According to Deutch, it was obvious at times that John had some demons, although it never, ever affected his work, even if he had been up all night he would turn up on set with no sleep and work as hard as ever. “He ate, he drank, he would come back having not slept sometimes and that was not a secret. When my kids came to visit me once he said to them ‘whatever you want come look in my fridge’, he took them on to his trailer and he had like five lunches in there. But the thing is he never showed those demons, he was private about it, he never ever lost his temper, never ever was a diva – never! I don’t care if he had been up for a week he would always be professional.”
Joking around on set John was overheard saying he was in Demolition Man – the scene at Taco Bell ‘I was in that’, ‘you were?’ ‘Yeah I was in the back, waving. Gone With the Wind – I was in that, I was in the side there.’ A little kid came to visit the set and John told the child how amazing his life was “look I get to sing and dance and tell jokes and they pay me for it, what could be better than that?”
Deutch had convinced himself that the film was going to be a flop, “I was just absolutely paralysed and I went away with my girlfriend and I didn’t pick up the phone, and then Monday morning it was a huge success and everyone was like calling me”. In fact the film, released in 1988, grossed over US$41 million and is still a timeless favourite for Candy and Aykroyd fans. The lodge they actually filmed in was a replica from Lake Bass, it can still be seen to this day on the Universal Studios tour.
Howard Deutch told me how much Candy and Hughes loved each other, to the point where he thinks they fell in love with each other, total soul mates, “They should have been married, they would have been married had they have been gay”. They would talk every night, they knew everything about each other, share stories, make up jokes, go out for the same kind of food. What also struck me was how Deutch told me Hughes didn’t think he was going to be around for a long time, like he knew the clock was ticking, just like Candy did. “Candy made Hughes laugh and Hughes was a brilliant writer and once he got his kind of fangs into a person whether it was Molly (Ringwald) or Candy, then that personality would ignite him and he could write a character around that person. A figment of his mind of that character became a collision of the real person and the character; they shared responsibility of that, emerging out of a character he wrote that comes tailor-made, it fits like a glove.”
They really were a marriage made in Hollywood heaven.
Above: Jim and John Candy circa 1955, photo courtesy of Shawn Chaplin.
Below: John Candy and Jonathan O’Mara, Niagara Falls, 1969, copyright Jonathan O’Mara.
Above: What was The Donlands Theatre, copyright Jonathan O’ Mara 2015.
Below: Neil McNeil High School, copyright Jonathan O’Mara 2015.
Above: Walter Olkewicz, John Candy and Mickey Rourke on the set of 1941 in 1979, copyright Walter Olkewicz.
Below: John Candy’s Star on the Canadian Walk of Fame, King Street West. John was inducted posthumously in 1998.
Copyright Tracey J Morgan 2018
Above: John Candy and Rick Lazzarini on the set of Spaceballs, copyright Rick Lazzarini 1986.
Below: Dione Taylor (Hair stylist) with John Candy on the set of Spaceballs. Copyright Rick Lazzarini 1986.
I like me…
John Hughes wrote a masterpiece in just over a weekend, ‘masterpiece’ being an understatement. A classic that everyone loves, gets played repeatedly every year - especially at American Thanksgiving. It shows the huge heart of strangers from worlds apart - coming together (even if one is reluctant). The acting and writing could not have been more perfect. Of course, I am talking about the great, Planes, Trains and Automobiles (PTA), with co-leads Steve Martin and John Candy acting their hearts out, making you laugh and cry with just the lift of an eyebrow.
As I mentioned before, Howard Deutch was going to direct PTA, but when they cast Martin and Candy together, John Hughes could not let the project go and decided he had to direct it and advised Deutch he could do Big Country/The Great Outdoors instead.
Neal Page (Martin), is the straight man, he has the well paid job as an advertising executive, which also brings the long commute, and he is desperately trying to get from New York City, to home in Chicago, to spend Thanksgiving with his beautiful wife and 2.4 kids. The weather and transport issues have other ideas. Neal encounters Del Griffith (Candy) enroute, who is a wandering Shower Curtain Salesman. Their first introduction was Del stealing Neal’s taxi cab, (although Del proclaims it was a mistake) sets the tone for the initial unlikely friendship;
(The following is an excerpt from Planes, Trains and Automobiles)
Del:“I know you, don't I? I'm usually very good with names, but I'll be damned if I haven’t
forgotten yours.”
Neal: “You stole my cab.”
Del:(Chuckling) “I've never stolen anything in my life!”
Neal: “I hailed a cab on Park Avenue this afternoon, and er, before I could get in it, you stole it.”
Del: (Thinks) “You're the guy who tried to get my cab!I knew I knew you. Yeah. (Chuckling) You scared the bejesus out of me. (Pauses and thinks) Come to think of it, it was awful easy getting a cab during rush hour.
Neal: “Forget it.”
Del: “I can't forget it. I am sorry. I had no idea that was your cab. Let me make it up to you somehow huh please? How about a nice hot dog and a beer?
Neal:“Uh, no, thanks.”
