I’ve been thinking a lot about you mothers out there as our special day approaches, particularly those of you who have lost children. I, for one, will miss Erik coming to the side of my bed with his brother and sisters early in the morning with a tray sporting breakfast, usually a hot dog without the bun, a piece of dry toast and a cup of coffee. It sure was a challenge for me to swallow it down. Thank god for the coffee, my hero of that moment, which allowed me to wash it down. I cherish those lovely memories, but I also know that I’m always creating more every single day with Erik. That’s what I hope you mothers do as well. Talk to your child. Love him or her. Continue that relationship. It doesn’t have to end just because they’ve shed their body. That said, I wish you all a happy Mother’s Day and hope your child comes to visit you, without a nasty hotdog on a tray.
I remember the day John Candy died like it was yesterday. He and Chris Farley were such a big part of our family that we quote their movie lines all the time. As you’ll see in this interview, his personality is the same. Gotta love him.
Me: Erik is there anyone you’d like to bring in today? I was thinking John Candy would be fun. Or we could interview Ray Charles, Notorious B.I.G. or you can pick anyone you want.
Jamie (giggling): He’s gone.
As we wait, Jamie and I discuss some computer and phone problems I was havin,g which caused me to be a few minutes late for the call.
Jamie: Hi.
Me: Who do we have?
Jamie (whispering): I always feel bad when I don’t recognize them.
Me (also whispering): I know. Me too. Why are we whispering? They can read our minds, you know.
Jamie: I know! It’s so crazy that I do that. I guess it’s a habit. It’s John Candy.
Me: John Candy! Oh, this ought to be fun!
Jamie: He’s a bit hefty?
Me: Yeah.
Jamie: Yeah, okay.
Me: Hey, Mr. Candy.
John: Hello!
Me: Is that your real last name?
John: Signed on my birth certificate.
Me: Okay. Do you know why you’re here?
John: Am I here for a good beating and bludgeoning?
Jamie laughs.
Me: Well, we can do that afterwards if you want.
John: Oh, please. It feels so good.
Jamie (giggling): Oh, gosh.
Me: Did Erik give you the—
John: The lowdown, yes.
Me: Good, good. So, the first question we’d like to ask is this: What was your spiritual mission here on the earthly plane as John Candy?
(Pause)
Jamie (to John): Don’t even. (Pause) Yes, answer it for real, not like it’s a movie audition. Erik and him actually get along very well together. They’re acting like they’ve already met before.
Me (to Erik and John): Have ya’ll met before?
Jamie: Yes, they say they have, so they’re teasing off that.
John: I was raised Catholic, and I believe it was my spiritual mission to get far away from being Catholic.
Me: Is that for real?
John: Yes, yes! That’s for real!
Me: Oh, okay.
John: That’s what I needed to do.
Jamie: He’s doing some funny skit. It looks like he’s wearing a bishop’s hat; you know those tall white ones like what the pope wears.
Me: Yes.
Jamie: So, Roman Catholic. He’s marching in a circle. Erik’s laughing. He’s mumbling something. Um. (Long pause). Oh, let’s not do that, guys. Stop it.
Me: What are ya’ll up to?
Jamie (to Erik and John): That’s only going to get everybody in trouble.
(Pause)
Jamie: It’s like lowbrow, dirty humor with Catholic, um (to Erik and John sternly) No, don’t!
Me: Okay, boys. No, we won’t do that. I kind of think I know.
Jamie (sarcastically to both of them): Yeah, you going there? Yeah, go there. It’s really awful, and that’s where your mind should go and that’s what their teasing us about. Erik, it’s funny, but it’s not going to be funny in print!
Me: No, it’s not!
Jamie: He does this thing where he can dress up and then just kind of like jerk the front of his jacket, and it’s gone, and he’s dressed plain again.
Me: Oh, that’s cool. Quick-change artist, is he?
Jamie: You can tell he’s done this thing before.
