Colin Hanks and Ryan Reynolds crafted a loving tribute to comedy legend John Candy, pouring their hearts into honoring the late actor who died at 43 in 1994. The documentary opens with Dan Aykroyd's beautiful eulogy — finally captured after tracking down the elusive star.
The production hit a major snag: no one could locate Dan Aykroyd for their Prime Video doc. Their rough cut featured what Reynolds described as 'a bad impression' of Aykroyd until they finally tracked him down and got the real thing — plus Bill Murray was equally difficult to reach.
John Candy died at age 43 in March 1994; his private Los Angeles memorial service wasn't recorded, only the later Toronto gathering. Reynolds stated on Variety's Awards Circuit Podcast: 'We couldn't find Dan Aykroyd to save our lives' and had no recording of his eulogy for their opening sequence.
The fact that two A-listers like Hanks and Reynolds struggled this hard to reach a fellow Hollywood fixture tells you everything about how fragmented celebrity contact has become — and how much the industry relies on old-school relationships. The doc finally got its emotional anchor, but the chaos of getting there is pure behind-the-scenes drama.
Colin Hanks and Ryan Reynolds knew exactly how they wanted their Prime Video documentary "John Candy: I Like Me" to begin — with the touching eulogy Dan Aykroyd delivered at John Candy's private Los Angeles memorial service in 1994. But as Hanks, who directed the film, recently revealed on Variety's Awards Circuit Podcast, executing that vision proved far more complicated than anyone anticipated. The core problem was twofold: the Los Angeles funeral wasn't recorded at all — only the much larger Toronto memorial service survived on tape — and perhaps more embarrassingly, the filmmakers had absolutely no idea how to get in touch with Aykroyd himself.
"We couldn't find Dan Aykroyd to save our lives," Reynolds, who produced alongside Hanks, confessed on the podcast. "And we couldn't get his voice to record it." Their solution? A rough cut featuring what Reynolds described as 'a bad impression of him' — which, given the high-wattage talent involved in this project, must have been an absolutely mortifying viewing experience for everyone involved.
After considerable effort, they finally tracked down Aykroyd and got him to re-record the eulogy. According to Hanks, the result was 'as vivid as the day he delivered it the first time' — a testament both to Aykroyd's memory and to how desperately this particular opening moment mattered to the documentary's architects. "I felt like it was important to open the film and show that heart right out of the gate," Hanks explained, noting that Aykroyd's words showcased 'his grace, his wit, his charm.' The filmmakers weren't just making a career retrospective; they were constructing an emotional memorial for one of comedy's most beloved figures.
The Aykroyd headache wasn't even their only tracking-down nightmare. Bill Murray proved equally elusive to contact, though the source material doesn't specify whether he ultimately participated in the project. What is clear from Hanks and Reynolds' conversation is that virtually every other talent they approached said yes immediately — a who's who of comedy that includes Mel Brooks, Macaulay Culkin, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Tom Hanks (Hanks admits his father was 'the easiest one to get'), and Catherine O'Hara.
The film ends with O'Hara, which carries extra poignancy given her recent death. "One of the very first conversations I had with Marty Short about doing the documentary, he said, 'you know, you're actually going to have a problem, because no one is going to say no," Hanks recalled. "Everyone's going to want to do it." For Reynolds, himself a proud Canadian, John Candy represents something deeply personal — every Deadpool movie features an Easter egg devoted to the late actor.
'He means everything to me,' Reynolds said, describing how Candy embodies both aspiration and nostalgia for him. 'John embodies a lot of what I love about my brother. John embodies that humility and the self-effacing kind of humor and really kind of the masking of pain at times.' Hanks, who knew Candy through his father Tom's collaboration in Splash, echoed similar sentiments about timelessness — noting that even SCTV sketches from decades ago remain 'cutting' despite their pop culture specificity.
'It's a shame that it's taken this long to look back at John's life and career and give him proper send-off,' Hanks admitted. 'But at the same time, when the body of work is that good? It almost doesn't matter when, as long as you do.'
