Chapter 17

JOHNNY TORONTO

Cool Runnings, filmed and released in 1993, marked the first commercially successful Hollywood movie John Candy had starred in since Uncle Buck four years earlier.

The story was drawn from one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of the Olympic games. In 1988, an unlikely team of Jamaican bobsledders who had never seen snow defied the odds and earned worldwide acclaim.

A movie based on that saga had been in the works for several years and was almost made a couple of times, only to have the plug pulled. Producer Dawn Steel finally got the cameras rolling in two locations—Calgary and Jamaica.

Candy plays Irv, the coach, the catalyst for the Jamaican athletes to achieve their personal best. At first he doesn’t believe they are capable of being bobsled racers.

“From my character’s point of view,” Candy observed in an interview promoting the film, “these guys are a joke. They’ll never succeed. We’re in Jamaica. There are no sleds here, no snow. They have no idea what a bobsled is. Yet they’re determined.”

Irv gives the Jamaican athletes a two-week trial. Then, impressed by their energy and drive, he determines to help them reach their goal. At first the film-makers had thought of Irv as a dramatic rather than a comic role, but when Candy was suggested for the part, they changed their mind.

“John was the biggest surprise to us,” said Dawn Steel. “Once he read the script and said he wanted to do it, we couldn’t picture anyone else in the role.”

In fact Candy gives the picture a likeable spirit. As director Jon Turteltaub explained: “It was important for me that Irv wasn’t a goofy, funny guy. He’s hardened, tired, angry and bitter, and has come to Jamaica to escape from something in his life. John loved playing the part, and he was able to balance the comedy and the heart.”

This being one of those alarmingly heartwarming, wholesome Disney outings for a mainstream family audience, the movie has its buffoonish side, featuring bar-room brawls and gags about guys from the tropics doing pratfalls when they encounter ice. The moral struggle in Cool Runnings is as rigged as the 1919 World Series. Yet despite its formula of shameless post-Rocky uplift, the film is watchable; patches of it are even enjoyable.

Candy does the best anybody could with big speeches such as: “If you’re not enough without a gold medal, you’re not enough with it.” And (on having been barred and disgraced in the past): “It’s quite simple, really. I had to win. When you make winning your whole life, you have to keep on winning.”

Dawn Steel went so far as to suggest that the reason Candy connected emotionally with the role was that there was a bit of Irv’s story in Candy’s film career. “Irv was a guy who won medals and then made mistakes and wasn’t welcome any more. In some ways John felt that way also. He had an extraordinary body of work, yet he felt out of the core of Hollywood decision-making.”

Cool Runnings (released in the fall of 1993) was a box-office hit, and it gave Candy’s career a needed boost. As things turned out, it was also the last John Candy movie that would be embraced by the public.

*   *   *

As the Toronto Argonauts floundered through the 1993 season on their way to an embarrassing final record of three wins, fifteen losses, John Candy—busy making a Hollywood comeback—was spending less time with the Argos. But he was still loyal to the team and the dream of leading them to glory, and he frequently occupied the club-owner’s box during Argo home games at SkyDome.

Candy’s disenchantment with Bruce McNall had become apparent, at least to members of the Argo inner circle like Brian Cooper, who recalls: “When John had had enough, he sort of divorced himself from Bruce at one point. I would present a plan, and John would say, ‘Do what you want.’”

Around the same time Candy was becoming increasingly disaffected with McNall, he was enjoying reconciliations with another mogul who played a major part in his life—Andrew Alexander. In 1985 Alexander had purchased the original Chicago Second City operation along with exclusive worldwide rights to the name from his former partner, Second City founder Bernard Sahlins. Then in 1992, after the failure of his Santa Monica club, Alexander moved from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Bret Gallagher—who left his Argo job to work as Candy’s assistant—had inadvertently raised an unmentionable name one day when an “SCTV” rerun was on in Candy’s hotel suite. Watching the credits on the show, he asked: “Who’s Andrew Alexander?”

Bob Crane, who was in the room at the time, giggled and shot Gallagher a look that indicated he was crossing into dangerous territory. But Alexander had already initiated a series of deals that would lead to his being called back from the gallows.

Candy and Alexander had been battling for years, most recently through a lawsuit over royalty payments. But Alexander hated being regarded as the bad guy; he wanted to be liked and appreciated as the godfather who put “SCTV” on the air and thereby launched a lot of major careers. Alexander had suggested compiling a comedy video called The Best of John Candy. It was his way of extending an olive branch—and provided a way to end the lawsuit Candy had launched while making both sides feel they were winners.

