So why does the film feel disjointed? Originally John Larroquette’s character, Don Moore, had a much larger role in the film. He was a romantic threat to John’s character, Chester, whose wife was being wooed by Don. The film was written as if Sandy was going to run off with Don, and when shown to audiences at the test viewings they didn’t like that storyline - so they had to cut it out. If you haven’t seen the movie or didn’t know that when you last viewed it go back and watch it, it all makes a little more sense when you know the context it was filmed under.
Austin’s character, Sandy, loved taking pictures - in fact in the end credits most of the snapshots taken were by Austin herself. “I had not done any photography before and they gave me a really nice camera. So one of the things John did, he went to a bookstore quite early on in the shoot and he decided everybody needed a book. He bought everybody books and he brought me a bunch of photography books which I still have to this day.”
John was happy to be working on the film, he was always extremely present. Both he and Reiner knew that the script wasn’t as strong as it could be so they would both work on it or change the blocking (how actors should move to add dramatic effect, how the lighting should hit them etc.) Austin recalls, “Carl would just clear the set and we would work. I never got the feeling of we have to hurry up, it was just the feeling of we have to do this right. The only time we ever had to hurry was when we were losing the light. The hardest thing was on the boat, because how do you make a boat race exciting? Carl kept saying I need to get some tension into this. I think probably the most fun we had was painting the boat and restoring the boat because we got to do whatever we wanted to do.
“Carl and John had a great relationship, sometimes the two of them would compete to tell stories and you would paralysed with laughter, I couldn’t get my breath I would be laughing so hard.”
Reiner tried to look after John on set, but he did have concerns, “I really worried about was his health, he was overweight. I did something, I said John I am giving you a gift and I ordered a Pritikin menu from a very good health centre and we are going to get a Pritikin chef in St Petersburg. We can eat healthy and we will eat together and the temptation will go away. He was very happy to do this and we did it for weeks, but he could not help himself, after we said that is it for the day, there he was with a bucket of shrimp - we couldn’t stop him and I had to say I have done my best.”
John hadn’t done a lot of love scenes, and there is one scene with Austin where John’s character is so sunburnt his wife is rubbing aftersun on him. Austin remembers, “I don’t think he had done a lot of love films with women and I think he was a little nervous about it. So I totally lost my nervousness about the scene because I wanted to take care of John and I must say I kissed a lot of men in my career and John was one of the easier ones to kiss, because I felt like he deserved it, he deserved to feel desirable and loved. That may have been our chemistry, I got delivered to him as a done deal, he never made me feel like he was unhappy with Carl’s choice, he always made me feel like he was glad I was there. When someone gives you permission to be great then you rise to that. He was great with the kids, he was great with the dog. That dog had a pretty easy time of things, he was treated well. The dog felt very comfortable with John.”
At the cast and crew screening of the movie Reiner gave a speech - not only did he mention how hard it was to work with Rip Torn but he also advised that they had shot a lot of footage, but due to the demands of the film some things had to be cut… “So I wanted to let you know that if some of your favourite scenes in the movie aren’t there, or there are not as many scenes as you thought there would be, it is just because you weren’t very good.” There was also a blooper reel put together where the cast would be laughing so hard they would have to stop shooting.
Reiner’s lasting impression of John, “Well, he was so in love with his wife and kids, it was just so sad he left when he did. And it was so sad, he was the most alive person I had ever met. In the movie, I haven’t watched it for a while, but John would find these moments in the movie that could only be his, he was just that creative.
“He had everything to live for, he had no negatives, he was so in love with his wife.”
Reiner left a lasting impression on John, in fact Reiner gave John the directing bug. Before working on Summer Rental John had no real desire to work as a director, after working with Reiner who gave him great lessons in directing and made him feel part of the directing process, it was then something he aspired to.
They had both agreed to work on a future project together but sadly that never came to fruition.
Fan Memory by Joe Kroger
It was Spring Break 1985 when I met John Candy. I was 16 and in St Petersburg, Florida with my parents and a few friends. Several groups of my friends and parents went to St Pete Beach every year for Spring Break from my hometown of Troy, Ohio. It was nice to have friends with which to run wild on the beach and surrounding hotels, arcades, surf shops, record shops, and all the places teenagers are known to hang out. That year was no different. I had 3 friends that year to hang with. Early one evening, my friend Pete and I, and 2 sisters from Minnesota we had been chasing after, were walking down the beautiful white sand beaches of western Florida when we decided to go up to the Hilton and ride the glass elevator up to the restaurant for a nice view of the beach at dusk. We walked into the lobby and pressed the button. As we were waiting for the elevator to come, my buddy grabs me and says “I swear that desk clerk just said ‘Sure, Mr Candy’”, as he pointed over to the front desk 10 feet away. I believe I was saying ‘No way’, as I looked at the back of a linebacker sized man in a sport coat. The man turned around, and sure enough it was the actor John Candy.
