Crane (33 page)

I could feel the emotional pulls—Rose and the kids awaiting their dad and Kari expecting her husband. Many of the Frostbacks employees discovered it was difficult, if not impossible, to punch the clock at 6:00 and say, “Goodnight, see you tomorrow.” Our jobs didn’t work like that. At 11454 San Vicente Boulevard there was no 6:00. Our day was as long as John wanted or needed it to be, and that sometimes included time for the boss to have multiple drinks. John was never a sloppy drunk, and he
always had the good sense to know that a celebrity under the influence can never drive. So the employees developed a rotation system whereby some would leave early and enjoy their own lives while others worked the late shift and drove the boss home. The next night, the dance cards would reverse. There often came a point in the evening when, the work, discussion, and analysis of the day completed and the imbibing dialed up to eleven, the fun and good cheer dissolved into babysitting. For my part, on most nights after a couple of beers, I was ready to say, “Good work, everybody. See you in the morning.” We all wanted to go home. There wasn’t anything else to do except consume more alcohol. For John’s part, though, as much as he loved Rose and his kids, he was so used to being on the road and on his own that when he sat at the bar at Frostbacks, he could have been in Chicago, New York, or Toronto.

Now, my dad never corralled the horsepower of John Candy, but he did as much as he could with his own celebrity to make people feel good, forget their problems for a few minutes. In the ’60s and ’70s, he always showed up on telethons: Jerry Lewis’s annual; fund-raisers for polio, arthritis, jock itch, you name it; channels 5, 9, 11, 13 in Los Angeles, answering phones, talking with the host, playing drums. He never turned down anybody asking for an autograph. He would stand in a dinner theater lobby and sign programs and photographs until every last customer was satisfied. But John Candy had real power; he was a “movie star.”

To better illustrate the use of that high voltage there’s this: I fielded a call from Sharon Monsky, founder of the Scleroderma Foundation. I had no idea what scleroderma was as I listened to Monsky make her pitch. Later in my research I found out that, put simply, scleroderma is a hardening of the skin and arteries. It breaks down and makes brittle all the body’s soft tissue both internally and externally. Scleroderma was a medical mystery that needed wealth and publicity to help solve it. Monsky told me that the Scleroderma Foundation was hosting its annual golf tournament and dinner at a country club in South San Francisco in the coming weeks and would love to have John Candy’s participation. A successful attorney, wife, and mother of two young kids in her midthirties, Monsky never mentioned in our conversation that she herself was suffering from scleroderma’s debilitating effects. I asked her for some written information to show John. I thanked her for her work and congratulated her on being the bellwether for an enormously tough uphill battle.

John would often decline an interview or appearance that I would
have bet money was a sure thing, like an interview with NBC’s Maria Shriver. Then he would turn around and approve an invitation that was problematic to attend due to time or travel constraints. The Scleroderma Foundation event was such an occasion—as I reminded him, he was scheduled to be in Toronto for an appearance, followed by downtime at his farm. But the plight of this young, sturdy woman who was making a stand for a cause appealed to John. He had been raised by a grounded single mother who stood up to the world. “No problem,” he said, dismissing the scheduling conflict. We would cut the farm R & R and swing by San Francisco on the way back to Los Angeles.

John was a left-handed golfer. He didn’t hit long but he hit straight, and he spent an enjoyable afternoon with the likes of Willie Mays (I loved watching John watch the “Say Hey Kid” in awe), Willie McCovey, and other retired greats of the Giants baseball team as well as an impressive lineup of 49ers football players and other local celebrities and politicians. All were drawn there by Sharon Monsky’s conviction and positivism.

After the golf, the first notable whom Monsky wanted to greet was John. When I saw her approach, my jaw dropped. She was almost unrecognizable from the photographs we had seen earlier, which had shown her as the young beauty she was before scleroderma’s ravages. She had become skeletal, her skin stretched to the max, her lips pulled into a frightful rictus. It was not easy to look at her face without feeling her pain. She was slight as a dandelion, obviously in pain, and had almost no movement in her face. Speaking was a chore. Her one facial expression was of fright. The hundred-pound Monsky walked right up to John and disappeared into his three-hundred-pound hug. The world was right and safe for that moment.