Meanwhile Candy had heard that his old friend Joyce Sloane, who had been with the organization for twenty-five years, was rumoured to be in danger of losing her job once Alexander returned to Chicago. Candy could be fiercely loyal to old friends, especially if he felt they were in need of protection. That gave Candy a reason to make contact with the Second City office, and Alexander seized on the opportunity to bolster the rapprochement. Sloane would be kept on in a part-time consulting role. Moreover, Alexander had a tempting offer that would turn antagonists into allies.

By 1993, Alexander had decided to seek a licence for a specialty comedy channel in Canada—and he invited Candy to become his partner. It was a shrewd idea—at once strengthening his application to the government regulatory board which had the task of granting licences, and at the same time giving Candy a good reason to make peace.

“There was a fence to be mended, and they did it on their own,” says Gallagher. “Look what Andrew was offering. He was setting up an application for a comedy channel, and he was willing to let John be one of the owners—just like Guy Caballero. They resolve the dispute about royalties. John’s friend gets her job protected. And as a sweetener, they release a video of John Candy’s best SCTV sketches.”

Indeed, the rapprochement was so complete that after spending years as the man John Candy loved to hate, Andrew Alexander would be chosen to deliver his eulogy.

*   *   *

In the fall of 1993, work was keeping Candy in Toronto rather than Los Angeles, so Rose and the children stayed on at the Ontario farmhouse through the fall school term rather than returning to L.A.

In October, Candy signalled a major career change when he filmed the made-for-TV-movie Hostage for a Day. The script had been written for him by his Frostbacks employee Bob Crane and Crane’s wife, Kari Hildebrand, along with Peter Torokvei. It’s a lightweight comedy about a browbeaten print-shop owner, Warren, who stages his own kidnapping in order to thwart his domineering, spendthrift wife and her mean-spirited father.

When Crane suggested Candy could direct as well as star, Candy jumped at the chance to direct—but decided he couldn’t handle it if he were also playing the main part. So in the central role written for Candy, he cast George Wendt (who had played Norm on “Cheers” for eleven years, and whom Candy had known since 1973, when both worked in Chicago at Second City). Candy contented himself with a juicy cameo as a KGB agent with a thick beard and a thicker accent, and his brief appearance on screen gives the picture a needed jolt of energy.

Financed by the Fox network (in the U.S.) and WIC (in Canada), Hostage had a four-week, twenty-day shoot, using Woodbridge (a Toronto subdivision with monster homes) and the beguiling Haliburton cottage area.

The filming of Hostage began with the shadow of death over it. Just before shooting started, Kari Hildebrand—who had been fighting cancer for months—was found dead one morning by her husband, Bob Crane, at the guest house on Candy’s Queensville estate, where they had been staying during pre-production work on the film.

Candy handled everyone working on the film with extraordinary affability and generosity, realizing that this was his chance to treat actors the way he had always wanted to be treated by his director. During the shoot, Candy showered the cast and crew with gifts—flowers, hats, jackets. Candy had always been known for his generosity to co-workers, but this time the flamboyance and extravagance also bore more than a touch of Bruce McNall’s baronial style of showmanship.

The set of Hostage for a Day was an ongoing love-in. Candy hired several of his old Second City friends—including Robin Duke (as Warren’s greedy wife), Don Lake, Peter Torokvei and John Hemphill—for the cast. He chose Ian Thomas, brother of Dave Thomas, to write the music for the film. And, tipping his hat to the SCTV past, Candy even set the story in the fictional town of Melonville.

In interviews to promote the film, Candy said he found it gratifying that for once he did not have to take the heat for the mistakes of others. “What was so rewarding in this venture,” he told a group of TV critics, “was that I had the control. I’ll take the blame, and if it does well, I’ll take the credit. I enjoy being in that position.”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of credit to go around when Hostage for a Day finally reached the air after Candy’s death. It’s genial enough, with some sweetly funny touches, but too softheaded, scattered and absurdly far-fetched to deter couch potatoes from zapping to another channel.

*   *   *

One night Candy entertained a group in his box at the Dome, partly to celebrate his forty-third birthday, and partly as a farewell party for his colleagues on Hostage.

Bill House attended the party along with his friend Linda Muir, the costume designer on Hostage. Candy was affable and welcoming, but House was alarmed by Candy’s appearance. Not only was he heavier than ever, but House recalls, “Candy did not look at all well, and in particular his hair looked diseased.”

Candy wanted to talk to House about Telefilm Canada and the prospects for producing comedies in Canada. House couldn’t help noticing that throughout the discussion, Candy drank one beer after another and chain-smoked Rothman’s cigarettes. It would be the last time House saw his old friend.

