‘Paints such a deep portrait of him,’ Mike Myers praises brother Paul’s new book on life of Canadian comedian John Candy
It was a special night for Paul Myers when he took the stage last week at the TIFF Lightbox to talk about his brand-new book, John Candy: A Life in Comedy (House of Anansi Press).
On his current promotional tour in Canada and the U.S., the author, Record Store Day podcaster and former frontman for the Gravelberrys is joined by various guest interviewers, but in Toronto, his home, his birthplace, it was his brother: actor and comedian Mike Myers of Wayne’s World and Austin Powers fame. Yeah baby.
Paul called it “the centrepiece of the book tour for me,” adding that he had been looking forward to it for “nigh a year,” even though Mike said they talk “five times a day.”
While neither live here anymore, they are proudly “elbows up” Canadians.
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“I actually never know what we’re going to talk about specifically,” Paul told Now Toronto in a phone interview about the biography. “There’s so many things, once me and Mike get together, but the Myers boys talking about John Candy is a little different. And when we get together, you’ll see we finish each other’s sentences and sometimes each other’s sandwiches. So, we’re very close. And my brother Peter will be in the audience.”
Their closeness and respect for each other’s work was indeed apparent. Paul has authored books on The Kids in the Hall, Todd Rundgren, Long John Baldry, and Barenaked Ladies. John Candy: A Life in Comedy is already a best-seller, his first. In it, he talks with Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Ron Howard, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, and many others.
“I’m very proud of him always,” Mike said, talking to the sold-out audience before inviting Paul out onstage, “but this book is particularly beautiful and heartfelt and well-researched and not in a fantastic Brian Linehan way, for those of you who remember, I do.”
“And John Candy is a Canadian hero of mine,” he added. “It’s so amazing, this many years later, after meeting John Candy and him saying you should do the Second City workshops, and gave this little redheaded, 100 pound kid 15-minutes of his time and gave some great encouragement to me. And also, when Wayne’s World came out, I came up to Toronto to see my family and I was at Wayne Gretzky’s restaurant, and I saw John Candy walk in and, as a joke I turned to my friends, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, John’s going to come over and say hi. Congratulate me on the movie,’ and sure enough, he came over and congratulated me. Gave me a big hug. He was like, ‘Oh, I’m so proud of you,’ Scarborough boy, and all this stuff. And I said to him, ‘Do you have a piece of advice?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, never buy a sports team.’ I have not bought a sports team.
“Just one of those guys who was just as sweet on screen as he is off screen and off screen as he is on screen. He had no airs about him whatsoever, but just a fantastic comedian. And just like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, and all the Canadians that we love, he’s just up there in the pantheon of worldwide loved actors. And my brother Paul has written a fantastic book.”
And with that, he bought out Paul. At the end of their 45-minute dee- dive into Candy onstage — Paul about what he learned about the man, and Mike about Candy’s influence — Mike said: “I think that’s one of the strengths of the book, if I may. Biographies can be, ‘And then he went here, and then he did that.’ This book paints such a deep portrait of him. That you took your time to [find] what makes Sammy run, what was driving him. You lifted up the hood and really tinkered with the engine.”
Now Toronto talked to Paul, while he was in the car “on the Don Valley parking lot,” as he called it, the connection cutting in and out, but we got the essentials. Now, pick up the book. As Mike said,“And if you don’t cry at the end of it, you have no soul.”
Why was John Candy the subject of your next book?
First, my last book was about the Kids In The Hall and that was for House of Anansi and they all told me that they liked how well that book did. So, Doug Richmond [editorial director] said, ‘We’d love you to do another one but what would you write about?’ and, at the time, I wanted to write about SCTV, the Second City Television, because a lot of the interviews for the other book were people mentioning how much SCTV had started their thinking about Canadian comedy, but Martin Scorsese, if you recall, had been making this documentary about Second City and I thought, “Oh, I won’t be able to do that.” So, I told Doug that’s what I’d like to do, and he said, ‘Why don’t you do John Candy only and then you can talk about the [Scorsese] movie, so it won’t be the same as the SCTV book?’ I said, ‘John Candy, I’d love to do that.’ And by the way, the Scorsese film never even came out; it’s gonna come out, apparently.
That’s a leap from a big overview book on SCTV to a profile of a single person. What was your connection to him?
I’ve always liked him. I’ve always been a fan. Me and my two brothers, Peter and Mike, first we watched Monty Python, and then we watched Saturday Night Live, but then when SCTV came on, you know, I’m a Toronto guy, it was filmed here, taped here, and we loved all those guys, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara and John Candy was a breakout star, so as he became a big star in Hollywood. We were cheering him like we do; we always claim our local heroes, right? He was so special. So, when Doug said, ‘You can write about John Candy for us,’ I said, ‘Absolutely. Sign me up.’
It’s not easy to write an interesting book about a person that everyone likes because people typically think that will be boring. What emerged through all the interviews you did that was at the crux of who John Candy was?
Two things. He always had emotional intelligence and I think that emotional intelligence made him a better actor than just the comedian. He brought that to all his acting in comedy, but that emotional intelligence also made him empathetic and helpful to other people, which is why everyone who knew him loved him, and then the people who didn’t know him got the sense that he was a good guy because he would help other people.
He wasn’t getting paid the same amount because he wasn’t considered a writer on SCTV, but he was making up material, so he said, ‘I’m a writer; I should be paid equally and Catherine O’Hara and Andrea Martin should also be paid equally.’ So, in a weird way, he was an accidental feminist, even though he was doing it because, gender aside, his friends weren’t getting paid well. So, he did things like that. He also made sure that the crew got their dinner break and that it wasn’t bad food. He’d pick up the tab for people and he would make sure that everyone was taken care of. That’s what emerged, the emotional intelligence that meant all of those things that I just said.
When you watched Colin Hanks’ documentary, I Like Me, was there anything in it that is not in the book or you didn’t know? Or is the doc essentially the film version of your book, even though it’s a complete coincidence they both came out at the same time?
No, and I hope you don’t think I’m dissing Tom Hanks’ film but they don’t go as deep as I do because I could, in a book, get more detail about how he had met his wife and how he got to Second City and who he met, and there’s this whole part about him going to Chicago before he goes to Toronto that isn’t in the movie. And the movie, on the other hand, has footage, home movies, and things that I didn’t have because it’s a book. So, they’re complementary. They did a great job. The Candy family commissioned that film and [producers] Ryan Reynolds and Tom Hanks were honoring their father and husband. So, it was a whole different thing. I can honestly say my book takes you on a different journey that has some of the same points, but it’s pictures with words. You make the pictures in your head and then you can go watch the movie and see the pictures and you can also watch his movie. So, I feel really happy with the two things to reference.
