BEFORE: Ryan Reynolds carries over from again from "I Am: Celine Dion". Yes, my Doc Block that was supposed to be all U.S.-themed has been invaded by Canadians. I mean, they're very FUNNY Canadians, for the most part, except for Celine Dion and Paul Anka, so I'm trying very hard to be OK with it. A bunch of people from around the Toronto area ended up on SNL, or producing SNL, or on SCTV, which also kind of aired on NBC late on Friday nights, and that's what I watched as a kid, SNL and SCTV.
However, all these Canadians are quite problematic when it comes to assigning U.S. states to these documentaries. Canada, it turns out, is NOT part of the U.S. - not yet, anyway - so this is forcing me to be very creative when finding states to profile each night. But I looked up where 'Stripes" was filmed, and it turned out the army training scenes were shot in KENTUCKY, like in and around Fort Knox. So there you go, we know that John Candy spent some time there, so tonight's "Get to Know a State" state is KENTUCKY!
Date admitted to the U.S.: June 1, 1792 (15th state)
Claim to fame: I just said it, Fort Knox is there, OK I'll throw in the Kentucky Derby as well.
Nickname: The Bluegrass State. Sure, why not?
State Motto: Either "United we stand, divided we fall" or "Deo gratiam habeamus". Your pick.
State Flower: Goldenrod
State Bird: Cardinal
State Fish: Kentucky spotted bass
State Horse breed: Thoroughbred, because nobody likes a non-thorough horse.
State Insect: Western honeybee
State Mushroom: Indigo milkcap
State Fossil: Mitch McConnell
State Dance: Clogging
State Tree: Tulip poplar
Notable Sports Teams: None that I'm aware of. Who has time for major league sports, what with all the horse racing and the clogging? Sure, there's triple-A baseball and college football, but who gives a shit about that?
Fun Facts: Except for the excitement of that Kentucky Derby, there's no fun in Kentucky, I'll bet. That's why they need to make all that bourbon and moonshine. Do they even know that the Civil War ended? I'm not sure. They have both kinds of wild turkey, the animal kind and the alcohol kind. Mammoth Cave might be fun if you like that sort of thing, I can't do caves myself, there's that deep-seated fear that as soon as I go in, TODAY will be the day that the cave collapses, even it's been solid and non-collapsing for thousands of years. Mountain climbing, whitewater rafting, hiking, yeah those are not my idea of fun, either.
Which is why I've never been to Kentucky - so I'm still holding at 23 states visited out of 35 now.
THE PLOT: Explores the life of iconic funnyman John Candy, who died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 43.
AFTER: OK, so I had to work for just a few hours today, the health services group that rented the theater for their annual staff meeting suddenly decided the other day to rent the small theater in addition to the big theater, so I got called in just to oversee the team-building exercises in the small theater. Great, I SO LOVE corporate B.S. and team-building exercises and I don't consider them a waste of everyone's time AT ALL. But hey, it's a shift, and a short one at that - I can come in on a couple day's notice and pick up a few more hours. After the meeting they put out a bunch of food in the lobby from several prominent local food chains - Popeye's, Shake Shack, Insomnia Cookies. I was offered a chance to eat, but I didn't take much, because my wife was cooking dinner. If there's any of that food left in the staff fridge tomorrow, well, that's another story.
I got off at 6 pm and headed home - only to encounter a real jerk on the subway who was using the elevator for a full-on moped, not a simple scooter or electric bike, which would be legal, he brought a full-size moped into the subway, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. His perception was that I did not back up enough to allow him to get his moped off the elevator, however I maintained that I DID back up, he had plenty of room to get his illegal vehicle off the elevator, however I was standing close by, as you do, because once he did get his moped out of the way, I needed to board the elevator before the doors closed. We exchanged words, obviously we disagreed about whether I backed up as requested, which I did, and he came back onto the elevator to try and have the last word, sticking his finger in my face and threatening to slap me.