In November, Candy made his final public appearance when he and Eugene Levy shared the job of emcee at a benefit concert at SkyDome to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Concert Productions International. They introduced Blue Rodeo, Simon and Garfunkel, and Gordon Lightfoot. Between emcee duties, Candy returned to his box to watch the show. He told one of the guests he was beset with anxieties, had a hard time sleeping, and was prone to fall asleep in the middle of the day at his desk. But, he said, his deceased friend Gilda Radner had appeared to him in a dream. “Don’t worry, John,” she told him, “everything is going to be all right.”

Gilda could not have been more wrong.

*   *   *

In November, while still editing Hostage, Candy began work on Michael Moore’s satire Canadian Bacon. Moore had become a minor celebrity in the late 1980s because of his surprise hit, Roger and Me, an impudent documentary about General Motors plant closings in Moore’s Michigan home town. Owing to Moore’s habit of playing fast and loose with the facts for comic effect, the film was notorious as well as successful.

Canadian Bacon, which aimed to be irreverent and provocative in the manner of Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear doomsday), was to be Moore’s first non-documentary feature film.

Candy took the role of Bud Boomer, the excessively zealous redneck sheriff of Niagara Falls, N.Y. The U.S. defence industry, enduring rough times after the end of the Cold War, sees Canada as a good prospect for official enemy status. Even the President is persuaded that invading Canada would raise his standings in the polls.

But it’s Candy’s Boomer who takes matters into his own hands and launches an assault on Toronto. It seemed like a delicious premise for the comedian who had been known to friends in Chicago and L.A. as “Johnny Toronto,” and had lived up to that nickname by becoming co-owner of the Argos.

Without Candy, Moore would likely not have been able to make Canadian Bacon. Before Candy committed to it, Moore had run into a wall of resistance from potential backers.

“The feeling in Hollywood was that it was too anti-American, not the sort of movie people wanted to take a date to,” Moore told me just before the movie’s North American premiere at the 1995 Toronto Film Festival.

Moore had been turned down by virtually everyone. Then Candy read the script, discussed it with Moore over breakfast in Detroit, and announced he wanted to do it. What drew him to the project was the fact that it offered something akin to the spoofy roles he used to play on “SCTV.”

Candy was bankable (because of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck), so within two weeks, Moore had a deal to make the film under the banner of Propaganda Films on a budget of twelve million dollars.

This demonstrated an important rule of the game: what matters in Hollywood is not how good your script is but whether anyone thinks people will pay money to see it. Once Candy was signed up, others signed on: Alan Alda, Bill Nunn, Rip Torn, Rhea Perlman.

For once in a Hollywood movie, Toronto got to appear as Toronto instead of a stand-in for New York or Chicago. The denouement occurs when Candy and his troops conquer the CN Tower. Climbing the stairs of the Tower was no easy task for Candy at his weight, and he facetiously suggested Moore could build a set replicating the monument instead of using the real one. It was a running gag that no other actors had ever shot a scene as high up in a freestanding structure.

As long as Candy was around, the film set had the atmosphere of an endless carnival. “The rock and roll was always coming out of his trailer,” says Moore. “There were always jokes and stories and music and old western movies on the VCR. His door was always open, and it wasn’t the usual movie star scene. John’s visitors included high-school chums and working-class people. There was never an invisible fence that said ‘I’m a star and you can’t come near me.’”

In late November, Candy’s friend Dan Aykroyd came for a few days, bringing a special treat for Candy—Virginia smoked ribs. Aykroyd also made a cameo appearance in the film, playing a cop with the Ontario Provincial Police.

Candy had clearly bounced back from recent woes, and his co-workers were treated to a return appearance of the exuberant, ebullient John Candy from the good old days. This was a generous, benevolent Falstaff who treated each film set like his personal tavern, ensuring that his colleagues’ needs were being met and that every day’s filming was enriched by fun, laughter and good times.

The successful release of Cool Runnings gave him a lift, and so did the chance to direct Hostage for a Day and feel, as he never had before, completely in control of a project. After doing hardly any movie work in 1992, he had taken on an exhausting schedule in 1993, but this made him more content. On a film set, he was at home and in his element, and the work left less time for brooding. At the same time, he was able to do the work while living at home, surrounded by Rose, Jennifer and Christopher. The work kept his mind off his health problems and the continuing collapse of the Argos.

During the filming of Canadian Bacon, Candy demonstrated again the qualities that made him one of the most popular stars with movie crews. He always went out of his way to befriend the ordinary workers in non-glamorous jobs. Each of them was invited to his trailer for a drink and a chat.

One day Candy left the set to visit a sick child in hospital—Gerry Salsberg’s twelve-year-old son Zachary, who had cancer. Candy turned up at the astonished boy’s bedside bearing a boxload of John Candy movies on video.

Instead of buying Christmas presents for the cast and crew of Canadian Bacon, Candy donated $10,000 in their names to charities for hospitals and deprived children.

