John Candy’s son, Chris, said at a recent event promoting the new documentary John Candy: I Like Me (via
“I was shocked in a way to see how the interviewers treated him,” Chris said. “That was kind of heartbreaking. And you could see how he was frustrated and found ways to deal with it…Through this (documentary) process, you could see that he was very nervous about eating in public because of the paparazzi. He developed bad eating habits and was like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to eat all day. I’m going to eat at night.'”
Chris continued, “When I hear stories like that, I feel so bad for him because I’m like, ‘How cornered are you?'” And in that moment, as his son, as his friend, I really wish I could grab him by the shoulders and say, “Why do you have to do this?” Who cares? Eat a sandwich and get mad. ”
John Candy: I Like Me is a film from director Colin Hanks and producer Ryan Reynolds. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and subsequently made its streaming debut on Amazon Prime Video on October 10, contains numerous instances during press conferences in which an interviewer essentially calls Candy “fat” to her face.
“Watching interview after interview, terrible things are said and questions are asked in incredibly insensitive ways,” Hanks told Variety before the TIFF premiere. “It’s hard to see how offensive John was in almost every clip. And he had good reason, because some of the things people said were offensive and would not be acceptable today.”
During a Q&A at TIFF, Reynolds revealed that while working on the documentary as a producer, he personally called one of the journalists who had mocked Candy’s weight after seeing archive footage of the insulting incident.
“There were a lot of things they left out in the documentary. They just said things. I called one of them,” Reynolds said of the journalists who were caught on camera making inflammatory comments about Candy’s weight. “I didn’t get into the movie, but I called this journalist to find out.”
“I wasn’t trying to embarrass him or teach him a lesson,” Reynolds continued. “[I told him]it was taken from the movie, but if you want to talk about it, I’ll put it in the movie, because I think every time something like that comes up, you probably have something to say about it, about your journey. We had a very thoughtful conversation about it.”
“John Candy: I Like Me” includes interviews with dozens of the late comedian’s former co-stars, including Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O’Hara. This movie is available on Prime Video.
