User blog:Amanim/The Lost Roles of John Candy

Ok casting is one of the most important processes in movie making. Placing the right actors in the right roles can determine whether or not an entire film rings true. Once again Lost Roles is a weekly series that examines the missed opportunities, the roles that could have been and explores how some casting choices that almost happened could have changed the film industry and the comedy world, at large.

John Candy was one of the sharpest comedic talents of his generation, leaving behind an outstanding body of work that spanned three decades. SCTV, where he debuted an eclectic array of characters, and films like Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Uncle Buck, JFK and Stripes stand as his best work, but Candy’s larger-than-life presence could make even the smallest roles memorable. John Candy’s warmth, humanity, and joy came through in all of his work. Let’s take a look at some of the John Candy roles that never came to be.


 * 1. Honey I Shrunk the Kids as Wayne Szalinski (A role that Candy was going to play but due to schedule conflicts he dropped out and asked that Rick Moranis, can step in to take his place)
 * 2. Ghostbusters as Louis Tully (John Candy had worked with the team behind Ghostbusters — director Ivan Reitman, writer Harold Ramis, and star Bill Murray — on the trio’s previous movie together, Stripes, and he was offered the part of accountant Louis Tully before Rick Moranis was cast. Candy brought some of his own ideas to the table, wanting to play the character as a German man who owns several large dogs. Candy passed on the project when the creative team shot down his ideas for Louis Tully, and as suggested by him that another of his SCTV co-horts, Rick Moranis, can step in to take his place. However Candy did appear in the music video for the film)
 * 3. The Flintstones as Fred Flintstone (A cartoon series that became his favorite. John Candy was considered for the lead role in the 1994 feature film adaptation of The Flintstones. While the end result was widely-derided, it was still a big hit with audiences. Landing the Fred Flinstone role could have been good for Candy. He passed away shortly before The Flintstones’s release, but the heart attack that took John Candy’s life occurred while he was in Mexico on the set of Wagons East, the movie he made this same year. Things might have gone differently if he’d played Fred Flintstone instead. If John Candy had been cast as Fred, it would have reunited him with his SCTV castmate Rick Moranis, who played Barney Rubble. It would have been nice to see these two share the screen one last time, even if it wasn’t in a movie deserving of their talents. Candy and Moranis had a decades-long rapport built up from working with each other in the past, so they would have been funnier and had a better chemistry)
 * 4. Disney's Pocahontas as Redfeather (Before his death, John Candy had signed on to provide the voice for a turkey named Redfeather in this Disney animated film Pocahontas. Candy had even recorded a significant portion of his dialogue already. Redfeather was intended to be Pocahontas’s sidekick, but after Candy passed on, the character was cut from the film completely. John Candy’s voice was perfect for animated films; he was able to cram so much infectious energy and enthusiasm into every word. He’d done a little voice work in the past, most notably in the adult rock cartoon Heavy Metal, as an albatross in the Disney movie The Rescuers Down Under, and as the title character of his own Saturday morning cartoon, Camp Candy. Pocahontas would have been his most widely-seen animated role yet, and his presence could have given the movie some much-needed comic relief especially since he had completed Cool Running)
 * 5. Last Holiday as George Byrd (A film that was supposed to be a sequel to Summer Rental. John Candy was attached about a decade before the Queen Latifah version went into production. The source material, at least, is pretty sophisticated stuff and it would have been nice to see John Candy stretch his abilities in a role that had a little bit of dramatic depth. He showed a great affinity for getting serious in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and it would have been exciting to see him try it again here)
 * 6. Holy Man as G (Gone Fishin’ wasn’t the only god-awful late ‘90s comedy that John Candy was at some point attached to. Holy Man was an Eddie Murphy movie so bad that even Eddie Murphy has admitted it’s “horrendous". As the role went to Eddie Murphy. Nevertheless, John Candy was signed on for the lead role in 1993. As with Gone Fishin’, Holy Man would have had a different cast and creative team if it had gone into production with John Candy; and while the end result may not have been an enjoyable movie, it could have at least been mediocre instead of terrible)
