Danny (Aykroyd) didn’t exploit him as a fat guy, he wanted him as a parole officer in Blues Brothers. Ivan (Reitman) and Harold (Ramis) exploited John. John was good natured if you treated him as a guy who was more than just a fat guy, he would let you get away with a fat joke because he was fair.”
For that mud-wrestling scene the pressure was on even more so as a lot of the guys from Second City and Saturday Night Live had heard that there were going to be scantily clad women wrestling in mud so they all turned up to watch!
Dunn remembers “That scene took a couple of days because there was other shenanigans going on in the club alongside the mud-wrestling, the mud-wrestling was in its own way complicated, you had the mud and you had to keep the mud a certain consistency, so any time you have a lot of people on a set it takes time”, and of course each time they wanted to start from the top Candy would have had to shower and get a clothes change.
Dunn reminisced about the Do Wah Diddy scene, where the troops are coming to grips with marching in time and the lead characters break out into the song, Do Wah Diddy by Manfred Mann. “It’s funny, John and I were older than most of the guys. Most of the guys in the parading troupe were in their mid twenties and John was around my age and I was 30, so we were old enough to remember the song, I am sure Murray would have known it too but because he was the star of the film he was busy doing other things. It was funny because to both of us, we couldn’t believe it initially that they didn’t know it, we thought they were pulling our leg, but it was just before their time. We were teenagers when that song came out. Luckily it’s a very simple song and very repetitive and also a form of the song is call and response so you can say a line and repeat it, we got through it. What was really impressive of the guys was the parade and marching around and handling of the rifles, we worked on that for a good week to get that down. It was very difficult to accomplish, even the people in the stands were local Kentuckians they weren’t professional actors and they thought that we weren’t actors, they thought they had actually brought people in from service to do the rifle drill because it went so well. Virtually anytime we weren’t on the set shooting we were in the barracks working on that thing.
“It was fun watching them work, I didn’t really come from an improvisational background so I was interested in watching that and it was fun to watch them interact and play together.”
John’s Canadian agent, Catherine McCartney, remembers that when the film came out, she took John along to watch it at the cinema. “When they were showing it up in Toronto I went with him to see it, he waited till the film had started and he snuck into the back, he said ‘I just want to know how Toronto would act because it is home’. There is a scene where he is first seen on camera, and the crowds were conservative in those days, but everyone just burst into applause and John just had to leave, he was so choked up. I think he realised they accepted him. He was always on the quest for better and I think a lot of good artists do that, they are always searching to do better because acting is always about the next role, the challenge.”
By this time Rob Salem was progressing in his journalism career, his first paid magazine gig was actually to spend the day with John and interview him about Stripes.
Salem remembers, “The first magazine article I was ever assigned was to spend the day with John. Two reasons why I don’t have that article, one is John liked to drink rum and coke, the problem with John is you couldn’t say no. He was always the guy at the party saying ‘c’mon just one more’ and you would have to. I spent the day with him at his house and we walked around his town and everyone of course knew him and we were drinking like fish. We went back to his house and he cooked something, I honestly can’t remember what it was, but I do remember at the end of the evening vomiting my bodyweight into the gutter outside John’s house. We were just hammered. Then when I did actuall
y get down to writing the story, the magazine which was Toronto Life, decided the story wasn’t Canadian enough. John had just done Stripes and his career was on the rise but it was perceived as more of an American Phenomenon, of course that couldn’t have been further from the truth seeing as John was the most Canadian booster of them all.“
Although there was no doubt Stripes was John’s biggest project that year, he also took part in a quirkier project. He played several characters in an adult animated sci-fi movie Heavy Metal.
1982 John was also in a short film called It Came From Hollywood, where he talked about his love for Ed Wood and was driven off set in a motorbike sidecar by Dan Aykroyd donning a bra. Gilda Radner and Cheech and Chong also featured in this celebration of B movie heroes.
Sadly on 5th March 1982 John’s friend John Belushi was found dead at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in LA. He had died of an overdose at the age of 33. This news devastated John, he was so upset he was sent straight home from work. He didn’t surface from his house for a full week. John was worried that this was the beginning of the end, that they had all been thinking they were untouchable and now they had all had the most horrible reality check.
Always Meet Your Heroes
Imagine being 12 years old again. You are set an assignment in your journalism course to interview someone. You are the biggest fan of John Candy and you think you’ll try your luck. You write a letter, and you wait. Then, one day you get a phone call. That’s exactly what happened to Scott Edgecombe.
“I have images and imaginings of the phone call but since it was almost thirty years ago I’m not always sure how much of those memories have been internally embellished with time…and fantasy.
“I remember returning to our home in Oakville from school and my mom telling me that a man named John had called. My heart completely leapt out of my chest and I quickly asked her what he had said. My mother just replied, “I don’t know, I’m not your secretary. And who is this man to be calling you anyways?”
“Since this was 1983, an eighth grade kid getting a phone call from a strange adult was mostly unheard of, unless it was the police or a coach of some kind and you were usually in trouble in both cases. I can’t remember how long I had to wait to call him back but I was more nervous than I had ever been when the time came…
“To this day I swear he was totally playing with me because when I called and asked for Mr Candy (in the deepest pretend adult voice I could muster) it sounded exactly like him on the other end but whomever I spoke to said, “Just a second, I will get him for you.” And then the exact voice came back on the phone saying, “Hi, this is John.”
“Even as I type now I remember shaking and hoping I was going to say the perfect things to get my SCTV/Stripes mega-hero to agree to let me interview him. An important sidebar here is that the teacher in charge of this school assignment had been my nemesis since 6th grade. Getting this interview would easily make my decade.