Now let me pause here and say that I was, and still am a fan of Mr Candy. I was a massive fan of National Lampoon’s Vacation, Stripes, and SCTV at the time, so to see him in person had me very excited. He walked right towards us, as we were between him and the sliding glass entry doors of the hotel. I took a deep breath and said ‘Hi, Mr Candy?’ He immediately stuck out his right paw to shake my hand and said ‘Hi, call me John’. The other 3 in my party were also very excited as they shook his hand. I asked him what he was doing in St Petersburg and he explained that he was in town making a new film called ‘Summer Rental’, and having a great time with all the folks on spring vacation. He asked where we were from, then commented that he loved both states represented, and asked our names. We asked what he was up to that night and he said he was done filming for the day, and was headed to dinner. He had a car and driver waiting right out in front of the hotel. It was at this point I scrambled to the front desk in search of a pen and some paper so we could hopefully get a few autographs. The deck clerk chuckled as he supplied me with the requested items. I returned quickly to the group and listened as he talked about the fun of making Stripes with Bill Murray. I spoke up about how hilarious he was in Vacation, and that my brother and I were fans of SCTV. He talked about both of those projects for a few minutes, and then returned to the subject of his current project. I remember him relating the basic plot of Summer Rental, and telling us what other actors were in the film. I also remember I didn’t really recognize any of the names. He assured us it was going well, he thought it would turn out to be a funny movie, and it would be out sometime that summer. I knew he would be getting antsy soon so I asked for the autograph he knew would be coming. On mine he wrote: ‘Joe, thanks for watching SCTV, John Candy’. For my friend Pete he wrote: ‘Pete, don’t forget about that money you owe me’.
It was one of the coolest 15 minutes time periods of my young life, and it really stands out to this day. He was a super nice guy, very accommodating to a few young fans, and seemed incredibly down to earth. I remember watching all his movies faithfully after that meeting, and remained a loyal fan throughout his career. Years later, to my delight, I even earned the nickname Uncle Buck from my young nephews. It was a sad day indeed the day I learned of his passing. I�
��ve had many chance encounters with celebrities throughout my life, but my 15 minutes talking to John Candy stands out as one of the best.
He bid us farewell and headed off to dinner. We all rushed back to our hotel to excitedly brag at what the others had just missed out on clutching our autographs as proof. I still have that autograph to this day and count it as a prized possession. A memory of my brush with a great talent, a great guy, a larger than life movie star.
Gone Fishing
In 1986 John agreed to be part of a fishing pilot which was the brainchild of broadcaster, Terry David Mulligan. Mulligan met John very early on in John’s career, when they both worked on an advert for Molson Golden Ale. They had kept in touch over the years and despite John’s fame growing and growing, Mulligan had always found John very accessible. The show was Mulligan and an ex-Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player, Tiger Williams, taking celebrities out to fish. To Mulligan, interviewing John in a fishing boat made sense as, “what he (John) did best was play a fish out of water”. Mulligan expands “I was good friends with Tiger Williams and I thought the two of them on a boat had infinite possibilities”.
The show was called Break Away – Outdoors with Terry and Tiger. It was filmed at a fishing lodge in Campbell River, British Columbia, which is renowned for its salmon fishing. During the shoot, the crew played a joke on John where they filleted a salmon so it just had its head, tail and skeleton, fixed it to a rod and passed it to John so he thought he had caught something. As John reeled it in he laughed and said dryly “well ya know, I think there is some sort of pollution thing happening in the water here.”
Of course whilst John was there he enjoyed himself, that night he and Williams went out on the town.
I was lucky enough to chat to Martin Anthony, a long time fan of John’s, who met him that night and could fill me in on some of the shenanigans.
“I was living in Campbell River BC on Vancouver Island, working at a convenience store and I arranged to meet some co-workers after work at a place called the Anchor Inn. So I am sitting there waiting for my co-workers and they never did show up but I was sitting at the bar, the waitress walks by and I say to her, ‘that person looks like John Candy!’ and she says ‘that is John Candy’. I said ‘Oh my god I am a big fan, well do me huge favour, please take one of your gift cheques that you write your orders on and please get me an autograph’, she said ‘well I can ask him’.
“Five or ten minutes go by and I am trying not to stare at him and actually he came over and sat right next to me. He said ‘if you want my autograph you have to come up and get it yourself’ and the waitress was there and she was laughing. I told him my name and introduced myself and he sat right down next to me. I was drinking a drink, I told him I was drinking Kahlua and milk which is kind of like White Russian but without the vodka. He gets up and he goes around the bar and grabs the biggest bottle of Kahlua they have got and about a gallon of milk from the fridge, he sat it right down in front of me and said ‘Let me buy you a drink’. I was only 18 years old. He just started talking, I am from the United States, I have family in Campbell River and that’s what I was doing there, he was up there filming a fishing show, I vaguely remember him mentioning that. He was with a hockey player called Tiger Williams, he (Williams) used to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs and was notorious for being rowdy. He liked to fight a lot, he wasn’t there at the time. John asked me if I knew any old songs, I knew old country songs like Hank Williams and stuff like that so the next thing you know, I am getting really drunk on Kahlua and milk, we had finished off the whole bottle, we were singing these songs and just having a blast and people were singing along with us.
