eye. You know, like in ‘Ghost’, Demi Moore has that tear and it’s like, it’s going to come down, don’t stop it, and it comes down, and you’re like, ‘Oh, god, I love you.’ Anyway, that was about to happen. And I’m hearing the director go, ‘Who the f—k ’s phone is that?’ I hear the f irst AD go, ‘Who the f --k ’s phone is that?’ And then f inally Denzel break s character. They don’t even call cut. ‘Who the f--k ’s phone is that?’ And I stand up and I look at all those stuntmen around me. And I go, [shouts]
‘Who the f--k ’s phone is that? I t’s
inexcusable!’ And I look at the fir st AD and I go, ‘Who the f --k ’s phone is that?’ And he was like, ‘D, can we do another one?’ And he was like, ‘We’re going to have to, aren’t we?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, these stuntmen. I did admit it to him later on a talk show in Spain. I said, ‘ It was me, ’ which at that time he found hilar ious. He would have turned my bones into like some sor t of cottage cheese on the day though. So, you know, distance does make the hear t grow fonder.
So let’s talk about ‘John Candy: I Like Me’. what did it feel like to share the world premiere with an audience here in Toronto, especially in john candy’s hometown? You never make a movie to hit a release date unless you’re a studio, a financier, or a producer. So we had always k ind of reverse-engineered this to hopefully premiere it at TIFF and being the opening night film is an honour we don’t take for granted that was not something that we were expecting in any way shape or form. But, there is no other place. I mean, this is not a Tellur ide or a Lake Tahoe National Film Festival movie - this is a Toronto International Film Festival film. So yeah. I think John, if he were here, he would have loved the fact that we were all sitting together in a movie theatre and we were in Toronto, and his two k ids and his wife were sitting in that audience.
When you were growing up in vancouver in the ‘80s John Candy was at the height of his fame, with such incredible films like ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’, ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’, ‘Uncle Buck’ - Icons, of course. What are your memories of watching these films and his performances? Well, I watched ‘SCTV ’ all the time. I loved it. And the thing that I loved, now I internalised this when I was younger, I didn’t intellectualise it, I was too young to intellectualise it but I internalised it, you k now, when you watch ‘SCTV ’, some of the sketches are br illiant, like they’re actually genius, and some of them are just really just patently ter r ible. And that’s what makes it special, that is life. You would see them exper imenting and playing and really k ind of enjoying the lack of per fection. And you juxtapose that to now,
and I see this all the time, I ’m r ight now
teaching what I need to learn myself over and over and over again, but I see with my k ids, is this k ind of refusal to fail or to put yourself in a position in which you may fail or suck or be bad at something. And it was so revelatory as I got older and realised it was no longer a feeling I had but I could intellectualise it. I was like, ‘Yes, they’d let themselves be bad. And when you do that, you can go be good at something.’ Or in my case, at times, mediocre - even that work s. [laughs] When my k ids wake up too ear ly I go, ‘Sor ry k ids, park ’s closed’, like John. And these things that are kind of indelible. And yeah, he just really touched me in a way that I wasn’t expecting. There were a lot of things we lef t
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out of the documentary, journalists just saying stuf f. One of them I called, I didn’t put in the movie, but I called this journalist
just to say, you k now, ‘Do you recall this
moment?’ And I wasn’t trying to shame them or teach them a lesson – who am I do to that? I actually was calling to say, ‘ I took it out of the movie but I would put it in the movie if you wanted to talk about it. Because maybe you have something to say about it, maybe you have something to say about your journey when it comes to something like that.’ And we had such a thoughtful conversation.
Finally, if there is one thing that you can say you learned from making the John Candy documentary, what would that be? I think , have the self -awareness to sor t of,
I think ,
under stand that, not everybody in the wor ld has to be happy with you all the time, you k now? And they’re not going to be. And this wor ld is a gigantic. We’re all on a screaming, spinning, flaming, green and blue sh-t wheel f lying through space, trying not to k ill each other. And I think it’s these little moments that matter. So if we’re ever in that situation where, like, you k now, you’re defending your life and we’re look ing back at, you k now, all of our years and all the things that we did, you might be a little bit disappointed, like I will, when you get
to that 30-year
stretch where you’re star ing at a little rectangle [phone] for 30 straight years and you can’t see what’s on it. My wor st fear is, like, getting to, if there is a heaven that I get to go to, I look back at my life and it’s just like, yeah, but what am I doing? I’m just doing this on the thing [look s at phone]. So, yeah, I’ve found that, like, when I ’m putting it down, when I make time to put it down, trust me, I struggle with it probably more than most, life gets a lot better when I let myself exper ience a little awe. Thanks.
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INTERVIEW RYAN R E Y N O L D S
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