{"id":212140,"date":"2025-10-09T16:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/212140\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T16:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:33:07","slug":"john-candy-i-like-me-documentary-revisits-real-and-honest-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/212140\/","title":{"rendered":"John Candy ‘I Like Me’ documentary revisits ‘real and honest’ star"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Ryan Reynolds on John Candy\u2019s prideful vulnerability<\/p>\n

Ryan Reynolds reflects on John Candy\u2019s mix of pride and vulnerability in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” The actor produces “John Candy: I Like Me.”<\/p>\n

Entertain This!<\/p>\n

TORONTO \u2013 Most kids don\u2019t get to go to work with their dad and hang out with John Candy<\/a>. Colin Hanks was lucky in that regard.<\/p>\n

As a 5-year-old visiting his father, Tom Hanks, on the set of the 1984 comedy \u201cSplash,\u201d he met Candy and was taken immediately by the Canadian comedian\u2019s warmth<\/a>. \u201cHe had this innate gift of making you feel important and feel special,\u201d Colin Hanks says. \u201cThat even as a kid, your opinion mattered. That your emotions mattered. That you mattered.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that gentle, complex man and beloved film icon whose story is told in the new documentary \u201cJohn Candy: I Like Me\u201d<\/a> (streaming Oct. 10 on Prime Video<\/a>), directed by Hanks and produced by Ryan Reynolds<\/a>. The movie charts Candy’s rise from being part of the improv comedy troupe The Second City in his hometown of Toronto in the 1970s to his stardom in the 1980s with movies like \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles\u201d and \u201cUncle Buck.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI Like Me\u201d explores Candy\u2019s personal struggles, from the anxiety he dealt with throughout his life after losing his dad at age 5 to being a big guy in a looks-obsessed industry. And interviews with former costars like Bill Murray, Steve Martin and Macaulay Culkin give new context to Candy\u2019s most famous roles and scenes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have such a greater appreciation for him as a performer now, how adept he was at being able to convey things in such a simplistic manner that was just so genuine and real and honest,\u201d Reynolds says.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Vancouver, Reynolds was a fan of the \u201cSCTV\u201d sketch comedy show \u2013 a sort of Canadian \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d \u2013 that launched the careers of Candy as well as Eugene Levy, Catherine O\u2019Hara, Harold Ramis and Martin Short. \u201cThese are the people I studied. I watched these guys one inch from the TV,\u201d Reynolds says. But Candy was always special for the actor, especially his \u201cPlanes, Trains\u201d character Del Griffith.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would find that part of himself, the dad or the lost soul that is insecure and just wants to feel part of something,\u201d Reynolds says of Candy. \u201cMy brother’s very vulnerable and I remember him saying once, \u2018I just want to have something.\u2019 This is when I was working at Safeway grocery store, and I remember thinking, \u2018God, if I could ever give him something, I would like to be able to do that.\u2019 Because he just wanted something of his own and couldn’t find his place. And I feel that’s in Del a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revisiting their father\u2019s movies for \u201cI Like Me\u201d has also been a joy for co-executive producers Jennifer Candy-Sullivan and Chris Candy. Their dad died of a heart attack at age 43 in 1994 when they were 13 and 8, respectively.<\/p>\n

Candy-Sullivan still loves watching the scene in \u201cUncle Buck\u201d when her father\u2019s title character eviscerates an assistant principal who insulted his niece and a little boy nearby reacts hilariously to the takedown. \u201cAll of his reactions are authentic because he had never seen or heard our dad do that scene yet,\u201d she says during an interview with her brother in The Second City’s John Candy Box Theatre.<\/p>\n

And Chris Candy enjoyed Tom Hanks describing his dad\u2019s \u201ccollaborative\u201d spirit for a key \u201cSplash\u201d scene: \u201cI saw the connectivity between the improv and that methodology and acting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

John Candy had conflicted feelings about some of his well-known works, too. Murray tells a story in the documentary of how his \u201cStripes\u201d costar felt somewhat uncomfortable doing one of the movie\u2019s signature scenes where his Army recruit Ox mud-wrestles strippers and winds up with their bikini tops in his hands.<\/p>\n

Hearing that made Candy-Sullivan flash back to their basement when living in Canada where John Candy displayed pictures from “Stripes,” including that scene. She wonders how he reconciled constantly reliving the moment with being proud enough of the movie to place it “prominently where family gathered,” she says. “It’s that kind of weird conundrum.”<\/p>\n

After John Candy\u2019s death, it took the siblings a while to be able to view their dad\u2019s movies, especially the posthumous releases \u201cCanadian Bacon\u201d and \u201cWagons East.” Candy-Sullivan \u201ccouldn’t get myself to watch” the latter for years because the film had to be finished after his death, she says. \u201cBut as time went on, his roles were so strong and the love was felt so much in those characters that when you watch them, it was cathartic. It felt really nice to see him back, walking and talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of John Candy\u2019s characters were “very much avenues of who he was,\u201d says Chris Candy, whose favorite movie of his dad\u2019s is \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles.” He calls it “the masterclass of comedy.”<\/p>\n

Candy-Sullivan allows that she \u201cwaffles\u201d depending on the day or mood when it comes to her top choice. As much as she likes her dad in \u201cJFK\u201d (\u201cHe\u2019s so different”), her current fave is \u201cSummer Rental\u201d because of \u201cthe frustration and the love and the absurdity\u201d of a family vacation combined with \u201cthe way that he talks to his kids and interacts with people and fights for justice,\u201d she says. \u201cI like watching that movie because I see a lot of him in it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Reynolds on John Candy\u2019s prideful vulnerability Ryan Reynolds reflects on John Candy\u2019s mix of pride and vulnerability…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[13716,228,108073,236,13721,1036,31568,10167,1129,86606,88,954,120877,13913,83981,19846,68285,3729,13723,16693,7050,31569,206,3,13694,97118,8513,8985,12627,24510,23876,22169,13692],"class_list":["post-212140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-affiliate","tag-arts","tag-candy","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrities-u0026-entertainment-news","tag-comedy","tag-comedy-films","tag-documentaries","tag-documentary","tag-documentary-films","tag-entertainment","tag-films","tag-hanks","tag-john","tag-john-candy","tag-live","tag-live-comedy","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-martin","tag-movie","tag-movie-reference","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-reference","tag-reynolds","tag-ryan","tag-ryan-reynolds","tag-steve","tag-steve-martin","tag-tom","tag-tom-hanks","tag-u0026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}