“So John at that time had finished a movie with Maureen O’Hara and he had a large gap of time between that movie and anything else. So he sort of spent a good two to three year period of not making movies and he became completely enthralled and happy to become a fan of the Argos and help out in any way that he could. So for a good 12-18 month period John would come into the office, not every day but four days a week. So it became, a comedian sits down in my office and helps run a football team. Now when I say helps run, he was certainly providing a lot of leadership to the rest of the staff and certainly comedic release. He was truly, truly passionate about this club.
“So he would come into the office and we had a working relationship that then became a friendship. Over the time I learned something people don’t realise – just how intelligent John was. Whether it was history, religion, politics, comedy, film or sport he knew not just a little about a lot, he knew a lot about a lot. I don’t know if it was from reading or what, but he was so intelligent and I loved that side of him.
“His passion that he wore on his sleeve was phenomenal. He used to barnstorm across this country to every away game and there was a blackout at the time. If you hadn’t sold enough seats to sell out the stands then they would black out the television production of the game in the market to encourage people to go to the game. Well he would go out two days before the game and would get on every news show, every talk show and tell people to come on up to the game, ‘We are lifting the blackout’. And he did it everywhere he went. He would walk up and down the sidelines – and this would be the opposing teams fans they would just stand and clap for this great iconic Canadian.
“When Wayne called me up initially he said he wanted me to come and meet John. So we had a meeting, we started talking about possibilities, what I thought of the team, what I thought I could do with the team and within a two week period I had left my own company and had starting working with these guys and then I saw John almost every day.”
John got to know all the players, when he first met them he gave them his number and said to them that if there was anything they needed, just to call him. The Argos and the CFL in particular had been struggling, there were TV blackouts. John would get up at 4am two days before a game and relentlessly promote. He did interview after interview, never wasting an opportunity to sell tickets, John worked as hard as the players, if not harder and he did it all with his own money. His work quickly paid off.
The first Argo game of the season Cooper said to John “We’re going to do an opening night”, of course as soon as he heard those words John wanted to put on a show. John got Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi to come down and do the Blues Brothers, he flew in friends including Martin Short and Mariel Hemingway, he also totally broke the CAN$20,000 budget they had and the eventual bill was over $90,000. “There wasn’t a budget he didn’t like to break, that became a little difficult for me, I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm and passion, plus it was a great idea! Jimmy Belushi, Danny, the opening night was a phenomenal night, the write ups said that we brought entertainment and sport together and we made a big bang in the city.”
When I interviewed Mariel Hemingway, she remembered this night as “one of the best nights of my life”.
That night Cooper stayed up with John and Aykroyd till four in the morning, Aykroyd owned a bar with a rooftop private area. Cooper sat under the stars watching John and Aykroyd just riff and riff backwards and forwards thinking to himself “life is just wonderful”.
The players took to John immediately, he loved every single one of them. Cooper told me, “He was the most beloved owner ever, he would have given them the shirt off his back. He would listen to them, he would pray with them, as some of the guys were religious, he would help their families. I remember one of the things he did as he wanted to build the pride in the team, he went out and had forty leather jackets made and personalised with the players names and games on, the jackets at the time must have been around CAN$300 each. He was generous with his time and generous with his money. He was truly interested, it wasn’t bullshit, he was truly interested.
“Then he would just talk football with them and just talk to them. He would be on the sidelines watching the games. If a player got injured, he would be the first in the locker room saying ‘don’t worry your career is not over, we are going to get the best doctors for you’. He was that way with the entire staff.”
Wherever they went the opposing fans would boo the Argos as hard as they would boo anyone, but when John Candy walked out on the side-lines the whole stadium would erupt. John was like a Roman Emperor. Everyone would jump to their feet and just cheer, even just a lift of his eyebrow would set them off. He spent hours signing autographs, talking to people, being seen, he turned every single game into an event and the buzz was palpable.
Just like for the Kings, John would often do these 30-second commercials for the Argos, selling tickets with his wonderful comedic talent. In one advert John had made stick figures of various celebrities he knew and was acting as if he was talking to them. It was their face cut out on a stick. “Hey, Tom Cruise are you coming to the game?” and he would do different voices for everyone.
Cooper recalled, “People would be screaming out Uncle Buck and his other characters at the game. He was great when you asked him to go in to character on any show, he would go straight into character. We took him to a restaurant at the end of the night, we would have a dinner and he would be back there with the cooks.”
John stayed up a lot, he would happily stay up till four in the morning and if they went out for dinner after a game he wouldn’t just end up in the kitchen he would also be waiting tables. On top of helping the staff and the inevitable promotion of the establishment, he would also leave them a very generous tip.
As well as Candy being on board a very important and expensive signing was made to the team, Raghib “Rocket” Ismail. McNall outbid the NFL to bring Ismail to the CFL - he was given a contract that could earn him up to US$26 million over a four year period (at the very least he would walk away with $18.2 million). This was unheard of, all CFL teams were capped at earning CAN$3.8 million per year, Ismail was earning US$4.55 million per season - on the exemption that he was a ‘marquee player’. This made Ismail’s salary the highest in Canadian and American Football history at that time. Fortunately, he was worth it.
