Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello once again and welcome back to Movie Deputy Reviews. We are talking about the John Candy biopic that is on Amazon Prime Video.
I actually have our, I'm going to figure this out eventually. This is actually going to be our podcast image. Let me switch over to the poster. Just kind of give a little bit more info on all that. If you are listening to our podcast, you may be wondering what I'm referring to. And these are our new video reviews where I share the trailer as well. And we discuss the movie. We discussed the trailer and just kind of a little bit of it. And today we are going to be talking about a few other little bonus things too because there are five things I'm going to be sharing with you today about John Candy. And I'm having to refer to the notes that are on my phone because I don't have these memorized, but there are just, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Sorry, six things about John Candy. I was thinking that was five, but it's, it is six.
And I'm just making sure to put my phone on silent there so it doesn't go off when I'm doing this. That can be very distracting.
But this movie, I, I, this might be surprise you a little bit as a lot of the John Candy movies are what I would classify as innocent.
But this biopic, I am going to be giving this a guilty rating because this is, it delves into a lot of details of his life, a lot of things that maybe the everyday person was not aware of. It's beautifully done. I, I want to acknowledge that right off the bat that if John Candy has ever made you laugh, whether it was on TV or some skit or a movie or you saw him live somewhere, if he has ever made you laugh, you want to watch this with tissues because this will make you cry. This will bring a tear to your eye.
It's, it's not necessarily sad, but it is very emotional because we get to see his mindset throughout his life, what made him him, what was his inspiration for becoming who he was, how that fit in with his family, how that fit in with his friends and how that fit in with him performing. And, and we think of this funny man on the big screen and on the small screen. However, you're familiar with him. But there was so much more to John Candy than just what we think we know.
And this was really an eye opener. I mean the whole poster itself, as you can see here, is all beautifully framed out and done and it's like a painting type thing Of. Of him.
And that's, in a weird retrospect way of putting it, that's kind of almost how he saw himself as artwork that he wanted to present to the world, but in. And that. That almost makes him sound fake, but that's not what I mean to come across at all. There was, if anything, he was as unfake as you get. He was as absolutely real as you get. And it delves deep into his drug use and he. His issues with grief and his issues with how he kind of got through all of that. And through this, we see not only John Candy, but we see his family, and like I said, we see his friends, we see those who work side by side with him. We get to see his wife and his children, Christopher and Jennifer. And a lot of people didn't even know he was a dad, but yeah, he has two children, Christopher and Jennifer. And they. They were his world. They were his world in every way imaginable.
And he wasn't just a dad to them. He became a dad figure, father figure for a lot of child actors that he worked with. And we get to see that side of it as well.
So before I get too much further into this, I want to share with you this trailer, which is.
I think it's kind of amazing as well. And don't worry, I'm not going to forget to tell you the score. You just got to hang around a little bit more.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: I. I can't tell you what was right about John Candy or what was wrong, but he was my friend and I don't want to cry, but when I see him.
When you see his face, I mean.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Who are you?
[00:04:31] Speaker C: I'm a Mog. Half man, half dog. Gus Polinski, Polka King of the Midwest Del Griffin Director of Sales, Shower Curtain.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Ring Division this is a lovable guy. This is a guy who, the minute you see his face, you're gonna.
He was amazingly funny.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: He was one of the top performers out of all of them.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Guess my secret to acting would be I pretend real hard.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Even though John did distinctly different characters, John was always there.
And that's one of the things that, I mean, it really does show through in this story is he says that he was who he was because he could pretend. But the thing is, every character that John ever played was as uniquely and authentically John himself in any way imaginable.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Was so gentlemanly and so Canadian. Nobody had bigger expectations for himself than John.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: And then all of a sudden, it kind of jumped to a different level.
[00:05:38] Speaker C: I've made winning my Whole life. And when you make winning your whole life, you have to keep on winning.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: You've been in more turkeys than a stuffing mix.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Oh, gee.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: I think the weight of everything he was doing was just too much.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: A hazard of this business is that it's very unhealthy for people.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Pleasers can't really do favors for people.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: It's a bottomless cup of coffee. If you go a whole lifetime eating your feelings, drinking your feelings, smoking your nerves, it shows up.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: And we think we understood that side of John. But like I said, this goes a lot deep, deeper than what you might think.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: You know, there's some things that are just painful, that's it. And you can't make them not painful.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Hollywood still reacting to the shocking news.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: John Candy is dead at the age of 43.
But it's the face you put on the world that defines who you are.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: He lived his life very much like the movies. He was the child that made everyone happy and he was the adult that did that. You know, I remember John caring when not a lot of people did.
Every time you go away, this is.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: No meager life we reflect on today.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: You take a piece of this is.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: As full a life as any human can live.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Hi, daddy.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Hi, Jennifer.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: How you doing?
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Magnificent of visage, eyes and frame, a titan of a gentle golden man.
[00:07:13] Speaker C: Well, you think what you want about me. I'm not changing.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: I like. I like me.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Woo.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Am I crying because I know what the movie is already or am I crying because so many of his characters touched my life in a lot of ways and sorry, the phrase I like me, it seems so simple to say.
It seems.
It's a lot harder than it sounds. It really is.
Anybody who's ever struggled with self worth understands how so how much, how hard it is to say those three words. I like me.
And there's a lot of days that I don't like me.