Del: “Just a hot dog, then?”
Neal: “I'm kind of picky about what I eat.”
Del: “Some coffee?”
Neal:“No.”
Del:“Milk?”
Neal: “No.”
Del: “Soda?”
Neal:“No.”
Del:“Some tea?”
Neal: “No.”
Del: “Lifesavers? Slurpee?”
Neal: “Sir, please.”
Del: “Just let me know. I'm here.” (Excitedly waving his finger) “I knew I knew you!”
As fate would have it, the couple are seated next to each other on the plane, Del attaches himself to Neil and aids him in his disastrous journey home when the flight is diverted due to bad weather. It is a beautiful comedy, full of heart. The film was shot in several locations, and due to the weather, the whole cast and crew had their own Planes, Trains and Automobiles experience - although as opposed to travelling home they trying to find the snow they so desperately needed for the picture (they ended up several weeks behind schedule and eventually shipped snow in to some of the locations).
If you can find the original PTA script (and it is out there in the ether), you can see how the characters are portrayed exactly as Hughes wanted, but both actors added a little something of themselves too. Hughes always encouraged his actors to improvise, in fact they would finish the scene and not hear the words ‘cut’ so they knew they had to keep going. If you read it you’ll see where the actors went off script and just how much it added to the movie. They filmed up to 14 hours a day. Adlib after adlib, often in the freezing cold. Hughes had so much footage that the initial cut was four and a half hours long, I would have so loved to have seen that, a lot of comedy gold must have ended up on the cutting room floor. You can actually find one deleted scene on Youtube where Del and Neal are eating their in-flight dinners, it’s hilarious, I have no idea why it was left out.
Candy really found his acting chops in this film, it’s up there with some of his finest work and he never fails to make me laugh and cry, no matter how many times I have watched his performance.
Del’s speech after Neal has laid into him at the hotel room was just magnificent, the hurt in Candy’s eyes, the way he delivered his lines, “You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better…” was worthy of an Oscar. If you aren’t already completely in love with Candy, it’s moments like this that make you fall for him. He gets you right in the heart, he hits you when you least expect it - and you can’t fail but to connect
with him, he bleeds humanity into his work. Of course Martin playing the straight guy was also genius. Martin later talked in interviews about their rapport, “At that point in my career, this was the direction I was headed for-more emotional roles. John Candy was one of the best acting partners I’ve ever worked with. We had great timing with each other”.
Martin also told JC Corcoran in an interview that he thought Planes, Trains and Automobiles was some of Candy’s finest work, “I saw him do scenes that aren’t in the movie that were just breathtaking”.
Martin remembers fondly “It was the first day of filming, he brought all this exercise equipment, jogging things, stationary bikes, weights and everything, and then never touched them!
“Well, he was a very sweet guy, very sweet and complicated. He was always friendly, always outgoing and funny, nice and polite, but I could tell he kind of had a little broken heart inside him”, which was possibly one of the reasons he played Del so well.
Hughes’ mind was always working, apparently the script was influenced by a disastrous journey he once had trying to get from New York to Chicago, but actually his trip lasted 5 days and he reached Chicago just as he was meant to be back in New York. Hughes filmed everything, even when they were not shooting properly they left the camera running between takes which resulted in them using twice as much film in the cameras than a normal movie shoot would use.
From all the extra footage Hughes filmed, a 10-minute short was also created, from the ‘Doobie’s Taxiola’ scene. Larry Hankin who played Doobie told me:
“I revered John (Hughes), I was very happy to work with him, he made great movies and this guy knew ‘funny’. He was watching me and John (Candy) hang out and riff, so John Hughes set aside a whole afternoon of me, John and Steve Martin to work in the cab. The cab was set up on rockers in a garage, we weren’t really driving around. When we shot the scene in the cab, the actual scene you saw in the movie took an hour to shoot. But then he sent everybody home expect a very small crew, the cinematographer, the sound guy, him, Steve Martin, me and John.
“So for the rest of the afternoon we improvised in that cab for hours. It was really great because John and I were (from) Second City, so we were great at improvising, we were just playing together. We must have improvised for three hours just inside that cab. He (Hughes) was watching on the screen and he would come down and would just watch all three of us improvise and he would sit on this orange crate outside the cab, and he would say ‘remember Steve when you said that? and Larry, you said that, and John you answer…’, I was like this guy is incredible he has a photographic memory. So that was just really cool, I got to riff with two of the heaviest guys in comedy, for hours! None of that stuff ever appeared in the movie.
“A while later I was working with Chris Columbus on She’s Having a Baby and I was talking about John with Chris Columbus and he said ‘well yeah, I really respect your work Larry, especially that film short you did in the taxi cab.’ I said ‘what taxi cab?’ He said ‘you know that one with you, Steve Martin and John Candy, you were playing Doobie in that film short.’ I said ‘I didn’t do any film short’, he said ‘well I was at John Hughes’ house and when we were talking about doing this movie and he showed me the film short of you, Candy and Martin in the cab.’ It was a ten minute film. So that is what John Hughes did with that afternoon of improvising. I have never seen it.”