John: Yeah, I’ve talked to several mediums before.
Me: Oh, okay. So, baaaack to you’re spiritual mission. Let’s try to stay on track, people.
John: For real it was to get far away from the beliefs I was raised with as a boy.
Me: And you wanted to go far away from those beliefs to…
John: I didn’t really know where I wanted to go, but where I ended up was finding faith really needed to be in the humor of day-to-day life, not in some spirit ghost waiting out in some heavenly cloud.
Me: Yeah because that certainly lacks a lot of humor there, huh?
John: Yes.
Me: Okay. Were you here to learn anything?
John: This is suggesting that I did learn something when I was alive.
Jamie giggles.
Me: Well, were you? It doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to take summer school, you know.
Jamie (laughing): He thought that was good.
John: I never felt that God handmade me to be on Earth to achieve something in His honor or my beliefs or my needs, but when I was on Earth, if I had to overlook the extent of my life, what I had to learn was really not to get lost. That was the hardest lesson—not to get lost in my family, not to get lost in my career, not to get lost in being famous, not to get lost in doing drugs and the nightlife. I needed to learn how to stay grounded.
Jamie: He really associates it to “Do not get lost.”
Me: That’s a hard goal to accomplish as a celebrity, isn’t it?
John: Very difficult to do, especially not—I give a lot of credit to the celebrities all over the world, but when you’re seen as the funny celebrity, people think you have it better, but not just being the funny, but the fat celebrity—the funny fat celebrity.
Me (sadly): Yeah.
Jamie: He’s shaking his head and smiling.
John: You get it. Much more difficult. Much more difficult.
Me: Okay. I understand. (Pause) Were you here to teach anything, John?
Jamie: He puts his hands in his, um, he has an over-jacket. No tie or anything. He’s just kind of casual. He puts his hands in his coat pockets.
John: I would like to believe that I did teach people how to laugh, but not at themselves, with themselves.
Me: Ah!
John: There’s a healthy laughter, and then there’s a sick laughter—a malicious one. I hope to god I taught people how to laugh in a healthy way.
Jamie: He teases about being, you know, getting far from the Catholic viewpoint, but a lot of what he says is based on, you know, how people say, “God bless them,” “I hope to God.” He still has that kind of language. I just thought that was interesting.
Me: It is. So John, do you think you accomplished what you were here to learn and teach?
(Pause)
Jamie: He immediately laughs. He has a really loud voice, by the way.
John: I hope I did because God called my number one night when I was sleeping and said, “That’s it!” You know, like jerking a fish out of water. Just come on out of there!
Jamie and I laugh.
John: So I like to think, yes. I have no need or desire to go back to repeat anything that I tried to do in this life that I just had. So, I guess that’s a sign of completion.
Jamie: Nice!
Me: Good! Now, let me get back to the fact that you said that you’ve been to a lot of mediums after you crossed over. Tell me more about that.
John: Oh, people were calling on me.
Me: Really?
John: How fantastic! I thought it was quiet after you died! I thought you got assigned that one cloud and that one harp that you have to learn how to play but no, I was overwhelmed by the amount of attention and love and affection that was coming, not just from my family but from many, many, many more people. Well, I think I still have a calling, so I went for it.
Me: Why not? You still have fans that won’t give you a moment’s peace, John.
John: That’s true.
Me: After you crossed over, did you gain any insights?
John: The first I knew it—
Jamie: I should repeat kind of how he says it because it’s funny, you know that, I knew it!
We laugh.
Jamie: He does get loud though.
John: When I died, again, it was like this jerk that happens right out of your body, and the news wasn’t delivered soft and gentle like in some good children’s book. It was like, “Hell, Mr. Candy. You are now dead.”
Me: Oh my god.
Jamie (giggling): He’s laughing, but his face is serious. It’s like, “No, seriously.”