 * 7. Telling Lies in America as Billy Magic (In his autobiography Hollywood Animal, controversial screenwriter Joe Eszterhas details his efforts to cast John Candy in this project, which was called The Magic Man at that particular phase in its development. Eszterhas writes of a meeting with John Candy at the funnyman’s office which was a fully-stocked barroom with Candy as the bartender during which John Candy begged Eszterhas to let him be a part of the project. Estzterhas writes, “He said he was trying to change his image from the goofball funnyman to a real actor.” The Magic Man would have been a nice opportunity for Candy to switch things up a little bit, but Ronnie Meyer, Candy’s then-new agent at CAA, talked him out of it, saying it was bad for his career. Eszterhas suspects this was in response to his own feud with CAA agent Michael Ovitz. In the end the role went to Kevin Bacon)
 * 8. Gone Fishin as either “Joe Waters” or “Gus Green” (Several years before it was a horrid Danny Glover-Joe Pesci buddy comedy, Gone Fishin’ was a project that John Candy and Rick Moranis were considering making together. John Candy died soon after these discussions began, and Rick Moranis retired from the movie business shortly thereafter. Before you assume this would have been a bad move for Candy and Moranis, consider that this project was at a much earlier stage and the Candy-Moranis version of the movie would likely have had different writers, supporting actors, and a new director. It could have been an entirely different comedy. In the end either role went to Joe Pesci or Danny Glover)
 * 9. Used Cars as Sam Slaton (John Candy was cast in a supporting role in this Robert Zemeckis comedy, but he had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts with Steven Spielberg’s 1941. His SCTV costar Joe Flaherty filled in, and Candy was freed up to film his scenes for the Spielberg film. Taking the part in Used Cars instead might have allowed Candy to sidestep the failure of 1941, but Used Cars was no hit either)
 * 10. A Confederacy of Dunces as Ignatius J. Reilly (Dunces, an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning John Kennedy Toole novel. The supposed curse extends to the book’s author, John Kennedy Toole, who killed himself before its publication, and to the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission, who was murdered (New Orleans was where the book and planned film were set)
 * 11. Atuk as the title character (It's unknown how Candy felt when he was about to play this character. Sadly he die before he got the chance. The only role Candy was against playing was fatty arbuckle as he turned down that role several times)
 * 12. The Magic 7 as Smokestack Sam (John Candy recorded his lines for this long-in-gestation animated TV movie back in the early 1990s, but a series of delays have led to the film never seeing the light of day. The movie seems to have been a piece of Captain Planet-era “Save the Planet” propaganda to shove down kids’ throats on a Saturday morning. Production on The Magic 7 began in 1990 with Candy, Michael J. Fox, Ice-T, and Madeline Kahn laying their audio tracks down two decades ago now. A series of delays and financial issues led to the project being pushed back a few years. Another studio bought the rights to The Magic 7 in 1995 with the intention of airing it on Earth Day in 1997, but that date was postponed. The project was shelved until the early 2000s, when an attempt at resurrecting it was made, with Candy and fellow departed comedic legend Madeline Kahn’s voices stripped out. That incarnation fell apart too, and it looks like The Magic 7 won’t be seeing a release any time soon or at all, for that matter)
 * 13. Bartholomew vs. Neff (John Hughes wrote this comedy script, about two feuding neighbors, and was preparing to direct it as his next film after Curly Sue in the early ‘90s. John Candy — Hughes’s most frequently-used adult actor — and Sylvester Stallone were attached to play the two neighbors, a former baseball player and a banker. By this point in Hughes’s career, he had turned his back on the more-sophisticated teen and adult fare that made his name in the 1980s in favor of creating slapstick movies that starred kids (Home Alone, Curly Sue) and animals (Beethoven, 101 Dalmatians). While it would have been neat to see Candy and Hughes work together one last time, Hughes was past his prime at this point and it would have just been a disappointment)

I always did say that Chris Farley was a second version of John Candy. Well since I see it in their films. Especially when they know when to tell a joke, having the same mindset, love to sing, they embrace the characters that they play, they don't hate the characters that they portrayed, want to show what they can do on screen, they can relate to a character that they are portraying, they love playing characters that are loud not to mention annoying to others but also had a sad story, great chemistry with other co stars and have great ideas for films.

Anyway I would have love to see John Candy in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Ghostbusters, The Flintstones, and Disney's Pocahontas.