With the talent on the field and John’s enthusiasm on the sidelines there was real hope for the team.
One of Cooper’s favourite memories of Candy was in Edmonton, “We had won the game and I said ‘John that was unbelievable’ and he looked at me and said ‘It’s not about the moment, it is about the journey we are on and it is going to unbelievable’. He knew we were going all the way, it’s not just about what had just happened. I just looked at him and he gave me a big smile and grabbed me in a headlock and said ‘Let’s go’.” So you may wonder what it’s like being in a headlock by John Candy? Cooper knows, “Well I was six two, he was tall but also big, but he was like a friendly bear.”
John and McNall would socialise a lot, “We would go to dinner together, we had a beach house and John and his family would come over and play there, we would sometimes watch the Argos games there. Hockey games we would go to around 40 events a year. Rose was just a very unassuming lady, not a typical Hollywood wife, just a normal lady, the kids were great fun kids. Just a normal family, you would have thought they were just a working class family, not stars in anyway shape or form.”
John talked to McNall about the movie industry, he was frustrated by the process. John was so creative and had so many projects that he wanted to do but he couldn’t get them off the ground. He felt like Hollywood had pigeonholed him and that he thought he had a lot more to give. “Both Only The Lonely and JFK were more serious roles and that’s what he really wanted to do, and I think he would have done had he survived.”
John had reignited the CFL. The Toronto Argonauts were working as a team, the energy and good feeling flowe
d. That year they went on to be undefeated at home and even won the glorious 79th Grey Cup Championship against the Calgary Stampeders. It was like a fairytale - everything they touched turned to gold and everybody was having a ball.
Cooper remembers, “First of all it was fantastic that we won it, we were undefeated at home. John used to walk up and down the sidelines and pick up one of the players helmets and hold it up in the air with the big Argonauts ‘A’ on it and the whole crowd would stand up. But when we won that at the end he made it all about the players. Whilst he loved winning and he loved the team he made it all about the players and never took any of that glory for himself. John threw a huge party for everyone and paid for it himself.
“We were in a hotel, we had all the players and families there and John had asked me to speak as the President, I said ‘John needs to get up here’. John got up and started to get emotional. He may not be a player, he wasn’t the only owner and he did not run the team, but he was the heart of the team and every player there would say the exact same thing.”
However much he was enjoying himself, at some point John needed to go back to work.
John featured in Boris and Natasha: The Movie (a film about Rocky and Bullwinkle’s nemeses) starring his old pals Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin.
He also took one of the leads in Once Upon a Crime a thriller, mystery, comedy directed by another friend and Second City alumni, Eugene Levy. John was in great company starring alongside Jim Belushi, Sean Young, Richard Lewis, Cybill Shepherd and Ornella Muti. Set in Monte Carlo, John played Augie Morosco, a gambling addict, who, like everyone else in the film, becomes a suspect in the murder of a millionaire. Unfortunately Once Upon a Crime got a mixed reception and was panned by the critics. For me there was just too much going on within the story and it got lost within itself, there are some funny moments though and like with all the films that weren’t highly acclaimed, John’s performance always made them better.
Being the ‘Whoooooole enchilada’, John would also play an uncredited cameo as an enthusiastic sports commentator in the sports comedy, Rookie of the Year, directed by Daniel Stern.
But something bigger was on the way...
A Gold Medal is a Wonderful Thing
Cool Runnings was loosely-based on the story of the original Jamaican bobsleigh team who competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, ‘loosely’ being the operative word. The real Jamaican bobsleigh team were such an inspiration, just as they are in the film, they even use some of the original crash footage for the ending, but that is where most of the similarities end. Not that it matters, both are inspirational in different ways.
The rights were originally sold to Tristar Pictures, who later merged with Columbia and that’s where producer Dawn Steel got involved. Originally the working script was called Blue Maaga (which means “serious trouble” in Jamaican) and was pitched as more of a sports drama than a comedy. Leon Robinson who played Derice Bannock and Doug E Doug who played Sanka Coffie were originally shown the script three years before filming started, two different Directors had been employed before Steel left Columbia and convinced Walt Disney Pictures to commission the picture. Jon Turteltaub was the eventual director.
The film’s version of events start with Derice racing to qualify for the 100 metres, 1988 Summer Olympics. Derice falls along with fellow runner Yul when Junior (also competing) trips and falls, taking them both out. Desperate to go to the Olympics Derice hears about an old friend of his dad’s, Irv Blitzer. Irv was trying to recruit runners for his bobsleigh team years ago, he had won two gold medals, later on in his career he was disqualified for cheating at the 1972 Winter Olympics and had retreated to Jamaica to become a bookie. Derice finds Irv and after a struggle convinces him to coach the first ever Jamaican Bobsleigh team. The other three members of the team are made up by Jul, Junior and Derice’s best friend, ‘the best pushcart driver in the whole of Jamaica’, Sanka.