“That made a lot of us feel good,” says Walter Gasparovic, the second assistant director on the picture. “None of us needed more hats and jackets.”

Candy’s loving attention was especially welcome because, according to people who worked on it, Canadian Bacon was far from a happy set. Moore kept the details of day-to-day filming plans vague, and there was constant tension which occasionally erupted in screaming arguments between Moore and his director of photography. And Moore was involved in ongoing warfare with executives of Propaganda. He claimed they were trying to force him to soften the political satire.

“Five weeks into the shooting, the film company had not given me a single pay-cheque,” recalls Moore.

It was Candy who came to his rescue. As soon as Candy learned what was going on, he called his agent in Los Angeles and demanded that Moore be paid. Within hours, Moore received a phone call from the business affairs department of Propaganda to inform him that a cheque was being delivered to his agent. For a guy used to being shunned by GM’s Roger Smith and other big authority figures, the protective clout of his new collaborator was as startling as the spectacle of the CN Tower being captured by Americans.

*   *   *

One year after it was shot, Canadian Bacon was on the shelf and the subject of nasty arguments in the trade press. Polygram Filmed Entertainment, which oversees Propaganda, had planned to release Canadian Bacon through MGM/UA, but the film was delayed and then dropped from the release schedule. In December, 1994, an executive of Propaganda told Variety the film’s test screenings had been very disappointing.

An enraged Michael Moore retorted: “What they found out was that teenagers who hang out in malls and don’t know the name of the governor of California don’t get the film. But Baby Boomers in major cities do get it and love it. So now we know our audience.”

After having its premiere at the 1995 Cannes Festival, Canadian Bacon was given a limited theatrical release in September, 1995, through Gramercy Films in the U.S. and Polygram in Canada. It drew mixed reviews and disappeared from theatres within weeks.

Candy has some good moments, but Canadian Bacon fails to live up to its promise, and comes off as a potentially clever fifteen-minute skit agonizingly stretched out to fill ninety minutes. Bits that may have looked brilliant on the page are strained in execution, perhaps because Moore doesn’t know how to work with actors. You find yourself staring at the screen and saying: “That’s a funny idea. How come I’m not laughing?”

Still, Canadian Bacon would seem like a masterpiece compared to Candy’s final movie, the dismal Wagons East, shot in Durango, Mexico, in early 1994.

Just before Christmas, 1993, John Candy put in a gruelling all-nighter at a film lab working until dawn on the final cut of Hostage for a Day. After spending what turned out to be his last Christmas with his family, he would make a problem-filled trip to Mexico.

Candy made no secret of the fact that he was not looking forward to Wagons East. He told Walter Gasparovic that he hadn’t been feeling well. His knees were giving him trouble, his weight was up, his waistline had expanded to an amazing sixty inches, and he felt tired all the time. Gasparovic asked Candy why, if he was feeling tired and unwell, he planned to go ahead with Wagons East.

Candy’s answer: “Three million dollars.”

The experience of making Hostage for a Day had given Candy such a high that he wanted to develop a new career as a director. And he felt that his Wagons East fee would buy him the freedom to do that.

He had also agreed to an acting gig in a high-profile Hollywood movie to be made after he finished Wagons East. Steven Spielberg—who had not worked with Candy since 1941 fifteen years earlier—was planning to make a movie based on the old Little Rascals series of comedy shorts. Spielberg had called Candy personally to ask him to be in it.

Meanwhile, Candy continued to brood about the Argos, partly because some of Canadian Bacon was shot at the CN Tower, right next to SkyDome.

It just doesn’t seem to work, Candy ruefully confided to Gasparovic, when pals get involved in a joint enterprise. “Friendships don’t lead to good business partnerships,” said Candy.

Still, Candy had not yet come to terms with the fact that Bruce McNall was about to unload the Argos—though the signs were visible, if Candy had been willing to read them.

*   *   *

During their SCTV salad days, Candy and his dear friend Eugene Levy had done a spoof called “The Mirthmakers” in which Candy as Orson Welles visits Levy as super-rich entertainer Bobby Bittman at his ostentatious Beverly Hills mansion, and they feed the audience the hilarious whopper that great comics have to sacrifice themselves so that the audience may laugh, and that this obscenely prosperous star would gladly trade places with someone who is poor but happy.

Not many years after performing in that sketch, Candy now found himself living something close to Bobby Bittman’s life. But to Candy’s frustration, the creative freedom he assumed would go along with fame and money had not. In fact, the more he hobnobbed with the great and famous, the more difficult it had become for him to be true to his own comic instincts—to stay loose and stay funny.

Now, trying to live out a boyhood dream of leading his hometown sports team to glory, Candy had come close to turning himself into one of those Hollywood sharks he used to love lampooning—a tycoon munching pizza in the back seat of a stretch limo.