Ryan Reynolds confronted journalist who insulted John Candy’s weight

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As he and director Colin Hanks were putting together their upcoming career-spanning documentary on the late comedian John Candy, producer Ryan Reynolds says he discovered archival footage of journalists who said mean things about the actor’s weight.

Reynolds made the revelation during an onstage conversation at the recently-wrapped Toronto International Film Festival as he discussed his career and the forthcoming doc, John Candy: I Like Me.

“There was a lot of things we left out of the documentary, journalists just saying stuff. One of them I called. I didn’t put it in the movie, but I called this journalist just to see,” Reynolds told the audience (via Entertainment Weekly).

Reynolds said he wasn’t “trying to shame him or teach him a lesson.”

“(I told him) I took it out of the movie, but I’d put it in the movie if you wanted to talk about it, because maybe you have something to say about it, about your journey whenever it comes to something like that,” Reynolds continued. “We had such a thoughtful conversation about it.”

Reynolds and Hanks ultimately didn’t include footage of the unnamed journalist, but there are instances of reporters making awkward comments about Candy’s weight to the actor’s face on camera that do appear in the film.

“You look at interview after interview and horrible things are being said and questions are being asked in incredibly insensitive ways,” Hanks told Variety at TIFF. “It’s tough to see how uncomfortable John was in almost every clip. And he had good reason, because some of the things that people said were disgusting and would not be tolerated today.”

Reynolds and Hanks’ revelations generated hundreds of comments on Reddit, where one person said, “Blows my mind that people can’t just focus on a person’s work, which is the reason these ‘journalists’ are essentially there to talk about.”

In an interview with Postmedia, Reynolds said that Candy’s films have stood the test of time because audiences “want to feel together.”

“There’s something about John that screams togetherness. We live in an era of extraordinary identity politics, and identity politics are very poisonous because it’s always binary; right versus wrong. John didn’t hurt people, he didn’t punch down and he was still so funny,” Reynolds said. “John brought people together and he did it with authority and leadership and kindness. That is something that is a scarce resource these days.”

In the film, Hanks and Reynolds tap Candy’s family and closest friends and co-stars, including Colin’s dad Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short and Mel Brooks to reminisce about the late actor.

Candy, who died of heart failure at the age of 43 in 1994, starred in a string of beloved comedies, including Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck, but he’d never gotten the cinematic tribute Reynolds thought he deserved.

One segment that made headlines after the film’s premiere found Candy’s Uncle Buck co-star Macaulay Culkin recalling how the SCTV alum stood up for him as he was trying to deal with a domineering father.

“Even before the wave crested and the Home Alone stuff was happening, it was not hard to see how difficult my father was. It was no secret,” Culkin says in the film. “All of a sudden, the fame and the money came, and he became an infamous monster. He was already not a good guy. I think John was looking a little side-eyed, like, ‘Is everything alright over there? You doing good? Good day? Everything’s alright? Everything good at home? Alright.’”

“I’ve always been obsessed with John and I’ve always loved him so much,” Reynolds said ahead of the film’s premiere. “We live in a curated world and John wasn’t around for any of that. But he left in his wake a kindness and joy.”

John Candy: I Like Me releases on Prime Video on Oct. 10.

mdaniell@postmedia.com