“The phone call was quick as I felt I should say very little and listen respectfully but I remember him being very sincere and treating me like a professional journalist adult-type person.
“Sure Scott, I’d love to let you interview me. Just give my agent a call and you and her can set it up from there.”
“That was the bulk of the call or at least the part I remember. You have to realize that just speaking to him was like being sung to by a Siren for my eighth grade SCTV obsessed mind. I think he laughed once or twice and I couldn’t move past the sound of his laughter to hear anything else. We all know that laugh and love it for all the places it takes us. I don’t think I slept much that night. I wanted to call everyone I knew except the phone wasn’t something that kids could freely used in our home so I didn’t…
“But…I did get to sit in journalism class the next day and have my nemesis teacher ask me in front of everyone whom I had planned to interview for the project. When I said John Candy he blurted, ‘You’ll never get him’, before moving on to the next student. It was another week before I got to tell him in front of the whole class that I had booked ‘John Candy’. His face went blank and a little white as he softly replied, ‘Oh’.
“It was the second most famous interview in our class. Ross Wace got Anne Murray.
(John was) ”Larger than life and the pun is somewhat intended. Keeping in mind this took place before my 8th grade growth spurt and that just minutes before meeting John I was passed by Martin Short in the hallway whom at the time was still shorter than myself…
“John was a big man in both size and presence and he knew it because it seemed he made every effort to quell any inhibitions one might have upon meeting him. He may have been larger than life but he was soft in character and you could tell that he was completely there with the people he shared a room with. He asked about me, cared for how I was feeling and did everything possible to play down any idea that he was better than the next guy. He introduced me to everyone from the show whenever we walked past either a cast or crew member and was graciously attendant to every question or need I had and I’m pretty sure I was a rather demanding child. Most of my time was spent in awe of the mere fact I was not only sharing a space with Mr. John Candy but that he was escorting me around and treating me like an equal as we traveled through make-up, his dressing room, and some of the sets of SCTV circa 1983. The thing that sticks in my mind the most and seems to have been a constant in his life based on what I’ve read is that he always made sure the people around him felt important…I might even go as far as saying John’s goal was to make those around him feel more important than others held him up to be.
”I will say that as we sat in the make-up room and I watched him being turned into the Mayor of Melonville next to Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty there was adult room talking going on continuously. I had nothing of any substance to add but John did his best to keep me in the conversation and never allowed me feel like an outsider. On a side note, Joe was very friendly to me as well, but Eugene…well…lets just say he scared me a little.”
Fast forward ten years...
“In December of 1993 I was living in Toronto and just beginning to professionally pursue an acting career. A classmate of mine from University who had heard my whole JC interview story called me up to say he was working crew on a one day charity shoot that John was doing for Famous Players theatres, something along the line of Variety Club I believe. My buddy said he could get me in as an extra for the day if I was interested and coming down to see John and hopefully talk to him. I jumped at the chance. But the really serendipitous part of the day involved a woman I had met the previous weekend at a bar up in central Ontario cottage country. You see, extras are wrangled like cattle on most sets, especially sets with celebrities on them so there is really never any opportunity to approach the really talent even when sharing an entire day with them. Well, luck or fate was on my side because the previous weekend I ended up in a conversation with a woman at a bar for at least an hour as she tried to avoid a drunk friend of mine that kept hitting on her. No numbers were exchanged as it was just one of those friendly slightly tipsy bar moments with zero sexual undertones. But…as I stood in my roped off extras holding area at the shoot the following week I noticed this same woman, Susan was her name I believe, standing next to John as he was escorted onto the set. When Susan’s eyes wandered over to my cage I smiled and waved at her. She immediately smiled and walked on over. After a moment of small talk I asked her why she was here and she said she was John’s assistant. Me being the slow idiot I usually am replied, “John who?”
“When she said John Candy I couldn’t believe it and began to tell her all about the interview in 1983 and then reached into my pocket to show her the cassette tape of the interview I had brought to give to John. She smiled at me and asked me if I would like to meet him…again. Within minutes she lifted my wrangling rope barrier and walked me over to John who was still larger than life and fully bearded for his Wagons East shoot.
“John was kind and receptive i
mmediately. After a few details he seemed to remember the interview but I was never fully sure if he was just being polite since that was his nature. We talked for a few minutes and I told him I was now ‘in the business’ which made him give me an ‘Oh no’ type response as he had tried to talk me out of acting so many years earlier. I gave him the cassette and found myself pretty much as flustered and nervous as I had been ten years ago. The shoot was beginning and John had already been more than polite to me so we shook hands, said goodbye, and I was escorted back to the extras holding. But before the day ended Susan made a point of promising me that she would make John listen to the cassette tape of our interview in the limo ride home that evening.”
Making a Splash
“Sorry folks, park’s closed. The moose out front should have told ya.” 1983 saw the release of the much loved National Lampoon’s Vacation, a film written by John Hughes (the first time John would work with Hughes - although they didn’t really get to know each other at that stage), Chevy Chase took the lead as the head of the Griswold Family, on a disastrous family road trip, all to get to Walley World to make some family memories. On finally reaching Walley World, Russ Lasky, the security guard played by John comes out to tell the family that the park is closed. Griswold loses his patience and holds Lasky with a gun as they had just travelled 2460 miles and were not going to go home without some Walley World entertainment. Lasky then has to accompany them on rollercoaster rides until the police turn up. It was a small part, but brilliantly executed by John.
Searching for Candy Page 7
