'John Candy' review: A reminder of what made him great

John Candy had a perfect gift for comedy, Whether he was in a goofy skit with his pals on "SCTV," removing his socks in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" or playing Uncle Buck as he rolled up to his embarrassed niece's high school in the smoking Mercury Marquis, Candy always delivered.

Now he’s the subject of a new book by Paul Myers, writer and host of "The Record Store Day Podcast." (He’s also comedian Mike Myers’s brother.) Myers is an "apprecianist," a documenter of the semi-forgotten or undervalued with previous books on "The Kids in the Hall" and British blues musician Long John Baldry. His writing tends to be straightforward and simple, meant to root the material in the extensive interviews he uses to make his case.

In "John Candy: A Life in Comedy," that allows us to immerse ourselves in a comic actor who has been largely forgotten since his death, at just 43, in 1994.

He was a big guy, a high school football player until suffering a knee injury, and weighed somewhere north of 325 pounds most of his adult life. And that size gave him the curse/blessing of the easy laugh, a tool also employed by John Belushi and later Chris Farley and Kevin James. But Candy’s true gift was his range. As Ben Stiller tells Myers, Candy’s specialty was to deliver a performance that was "vulnerable and real within some very unreal situations." So we get the famous shutdown scene in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" in which Candy, in his salesman mustache and gloriously tacky pajamas, delivers a speech that turns Steve Martin’s raging advertising executive into rubble.

Myers makes a solid case that Candy’s gravitas was rooted in how much the real man shared with his characters. He was defined by family, both lost and rebuilt. His father, Sidney, died of a heart attack at just 35, when Candy was not yet in first grade. As a young comedian, he went out on a blind date with Rosemary Hobor, an art student in Ontario, and fell in love. They married in 1979 and had two kids, Jennifer and Christopher. Candy’s professional drive left him constantly struggling to balance work (the rented house in Los Angeles) and home (the 10-acre farm north of Toronto). The public manifestation of his inner conflicts seemed to center on food, a constant theme of the book, as Candy bounces between the fashionable, low-fat Pritikin diet to the pizza and candy bars stocked in his trailer. The smoking and drinking didn’t help.

"I think he had this little broken heart inside of him," Steve Martin tells Myers.

In his charming foreword, Dan Aykroyd notes that Candy was a Kleenex salesman and was driving a Royal Mail truck when they met, "so we were both just honest working men with a shared love of comedy greats, movies, music, and laughter."

The fact that Candy existed in the pre-TMZ era gives Myers ample space to maneuver this material tastefully. He also spoke to nearly everyone in Candy’s orbit — his children, old friends and collaborators, as well as A-list icons he worked with, including Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Martin, Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Catherine O’Hara, Tom Hanks and Mel Brooks. We get details about his generosity, whether demanding that producers get Irish screen legend Maureen O’Hara a bigger trailer when they were filming 1991’s "Only the Lonely" or having turkeys delivered to the 200 cast and crew members working on the film.

Myers also does an excellent job showing the symbiotic nature of Candy’s relationship with John Hughes, a professional pairing that allowed "The Breakfast Club" and "Sixteen Candles" writer-director to explore more adult themes. That led to "Planes," "and "Uncle Buck" as well as Candy’s small but memorable part in "Home Alone" as "Polka King of the Midwest" Gus Polinski.

What "A Life in Comedy" does best is give us an excuse to luxuriate in YouTube clips and easily streamable films. (There’s also a new documentary, "John Candy: I Like Me," if it’s more backstory you want.) These works serve as reminders of the happiness John Candy spread, the "little confections that remain with us for years and years," as Mike Myers tells his brother near the end of the book. "You are happy to see him the second he appears on the screen."