There's a lot of days I struggle with self worth. And so, and everything I've been through in life, I'm a survivor. I.
I don't ever want to think of myself as a victim. I want to think of myself as a survivor.
And I mean this story is not about that. The story is about John, but just his just pure self and being able to say that he liked himself even when sometimes the world didn't.
And I'm sure at times he didn't. But that's not the side that he ever let the public see. A few people the closest to him they did, but not for not that wasn't for the rest of the world. That was for him. That was for those closest to him. And this was as authentically John as anything could be.
So I didn't forget. I'm going to still share those five things with you that just my. Some of them may surprise you. And the last one, trying not to completely choke up here.
It's harder than it sounds sometimes.
But you're probably wondering the score that I gave this, I'm giving John Candy, I like me a 6.75 out of 10 on the Deputy scale.
It's. This type of documentary is not going to be for everybody. And typically I'm not a big fan of documentaries, but this one, this one touched me in an awesome way and I hope it does for you too.
But I would say let's do the final five countdown, but it's the six.
John Candy has no, has no kneecap on his left leg or he had no kneecap on his left leg. He was born with one, but due to a football injury, his kneecap, his left kneecap was removed and never replaced with anything.
As the second part of part two of that, which is one, which is another one of the things that a lot of people didn't realize is he number one, he's Canadian. Not. That's not the thing. But he tried to enlist in the US army and being a Canadian, that was like really frowned upon. But he traveled down to New York multiple times to try to enlist. And the only reason he was not allowed to was his kneecap or lack of his kneecap, the injury to his leg during football, that was what kind of kept him out of being able to serve in the US Military. I just thought that was really incredible because I'd never, you know, I mean, I just never really thought of something like that with him. And that just really kind of blew me away.
The third thing is going to be maybe something a little more people are probably familiar with is in this story, he is commonly referred to as Johnny Toronto. And what I keep looking down at is I'm just glancing at the notes on my phone.
But his, he, it was like one of his stage Personas and it kind of became his go to. And he started just going by Johnny Toronto for quite a bit of his career and just the fun side of it. But yeah, he. If you mentioned Johnny Toronto, a lot of people, especially in Canada, are going to immediately know the name John Candy.
Now there's something. This is, this one is maybe going to surprise a few people.
Item number four is that John actually had crippling anxiety. Now, I'm serious. He really did.
He struck. He would just. He'd have to stop and he'd have to breathe and he'd go out there. But he had such this fear, internal fear of failure, of letting people down, of not living up to people's expectations, of not living up to his own expectations, of trying to deal with everything in life between his personal career, his professional career, his personal love life, his love life, even in the professional side of it, because he loved those around him.
And this anxiety just really kept him on edge. And like you saw in the trailer there, it says once you basically start winning, you're expected to keep winning. And. And there's the jokes in there that he's been in more turkeys than stuffing. And that's kind of a. Just a bit of a joke, bad joke on just how many flops and stuff that he had been in. A lot of people think of, like, the big names of the things he's been in. And one of those movies, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, is one of my husband's favorite movies. He has other ones, too, but that's just one that always stands out.
Now, the last two, Number five and number six. Number five.
When John Candy was filming one of his last. His last story that he was doing, he had gone back to his. The house that he was staying in, and he had picked up.
He'd gone to bed like normal. And at some point during the night, he must have gotten up and known that something was wrong.
And he picked up a Bible and he had opened it up to try to find some solace.
And when they found him, he was laying on the bed and the Bible was still open. He was holding the Bible, trying to find home.
Because his faith at the end of the day was what was most important.
And that was the last thing that he did.
When John's funeral took place in Los Angeles in 1994.
My son was born in 1994. So, yeah, that ages me a little bit.
And I didn't know this. I mean, I remember hearing about his passing on tv and it made me sad when I'd heard the news and like many other people, I didn't really give it a second thought. It was like, oh, like he was a funny guy. He'll be missed. I mean, that was about the extent of it.
And that's probably a lot of people's extent of it, to be honest. And I didn't, like I said, didn't really think anything of it. And so when they were talking about this and Eugene Levy was one of the pallbearers and he mentions this in the documentary. And it's just there on the 405 during John's procession.
And he looks around and he's like, wait, where's the traffic?
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Where?
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Where? I mean, it's the 405 in the middle of the day. Where's the traffic?
And they start. They start going by and they see California High State, California Highway Patrol, CHB and other police and first responders and stuff just there. And they're lining up all these exits and they're waving to the processional.
California Highway Patrol shut down the 405 during the middle of the day for John Candy's processional. Now that's only been done two other times in history.
It was done for the Pope and it was done for the President.
That says a lot.
So I hope that this documentary will bring a tear to your eye and in a good way.
I want this to leave you with a memory of John Candy that made you smile.
I want you to take something away from this that think back to your favorite John Candy moment. Whether it was on TV or on the big screen or on the radio, any of that, or even if it was a sports game, I'm not going to give too much away there. That'd be a big spoiler for the documentary because there's some deep details in there that are kind of special. But take a moment and think back.
So I promise this would be an adventure, the highs and lows.
But again, I am giving I like me a 6.75 out of 10 on the Deputy scale.
And just because of some of the content, I it is getting a guilty rating.
If you have prime, please check this out. If you don't have prime, sign up for a trial of it. And just if nothing else, just to watch this. If you want to cancel it right after, so be it. But this is one that you don't want to miss.