(FYI John also has a very short cameo in She’s Having a Baby).
Other scenes that did not make the final movie included flashbacks to Del and his wife Marie (or as we find out later, his late wife), Marie was played by Susan Isaacs but sadly only the picture of Susan made the final film, oh how I would love to see those cuts. "To the wives!". Astute viewers may also wonder why part way through the film Del appears to have an unexplained black eye, this was also down to editing, Neal actually hits Del in the script, after Del admits he forgot to take out insurance on the hire car, just after it was destroyed beyond repair.
The wonderful “those aren’t pillows scene” in the motel room was not in the original script, Candy had a similar experience with Jonathan O'Mara when they went to Buffalo as teenagers for John to apply for the Marines, O’Mara said it was so close to their experience “John must have influenced the scene”. John remembered in interviews that this scene took forever to film, basically when the two leads had stopped corpsing the camera would then start to shake, it took forever for everyone to get through it.
Another great scene was between Martin, Candy and Martin Ferrero who played the motel clerk at the El Rancho Motel, the couple stayed at. Neal and Del find the motel not long after their car had been on fire, Neal’s credit cards were so melted they could not be used and Neal barters with the clerk to pay for his room with “$17 and a hell of a nice watch”, Del’s offer of “$2 and a Casio” were not accepted unsurprisingly! (You may also know Ferrero as the immoral lawyer from Jurassic Park that meets his untimely demise by being eaten by a T-Rex whilst he is sitting on the toilet). Ferrero was only on set for a day to film that scene and told me about meeting Candy;
“When I went on set that day, John was chatting with all the crew and he was on set practically all the time, talking to people and being very outgoing. He welcomed me in, he said ‘I know we are working together’. Steve Martin wasn’t on set a lot, he would do his part and then go back to his trailer.
“When I saw Steve and John work that day I noticed there was no improv at all, they didn’t improvise, they stayed on the script and I asked him about it, John said “No we don’t do a lot of improv because John Hughes has written a script that is pretty tight and there is a rhythm to what he has written, if you were to begin to improvise you might waste a lot of time, it might be funny but you might be upsetting the rhythm, it’s a heartfelt important movie and you need to stay on course.”
I actually wonder if at this stage, because they were so far behind schedule whether they had also started to rein in the improv, I know at one point Candy and Martin had agreed not to improv too much anymore as Hughes loved them improvising, probably a little too much and they could do one scene fifty different ways.
Ferrero recalled, “John pulled me off to one side and said, ‘are you preparing anything for your character?’ and I said ‘I have a backstory, but I won’t use it if we aren’t improvising’.
“I told John I had done a commercial for tacos where I had done my Jack Nicholson impression. So John said ‘let’s hear your Jack Nicholson impression’ and I did it, and it cracked him up. He said ‘You wanna try and sneak that in on a take?’, I said ‘I guess I could try’ and he said, ‘but you’ve got to mask it - don’t make it too much like him else it will be just an impression - but the attitude was correct for the character and you should try that’. I said ‘OK’, on one of the takes I did try it, I snuck a little of it in at the beginning and that’s the one John Hughes used. So it worked out really well.
“When they were wrapping up for the day, John said he was heading back to his trailer and he was going to watch the end of the Lakers Celtics game (the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics), they were in the final playoffs and he said ‘why don’t you just come over to the trailer to watch it?’, and I went over the trailer, he gave me something to eat, he would ask me questions about the Celtic and Lakers rivalry - he said he was really into hockey but he didn’t know that much about basketball. I was very vocal throughout the game, John found it very amusing, it turned out to be one of the most important games in basketball history, it was the game where Magic Johnson took the hook over Kevin McHale in the last seven seconds, LA that night was ecstatic.”
Greg Agalsoff was the boom operator on the movie and recalls, “I was certainly a fan of John's before we met and worked together. What made me a bigger fan was what I had heard of him by other crew members. Unlike other crew members who generally are introduced to the actors they will be working with on the first day of shooting, I was invited to have a beer with him in our hotel ba
r in Buffalo, NY, by John's driver and friend, Frank Hernandez. Several weeks earlier, when I ran into Frank on a studio lot and we both discovered that we would be working together, Frank told me that I would never work with a nicer person. He was more than right. When I met Frank and John in the bar, and was introduced, John was so very warm and unassuming. He smiled and said, "If Frankie says you're ok, then you're ok." A Buffalo Sabres hockey game was on the TV and I found out how rabid of a hockey fan John was!
“John got along with everyone. I mean everyone. He kept all of us ‘in stitches’ and both actors and crew alike adored him. John Hughes would have a most difficult time stifling his laughter in so many of the scenes that we did. Great to everyone, all the time, even when the situation was difficult.
“A great memory of John was when the great Chicago Blackhawk hockey player, Bobby Hull (aka the "Golden Jet") came by to meet John at a bar location we were shooting in. John was like a little kid, meeting his hero.”
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