A segment producer for the television program
PM Magazine
sidled up to me with a request for an interview with John. I took John aside and relayed the request. “Fine. I’ll do it with Sharon,” he said. When I conveyed the good news to the producer, her face took on a pain of its own. No penny needed for her thoughts. She glanced at John and Sharon, undoubtedly wondering how she was going to sell this to her executive producer.

The new best friends were led into a nearby sitting room with a sofa and chairs. The segment producer immediately tried to separate them, placing John on the couch solo and Sharon in a chair, conveniently out of the shot. John Candy had invisible sensors. He was a satellite dish listening
to what was going on behind him, in front of him, to the side of him. He heard every conversation in the room, paying special attention to the segment producer talking with her sound and camera crew. John knew one thing for sure; he was there for Sharon Monsky and scleroderma, not for any publicity for himself. At first he watched quietly as the segment producer tried to position Sharon out of the television screen frame, out of the room, out of the building. Finally, John announced firmly, “No, that’s not how it works. Sharon sits next to me on this couch or I don’t do it.”

I watched the panicked exchange of looks between the segment producer and her cameraman as if to say, “How are we going to show this?” John knew showing it was exactly the point. It was why everyone had schlepped to the South San Francisco event in the first place. The room got very quiet.

The producer’s call was simple: Candy or no Candy? Segment or no segment? John didn’t care. Of course the
PM Magazine
team acquiesced. I stood still and fought back tears as I witnessed the power of celebrity-dom at its best and most effective.
PM Magazine
would promote the hell out of its exclusive interview with funnyman John Candy, but because Sharon was practically sitting on his lap, there was no way the camera could shoot around her, and John knew it. Sharon’s lipless, ravaged face was in every shot as the program was broadcast into living rooms across North America. John at first attempted to speak about scleroderma, but then just graciously turned it over to the expert, founder of the foundation, and sufferer of scleroderma, Sharon Monsky.

This moment was worth all the hours of babysitting John during late nights at Frostback. I was intensely proud of him. If they gave Oscars for humanity, John would have a shelf full of them.

32

The closest John Candy ever got to an Academy Award was handing one out in 1990.* Bruce Vilanch and his staff of edgy writers came up with the idea of Candy presenting the Best Live Action Short Film. A big fat man presenting an award in the shorts category? Funny stuff, no? John, instinctively, sidestepped that bomb of a joke and said he would present with former
SCTV
mate Rick Moranis, who was also to be on the telecast. He had just starred in the remake of
The Little Shop of Horrors.
Working together created a comfort zone for both Candy and Moranis; they shared a shorthand whereby each knew exactly what they were going to do, starting with the rewrite of the inane patter provided them by Vilanch and company.

That Oscar broadcast, hosted for the first time by Billy Crystal, was scheduled for a Monday. The rehearsal spanned the preceding weekend. All presenters and talent went through their motions for a few minutes as they found their marks and read the half-witty TelePrompTer–provided repartee. John and Rick had rehearsed and run lines a million times for
SCTV
so this practice session was standard stuff. They did their shtick a couple of times and knew without nervousness that the next time would be on Monday night, live in front of a billion people worldwide.

After the run-through John needed a Marlboro. As we approached the exit door, we heard a cry of “Hey, Johnny!” echo down the hallway. It sounded so like Jack Nicholson’s character Jack Torrance saying, “Heeeere’s Johnny” in
The Shining
that I started to laugh. We stopped,
turned, and watched in amazement as Nicholson himself and Warren Beatty rapidly caught up with us. They were presenting the Best Picture award that year. John, Jack, and Warren shook hands and made small talk—“How have you been?” “What are you presenting?” The four of us stood in a circle, though I was given neither an introduction nor a handshake. I was invisible, having a Fellini Excursion all by myself. Jack gave his full attention to John, never once looking in my direction, which was incredible, really, since Chris Fryer and I had spent many hours in the intimacy of his living room talking about film and creating the first ever book about him.

