John Candy: I Like Me is an anomaly in the context of celebrity documentaries. It contains few of the famous-person struggles that have become clichés of the genre — no scandal, no addiction, no bankruptcy, no notably objectionable behavior. The comedian was not without his struggles, but this is a nice movie. And it’s made by Hollywood Nice Son Colin Hanks, who met Candy when Candy co-starred with his father, Tom, in 1984’s Splash.
“He was an incredibly engaging personality,” Colin Hanks recalls. “It takes a special kind of person to leave that kind of imprint on a kid.”
I Like Me, released by Prime Video, came to Hanks through producer Ryan Reynolds, who long has had an affinity for Candy and already had secured participation from Candy’s children, who supplied the production with home movies, scripts and other hallmarks from their father’s vast archives.
The resulting film is a touching homage to an entertainer who somehow held on to his sense of self despite losing his father on his 5th birthday, battling anxiety at a time when mental health wasn’t commonly discussed in mainstream culture, and being grilled by journalists about his weight. The title comes from a well-known Planes, Trains and Automobiles monologue in which Candy’s character, chummy salesman Del Griffith, responds to put-downs from Steve Martin’s unsympathetic advertising exec, Neal Page, saying, “Think what you want about me. I’m not changing. I like me.”
One of Hanks’ greatest research finds was outtakes from Candy’s Home Alone improvisations. His role as the “polka king of the Midwest” is one of the blockbuster’s most memorable elements, and director Chris Columbus dug up the dailies from his basement. That footage now doubles as a tribute to Candy’s scene partner, Catherine O’Hara, who delivered Candy’s eulogy in 1994 and died in January.
Hanks acknowledges that there’s a more “salacious” version of the doc that draws contrasts between Candy and his two large-framed peers who died of drug overdoses, John Belushi and Chris Farley, but he chose not to go down that path. “It’s my job as a filmmaker to not create drama but to show where that drama actually existed and present it in a way that is engaging,” he says. “Everybody experiences trauma in some shape or form. It doesn’t have to be big-T trauma. But those personality traits — that gregarious, everybody-come-together energy — was what made John special. They were also learned coping mechanisms.”
The goal, in Hanks’ eyes, was to deepen the public’s understanding of the man who helped to define a generation of comedy with Second City Television, Brewster’s Millions, Spaceballs, Uncle Buck and Cool Runnings. “I remember thinking early on that John was this everyman, and people saw a quality in him that they connected with,” says Hanks. “What if the quote-unquote issue that our subject has is just as relatable as what everyone else goes through?”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.