“The people he was doing the show came into the bar, the hockey player came straight in and wanted to fight with me, he just picked a fight and wanted to kick my ass, from what I understand the guy liked to fight, a lot. The waitress and bartender there were having a good time with him too, (someone was taking pictures but I have never found them). We were at that bar, it is more like a restaurant and it was about eleven o’clock, eleven thirty. So John Candy gets up and puts his credit card on the bar and says well alright, for everyone that is in here already this is now a private party, and he paid for everything.
“They eventually had to close. So we all jumped in a bunch of cabs and went to the other side of town to a place called Bobo’s Cabaret and People’s Cabaret and by the time we got there they were closing down too, it was about 1.30am in the morning, but they let us in. By this time I was having such a good time with those guys they thought I was part of the crew. So I asked him, ‘why don’t you give me a job?’, and he said, ‘well what can you do?’ I said ‘anything, I will do anything’, John said ‘well I will give you my number and I gotta go to Los Angeles to finish something, but I will hook you up when I get up to Los Angeles.’ So I got his number, his autograph, the empty bottle of Kahlua, a picture Polaroid of all of us together and come morning time the sun is coming up, they need to go and do their fishing show and I took a cab home. I told the guy where I lived and passed out on the back seat, he got me home and I went to bed. I woke up in the morning and realised I had left everything in the back of that cab! We had a blast and that was it. All my friends about it were like ‘yeah right!’.
“The hockey player did actually get into a fight with three or four guys and I am pretty sure he won. I was just at the bar with John singing songs and by the end of the night we were singing nursery rhymes.”
Instead of going out with them, Mulligan actually went to bed early that night, but he was woken by Williams at around 4.30am as he recalls in his book Mulligan’s Stew. “A hockey stick came through my open bedroom window and hooked me underneath my chin while I was dead asleep. It was Williams, hammered beyond belief. ‘We got a problem, get up’ he said.
“He and Candy had closed down all the bars in Campbell River the night before and had then woken up all the (fishing) guides in the guide shack and had gotten them drinking as well… Candy had passed out in the middle of all this, and now nobody could wake him up.”
They were meant to be filming at 6am but they couldn’t wake John until much later, John had to be back in New York later that day, so they fudged an ending, the pilot is actually available to watch on YouTube and is very entertaining, but sadly it didn’t get picked up as a series.
Tom Tuttle from Tacoma
Volunteers was originally written in 1980, however the film was not made until 1985 and went through many changes, so many in fact that the only constant was a character called Tom Tuttle that John ended up playing.
Filmed in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico, the crew built a whole Thai Village set, based on the Karen people of Burma’s Golden Triangle.
John and Tom Hanks were reunited quickly after featuring in Splash together, this time playing very different roles. Hanks took the lead, playing Lawrence Bourne III, a rich kid that runs up gambling debts his father refuses to bail him out of. Being chased by angry creditors, Lawrence fleas the country by convincing his college friend to let him take his place on a Peace Corps trip to Thailand. This is where he meets John as Tom Tuttle from Tacoma (that is his full title), a graduate from Washington State University. They have gone to Thailand to help build a bridge for the local villagers, unbeknownst to them the bridge is coveted by a local communist force and a drug lord. There they meet Hanks’ love interest (both on and off screen) Rita Wilson, who played Beth Wexler.
Ken Levine who was one of the writers told me, “We always pictured Tom Tuttle very differently from John Candy. We had always pictured a thin weasley guy to be Tom Tuttle. At the time we wrote it, Tom Hanks who really liked the script, was doing television and couldn’t get many films. John Candy was off doing SCTV at the time and when Tom Hanks and John Candy got together on Splash and that became really kind of a break out movie, once we thought about asking Tom to do Volunteers, the thought was about re-joining him with John Candy. Putting them together for this. When the idea was run by me I thought th
at was not the way we conceived it but we love John Candy and he is really funny. I imagined the part would change considerably, but what the hell? How often do you have an opportunity to get somebody like John Candy to do your movie?
“Surprisingly he did not change a word of the script. He absolutely stayed with the script to the letter and yet made it his own and was absolutely hilarious in the movie, was way funnier than we perceived the character. At the time we wrote it back then for a Rick Moranis character. But John was just inspired casting.”
Strangely enough Moranis and John were often landing roles that were meant for each other, physically they looked very different but in terms of building and living a character they were both just so versatile.
Levine remembers, “He was such a nice guy there were times that I talked to him, I am very much into baseball and John was a big fan of the Toronto Blue Jays, and so we would talk a lot of Toronto Blue Jays baseball. People in Hollywood talking about the Toronto Blue Jays? People in Hollywood have never even heard of the Toronto Blue Jays! It just made him that much more down to earth. I never got the sense that he took himself too seriously or his success that seriously, which is very difficult to do, because once you become A list actors Hollywood is just fawning all over you – all the agents, the PR people and the sycophants, everyone is telling you how brilliant you are. It’s very difficult after hearing that for a number of years to not start saying, ‘well enough people have said it so they must be right’. He was never affected by that, you just got the sense that he enjoyed the work.”
Searching for Candy Page 9