I smiled to myself, hoping my dad, wherever he was, was tuned in to this bizarre quartet, though he was probably still trying to figure out why his son and Fryer chose Nicholson over Jack Lemmon or Gig Young. My dad’s own close encounter with Jack Nicholson happened when he, Patti, and I had attended the opening of the Palm West Hollywood in 1976. I spotted Jack and his then girlfriend, Anjelica Huston, come in, and I went over to say hello. The Nicholson book had just been published the year before. We exchanged pleasantries, but the crowded restaurant and Nicholson’s handler didn’t permit my calling my dad over for an introduction. I would have loved seeing the interaction between Colonel Hogan and Billy “Bad Ass” Buddusky.

Returning to the tableau of the moment, I panned left to right: Candy, Nicholson (facing me), and Beatty, who impressed me with his height, at least six two, on my right. Beatty was literally looking down his nose at me, trying to figure out who the hell I was and why the hell I was sharing the same oxygen with greatness. His stare made me feel as if I were some kind of smear on a laboratory slide. Jack’s eyes never met mine. The three pros cracked jokes and were having one hell of a time. John was so caught up in the moment it never occurred to him to introduce his publicist. Frankly, I was enjoying my cloak of invisibility. Both Jack and Warren were charming to John. I was impressed that Jack had called out to John in the first place. I wondered what was his favorite John Candy film and if Beatty had ever even seen a John Candy film. The three of them had certainly never spent time together before, but the actors’ club was in session. I, not being a member of that elite club, was relegated to the sidelines, but I was satisfied with my dugout box seat. The thespians shook hands, said good-bye, and John finally got to have his cigarette.

When game day arrived, John didn’t feel comfortable walking the Red Carpet. He didn’t want to pull up in a limousine in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and make small talk with Mary Hart of
Entertainment Tonight
or tell Joan Rivers whose tux he was wearing or kibbutz with decorated stars and producers who, he felt, would be asking themselves, “What is Candy doing here?” John just wanted to do his thing with Moranis and beat it out of there. So he decided no limo, no Red Carpet. We were going commando through the loading dock. John wore his tuxedo because all male presenters and indeed any male backstage (including all the television personnel) had to wear one. I was also suitably attired: “Yes, Joan, I’m wearing a Gary’s rent-a-tux.” We found an exit door that John could crack open to have a smoke while he waited for a stage manager to take him to the green room. John and Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Daryl Hannah, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese all swapped small talk as they headed toward the stage. The call came for Moranis and Candy. They got a couple of laughs, and the whole megillah was over in three and a half minutes.
Work Experience,
produced by James Hendrie, won Best Live Action Short. Backstage, Rick and John said their farewells. I walked with John back through the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion loading dock, jumped in the idling town car, and lit out for the territories. We sped down Interstate 10 to the Frostbacks office, where I swapped horses and hightailed it to the Valley. Kari was still watching the broadcast as I walked in the front door, dressed to the eight and a halfs. John and I had spent an hour backstage, then traveled halfway across Los Angeles, and I had still gotten home with over an hour of airtime left. Crystal was hilarious in his debut.

In many instances, John took on roles for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes, I think, he didn’t even bother reading the script.
Delirious
was a perfect example. He trusted the director (and script doctor), Tom Mankiewicz, to overcome a mediocre text by Fred Freeman and Lawrence Cohen through sheer energy and will. The script had made the rounds in Hollywood for years, and the studio involved was MGM, a mere shell of what it had been in its glory days. That said, John thought Mankiewicz was smart, and costars Emma Samms and Mariel Hemingway were beautiful and delightful, respectively. Stir those elements with the chance to work with a legend like Raymond Burr and comedy actors Charlie Rocket and David Rasche and voilà, all systems go. In fact, it was a love-in for everyone involved for the three months of filming, which included an on-set
visit in New York City by Tom’s father, Oscar-winning writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. There was constant laughter on set, and Tom told wonderful stories of the film business everyday after the wrap. Drinks were poured, cigarettes lit. No one wanted to go home. It was the best time John ever had on a set, but he was deflated by the film’s eventual lackluster release by a bankrupt studio. John even made an offer to MGM to pay for the film’s promotional posters, but CEO Alan Ladd Jr. told John to save his money because he couldn’t guarantee his contribution would be spent for that purpose.