This guy was looking for a fight, no doubt, but I wasn't going to take the bait. Every time I've ever been in a fight it's ended badly. I just maintained that he was wrong, I did back up, and suddenly I was a "cracker" who had "white privilege" and I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. Dude, I can show you my bank balance, trust me, there's no "privilege" to be found there. He left and still I had to yell at him again, my need to get in the last word was my downfall. He came BACK on the elevator again and slapped/punched me. I did not retaliate, I did not escalate, I just wanted him to go away at that point, thinking he'd won. I went straight to the police and filed a report, because he had bent my glasses, pushed them into my face and I was bleeding a bit. Look, I don't expect the police to track this guy down, most likely he'll go unprosecuted, hopefully he'll pick a fight very soon with someone who actually can punch back.
Oh, I wanted to, but really, I'm a big guy who's no good in a fistfight, I know this from experience. Doing nothing when someone punches you is very, very tough to do, but even if I had punched back and somehow won the fight, how would THAT have looked? A big white guy beating up a smaller black guy, not a good look, in addition to being impossible. Let me use my "white privilege" to report him for assault and a hate crime, sure, elder abuse too, let's see how he likes that once the cops review the camera footage.
I'm going to give this pacifist thing a try, it doesn't really sit well - but for all I know, this guy had a knife or a gun and if I'd escalated things, or taken his picture, or thrown his moped on to the subway tracks, who knows, maybe I never would have made it home, I could have been in jail or a hospital or a morgue. This is the best outcome I could have hoped for, no permanent damage and only my pride is sore. I have to think it's what John Candy would have done, taken the hit. Not Dewey Oxberger, but John Candy probably.
Nobody here really had anything bad to say about John Candy, and really, that's a rarity. He was in a bunch of great movies, he had a wife and two kids, and he was really really funny. OK, so he had addictions of his own, probably, drinking and food, but nobody said anything about drugs, also he seemed to get depressed a bit, but who doesn't? He had a fear of dying early because his father died at the age of 35, but if anything that should have motivated him even more to get and stay healthy, which it didn't. Once John Belushi died he kind of figured his days were numbered, but I guess if I'm looking for any kind of positive spin he made it to age 43, while Belushi only made it to 33 and the same goes for Chris Farley. If he thought he wasn't going to make it to 35, he did get 8 years beyond that. I know, that's little consolation.
But look at that track record - "Stripes", "Splash", "Spaceballs", "Uncle Buck", "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", supporting roles in "The Blues Brothers", "National Lampoon's Vacation", "Home Alone", "JFK", "The Great Outdoors", "Cool Runnings", "Brewster's Millions" and "Little Shop of Horrors". That's a phenomenal resume, but you can't take the good without the bad, of course there were missteps like "Nothing but Trouble", "Who's Harry Crumb?", "1941" and "Once Upon a Crime..." And you know, "Canadian Bacon" isn't a terrible film, it was just a fiction film made by a documentarian, which just created a weird result.
He was also in NINE John Hughes movies, I think that's more than Molly Ringwald even. At some point after he and Hughes crossed paths, there was a close friendship there and their families even went on vacations together, and not to Wallyworld. I think the montage of other films by John Hughes went on a little too long here, because some of those films didn't have John Candy in them, and that's really why we're here, but it's a minor quibble. All that great work on SCTV, too, developing all those great recurring characters like Johnny LaRue and the Schmenge Brothers and Doctor Tongue and of course the mayor of Melonville, Tommy Shanks.
Really, he was like the Chevy Chase of "SCTV", the first cast member to break out and appear in feature films. He couldn't really believe it when Steven Spielberg approached him and wanted to cast him in "1941", but when Spielberg comes and find you, you should probably go with him and do what he wants, even if he cheated his way into the industry. That brought John Candy into movies with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, and he was in "Stripes" with Bill Murray and "Vacation" with Chevy Chase, so for years he was SNL-cast adjacent, and it turned out to be a great thing, one that led him into bigger and bigger movies. And was there any bigger movie than "Splash" in 1984? Co-starring with Tom Hanks was also a very smart thing to do, and he did that twice, and also had great chemistry with Steve Martin in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles".
