Last month, I watched Amazon’s documentary John Candy: I Like Me. I was never a huge fan of Candy’s work on film, but I’ll watch almost any movie about a filmmaker’s life. It’s not that I didn’t think Candy was funny. Anyone with a sense of humor could pick up that he could be very funny, given the right material. But far too often, Candy chose (or was offered) films beneath his talent. Even the films he made that I did find funny (Stripes is a good example) made too many cheap jokes at the expense of Candy’s physical largesse. Of course, I doubt that choice was often, if ever, Candy’s idea.
As I took in I Like Me, I began to see Candy’s career in a different light. It didn’t change how I felt about his movies that I considered lackluster, but it did illuminate Candy’s struggle to find his place on film and his ability to create a special moment in nearly all of them.
I recently revisited Uncle Buck (written and directed by John Hughes). While I still find the movie’s charms modest, I had forgotten the hysterical sequence when Candy’s Buck, sleeping off a few beers too many, is awakened by a call from his brother. After coming to, coughing like a man ready for an iron lung, Candy tries to conjure up the ability to communicate with his sibling. He wrenches and contorts his face as if he’s fighting off demonic possession, and I laughed until I cried. Then I ran it back four more times. My wife wanted to know what was so funny, but I could barely talk.
Uncle Buck is far from Candy’s best film, though. That position is taken up by another John Hughes film, Planes, Trains, & Automobiles. I saw Candy and co-star Steve Martin’s odd couple-holiday-road comedy of errors in the theater back in 1987, and while I loved the film for its laughs, something more always stuck with me.
Underneath the slapstick (“Those aren’t two pillows!”), the sight gags, and the often uproarious dialogue, lie an undercurrent of deep sadness. The character of Del Griffith (played by Candy) was a folksy shower-ring salesman who didn’t know when to stop talking, or when it might be inappropriate to remove his socks. He and corporate ad man Neal Page (Martin) are as opposite as any two people could be. Del is sweet-natured, while Neal has a short fuse. Neal likes structure and order in his life, whereas Del is wayward and impossibly, even annoyingly, upbeat. Del is earnestly friendly in a manner that can drive some people to madness. Neal Page is “some people.”
Both Del and Neal are trying to get back to Chicago from New York City. Both men speak of needing to be “home” for Thanksgiving, but Del has a sorrowful secret that illuminates itself in bits and pieces. The two men are thrust together when Del unwittingly swipes Neal’s cab to the airport. They end up seated next to each other on the flight. This is when Del decides to air out his socks. Every word, movement, and breath Del makes is seemingly designed to aggravate Neal. When a snowstorm hits Chicago, Del and Neal form a very uneasy alliance in a shared effort to return to Chicago.
Planes, Trains, & Automobiles is full of so many laughs that it would be hard to keep count since you’ll likely still be laughing at one joke when another one arrives. The film has a plethora of highlights. Martin racing for a cab against another commuter played by Kevin Bacon (in a one-scene cameo), with closeups of both men’s eyes as if their characters were in a Sergio Leone Western. Martin’s blistering curse out of a rental car clerk after he is delivered to a lot that lacks the vehicle he paid for is memorable not only for Martin’s succession of F-bombs, but also for the clerk’s single retort that puts Martin in his place. The moment when Neal can no longer feign even the slightest cordiality toward Del (“And when you’re telling these little stories, here’s an idea, have a point! It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”), It is a cantankerous shredding of a man that Neal cannot believe fate has foisted upon him, made all the more notable by Del’s vulnerable reaction and Neal’s almost instantaneous regret.
Martin is in top form here. What makes his work all the more remarkable is that even when he’s behaving at his worst toward Del, you don’t dislike him. Neal is a man suffering from a cavalcade of indignities: unmerciful travel maladies, frigid weather, the loss of cash and credit cards, but most of all, he suffers from Del’s relentlessly cheerful nature.
But that jovial nature hides a pain that lurks just beneath the surface of the thick parka Del sports from one misbegotten location to another. In their better moments, the two men speak of their wives with great warmth. However, Neal’s words sound very tied to the present, while Del’s sound attached to the past. Even the photo of Del’s beloved Marie, which he props up at each low-rent hotel the men stay at, looks out of date.
As Neal and Del finally make it to the Chicago L train that will take Neal home, Neal starts to laugh, thinking of the misadventures he had with this man whom he was fitfully tied to the hip of. Then he begins to think deeper. He goes over Del’s words. Not for what Del said, but for how he said it. The weight of the revelation hits Neal right in the chest: Del is alone.
Neal has been trying to free himself from Del throughout the film. Now that he finally has, he realizes he no longer wants to be rid of Del. Then he goes back, and he takes Del home, and we understand. For all of Del’s foibles, he’s an undeniably good person. He’s also very, very sad. It is to John Candy’s great credit that he balances Del’s buffoonery with a heaping helping of empathy. Del does not deserve to be left behind.
Candy gives his best performance here. One that, after seeing I Like Me, strikes me as close to the man Candy was in real life—a big man with the dexterity of a dancer, and a heart full of warmth. I don’t know if anyone could have portrayed Del Griffith as deftly or as winningly as Candy did. Having learned more about Candy, I found myself missing him in a way I never had before. I always saw the funny man, but this time I saw the artist.
The silly season is a hard time for many people. Between the often acrimonious Thanksgiving dinner with extended family, through the stress of gift-giving and gift-receiving of Christmas, and then a New Year’s celebration where we are expected to look forward to another year with optimism in a world that seldom gives us the evidence needed to feel optimistic. It’s a tough nut to crack for those of us who do have families.
But for those of us who don’t? What of those who have only a microwave dinner for turkey day and Christmas, and too much time alone to think. I come from a fractured family, and there were years I had nowhere to go. I recall volunteering to chart the year-end inventory on Christmas Day at the record store I ran while in college. I counted the CDs, cassettes, and albums to make sure we’d be square with the IRS on filing day. I picked out whatever music I wanted to listen to, and I cranked it as loud as I wanted. I also brought my dog.
I guess I’m a little like Del Griffith. I talk too much, I like to think I have a good heart, and there were years when I was alone. That is no longer the case for me, and I’m very grateful for that. But there were some years when a friend would ask me to come over for a holiday. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, but I knew he knew I had no place to go, and I’m pretty sure that he knew that I knew.
If there’s one vital thing to take away from Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, it’s that there are a lot of Del Griffiths out there suffering quietly through the season, telling you that they’re fine through tired eyes. I’m betting you know one. If you do, give them a call, stop by to see them, or, better yet, bring them home.