“We were looking for someone to play an ex-Olympic Gold Medallist and a tough grumpy coach and the last person I would have thought of was John Candy.” Turtletaub told me.
Turtletaub had not actually thought of John because his physical appearance was not typical of an Olympic athlete, in Turtletaub’s head the part was more suited to someone like Kurt Russell (who actually ended up playing an Olympic coach some years later in a sports docudrama, Miracle). However, this was Turtletaub’s first time directing a movie for a studio and it was actually Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Head of Disney Studios that suggested John Candy. “Jeffrey said ‘what do you think of John Candy?’ I said ‘Sure!’, it was Jeffrey Katzenberg –I thought it was a good idea to agree. Recreating some accurate portrayal of the Olympics, I thought this is crazy, but I really underestimated John’s emotional power and dramatic ability to make it work.”
Turtletaub was not the only one to have doubts about John playing the role. Leon Robinson who played the lead, Derice Bannock, was also unsure when he heard the news. “I didn’t think John Candy was right for this role, they were also talking to Scott Glenn. I thought he would be much better, much more serious guy and then they told me it was going to be John Candy and I was like what? But whilst making the movie and after seeing the movie I could never imagine anyone else playing that role but John.”
Rawle D Lewis who ended up playing Junior Bevil, the posh boy from a rich family trying to prove himself, was actually a reader on the script whilst they were auditioning. No one could play the part of Junior as well as Lewis so eventually he was offered the job. Hanging out as one of the readers, Lewis was privy to production banter and heard that John Candy was actually calling the studio and production team pushing for the part of coach Irv Blitzer, he even took a US$300,000 pay cut because he wanted the role that much. Being a massive John Candy fan, Lewis was thrilled John was on board.
Lewis recalls “So when we met John he said ‘They don’t understand what they have got with this movie, I am from Canada and I saw what happened, this movie is very spiritual, very powerful, they have no idea what they have here’. He had a meeting with all of us (the guys who were playing the bobsledders) he gave us everything we wanted, he made us something to drink, he made us very relaxed and then as he drank more he started to be really honest. He was saying they don’t really know what they have here; this is such an uplifting movie. ‘They are laughing at me for taking a pay cut, but I am from Canada and I was there.’ ”
John gave the young actors a pep talk, he told them that they could all go off and do their own thing if they wanted to, however he thought it was a good idea for them all to become friends, that if they got know each other it would show on camera and make it more believable. He also gave them gifts that he thought would be useful for their character preparation, he gave Malik Yoba, who was playing Yul Brenner, a CD full of music, Lewis was given pictures of the original bobsleigh team and a copy of Jimmy Cliff ‘The Harder They Come’. Yoba remembered “He was the sweetest guy. He taught us to make every scene count - we are only as strong as our weakest link. If they don’t believe me, they won’t believe you. He chose music for each one of us, and invited us to have dinner at his suite. He gave us all CDs he had made for our characters.”
John asked the young toboggan actors about themselves, they drank, laughed and chatted; he wanted to know everything about them. Part way through the meeting they told John how old they were, he exclaimed “I gotta tell you, screw you guys, I’m 42!”. John forewarned the young actors that they had around half an hour before the production team would come in, they didn’t want them all to get too close without their supervision in case they banded together. They all looked at John as if “It can’t be that bad” and John gave them the look of “Trust me kids, I have been in Hollywood long enough”. Lo and behold, 30 minutes later there was a knock at the door from the production team.
The day before filming John rang his old friend and costume designer from his SCTV days, Juul Haalmayer, “John called me and I was about to start a comedy pilot
here in Toronto and he said ‘Juul I need you in Calgary’, I said ‘John, what are you doing? I am about to start a pilot in Toronto’ and he said ‘I am doing a movie for Disney called Cool Runnings’, I said ‘What’s involved?’, he said ‘Five weeks in Calgary, five weeks in Jamaica’, ‘When does it start?’ He said ‘It starts shooting tomorrow’, I said ‘John I can’t pull a movie together in a day’, and he said ‘No I just need you to be here, so give Disney a call tell them what your rate is and get out of the pilot’. So I cancelled my gig on the pilot and I ended up being his dresser on Cool Runnings. He felt comfortable with me. That was really fun.”
On set, Turtletaub along with many of the actors were fairly green, for a lot of them this was their first big feature film. John was like the father figure although he came over as more of a ‘fun uncle’, he made it easy for everyone and taught them a lot about professionalism and etiquette on set. He would walk into a room and everyone would just light up “Because the room was more fun with John in it”, here you have this totally unaffected bona-fide movie star that is wonderful and respectful with everyone. Haalmayer commented to me that from the early days of SCTV to years later working on Cool Runnings, “John never, ever changed, never”. John hung out on set a lot, the walk back to his trailer was a real schlep, he could have gone back and forth making everyone wait for him, but he never did. He loved being involved and as long as he had somewhere comfy to sit he was happy to spend all day on set, which was a boon for Turtletaub as he felt he always had a really funny buddy on site and John was always available.
Searching for Candy Page 17