He fulfilled his lifelong sports dream (he was cut from football after a knee injury) by becoming a co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League, along with Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall. From the look of things this was more than just a side hustle for him, he really found himself involved in the operation of the team and celebrated when they won the Grey Cup in 1991, however, of course there was a downside, this doc suggests that flying all over with the team and spending so much time and effort to help run things, that this may have contributed to health problems in his final days. Did the CFL kill John Candy? It's not for me to say - maybe it was the stress of making "Wagons East", in addition to all the other stress factors in his life.
Anyway, we're celebrating the life of John Candy tonight, it's inspiring that there can be funny and decent and well-meaning people in entertainment once in a while, that they don't all have terminal cases of "Artist Brain" after all.
Directed by Colin Hanks (producer of "Say Hey, Willie Mays!")
Also starring Steve Aker, Andrew Alexander, Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), Steve Martin (ditto), Bill Murray (ditto), Martin Short (ditto), Mel Brooks (last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Chris Candy, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan, Rose Candy, Chris Columbus (last seen in "Child Star"), Macaulay Culkin (ditto), Rita Davidson, Tom Davidson, Robin Duke (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Terry Enright, Ennio Gregoris, Tom Hanks (last seen in "Freaky Tales"), Pat Kelly, Don Lake (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Eugene Levy (last seen in "Once Upon a Crime..."), Andrea Martin (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3"), Catherine McCartney, Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Starring Dick Van Dyke"), Catherine O'Hara (last seen in "Lorne"), Dave Thomas (ditto), Kelvin Pruenster,
with archive footage of John Candy (also last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Matthew Broderick (ditto), Charlie Chaplin (ditto), Larry King (ditto), Rick Moranis (ditto), Bill Pullman (ditto), Orson Welles (ditto), Daphne Zuniga (ditto), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Karen Austin, Dana Barron (also last seen in "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), John Belushi (ditto), Johnny Carson (ditto), Chevy Chase (ditto), Beverly D'Angelo (ditto), Anthony Michael Hall (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Eddie Murphy (ditto), Richard Pryor (ditto), Gilda Radner (ditto), Jim Belushi (last heard in "Belushi"), Joe Flaherty (ditto), Harold Ramis (ditto), Milton Berle (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins"), Valri Bromfield, Michael Caine (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Evangeline Candy, Jim Candy, Sidney Candy, Dick Cavett (last seen in "Starring Dick Van Dyke"), Oliver Hardy (ditto), Stan Laurel (ditto), Carl Reiner (ditto), John Chancellor (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Kevin Costner (last seen in "Draft Day"), Richard Crenna (last seen in "Sly"), John Diehl (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Bob Dylan (last seen in "Roy Orbison Forever"), George Harrison (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Roger Ebert (last seen in "When We Went MAD!"), Joe Piscopo (ditto), Steven Spielberg (ditto), Emilio Estevez (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Victor Garber (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Jackie Gleason (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Paul Gleason (last seen in "Brats"), John Hughes (ditto), Demi Moore (ditto), Judd Nelson (ditto), Molly Ringwald (ditto), Ally Sheedy (ditto), Ronny Graham (last seen in "The World's Greatest Lover"), Wayne Gretzky, Daryl Hall (last seen in "Devo"), John Oates (ditto), Brianna Hildebrand (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Shioli Kutsuna (ditto), Gaby Hoffmann (last seen in "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere"), Ron Howard (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Ernie Hudson (last seen in "Sigourney Weaver, the Most Iconic Action Heroine"), Kevin Kline (ditto), Sigourney Weaver (ditto), Anjelica Huston (also last seen in "Child Star"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion"), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Meryl Streep (ditto), Joey Lawrence, John Lennon (last seen in "Stevie Nicks: Wild at Heart"), David Letterman (also last seen in "Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins"), Ray Liotta (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Peter Sellers (ditto), Bruce McNall, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Richard Nixon (last seen in "John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls"), Maureen O'Hara (last seen in "Jamaica Inn"), Warren Oates (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Sydney Pollack (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Judge Reinhold (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Alan Ruck (last seen in "The Burial"), Betty Thomas, Terry Thomas (last seen in "How Sweet It Is!"), Tony Todd (last seen in "Candyman"), Steven Williams, and the voice of Seth McFarlane (also last seen in "Music by John Williams")
RATING: 7 out of 10 animated characters with John Candy's voice
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