John: It was like, “Greetings. Here you are.” I knew I wasn’t all that healthy, but I didn’t know death was knocking on my door. I didn’t have the premonition. I didn’t have the sense of knowing. So, okay. I accepted what was told to me; I was happy I wasn’t in Hell. I was happy the devil wasn’t giving me the news!
Jamie and I laugh hard.
John: And my first aha moment was God is not the white guy with the beard on the throne, and I didn’t have to kiss anybody’s feet to end up where I was, so I must have done something right.
Erik: Well, what did God look like for you?
John: God was just like another person. He wasn’t taller than me or greater than me, but he was a male figure and he was Caucasian. And I had this sensation that I had come to the right place at the right time, and it didn’t make me have any kind of regrets. You know the crazy part about it is that you get so flubbed up in life when you miss your lines. Even in my type of career, when you miss your lines you feel like you need a redo. I never once felt like I needed a redo, and I never had to say goodbye to anyone. That was a neat feeling.
Me: Very cool. Now, do you have a life that you’d like to share that you think most influenced your life as John Candy?
John: Yes, of course I do.
Me: Well, tell me, tell me.
Jamie: It looks as if they had agreed before that Erik tells John when he’s rambling.
Me: Oh!
Jamie: So every now and then Erik will jump in and say, “You’re doing it.”
Me: Okay, good, because I noticed that John can tend to be all over the map.
Jamie: Yeah. I just thought I’d let you know. They are talking a lot to each other, and they seem every friendly together.
Me: Okay.
John: It’s wonderful to have gained all of this knowledge about myself and about the type of lives that I’ve led and a better understanding of why I’ve become who I have become. I’m very fond of this one life where I was an Italian man who worked in a restaurant. I was a chef. I was everything in the kitchen. You know, it’s not like it was fancy like I had like different people making different courses. I actually did everything.
Me: Wow. That’s tough.
Jamie: He’s showing me that he was a larger man. Solid looking.
John: I grew up in a restaurant. This was back in the dirty days. The 1800s. Before clean water, boiling items, you know, the dirty days.
Me: Yeah. Not a good time to be a restaurateur.
John: Before modern appliances. But I had such a passion for food. I married a wonderful woman; I had wonderful children, and even though I found people to be so intriguing, I never wanted to leave my kitchen. It was my only place of control. I loved the idea of being in control of what was going on and what was happening around me, and I loved the idea of what I produced, what I created, I could also experience. I know we’re talking about how did this life kind of give life to the one I just experienced. The way that I link the two is that the joy that I had in the kitchen is that same joy I found in my acting career except I wasn’t confined to a small room anymore. I had the world as a stage, so it was on a much grander scale and got me to experience other people more, experience relationships, become involved with teens and humanity. I think that just being locked down to something so small made me have the drive to be something very large. I still wanted to maintain that passion.
Me: Yes, you were larger than life, John.
Erik: Dude, I guess you kept your love for food.
John laughs.
Me: Erik! And there’s nothing wrong with that. Were you a good cook in this life, John?
Jamie: That’s so crazy that you asked that because he was saying that he was an excellent cook in this life.
John: Yes, and the last thing I had was Italian food.
Jamie: I wonder if you could, I mean, that’d be an odd thing to research.
Me: Well, it’s coming out of the mouth of John Candy so of course it’s true.
Jamie (to John): Interesting that you’d remember that.
Me: So, do you have any messages for humanity, John?
John (hiking up his pants a bit): Whooooaaa!! That’s a tall order for a little lady, but I guess since you’re Texan, you’re allowed to ask.
Me: Exactly!
Jamie belly laughs.
John: Just taking from the life I experienced now, do not allow yourself to get lost.
Me: Mm. How do you do that?
John: There are many paths to take, but if you’re not taking the one that’s inside of you, then you’re lost.
Me: And how do you determine that? I mean, that’s easier said that done, John!
John: Haven’t you ever closed your eyes and asked yourself if you like where you are?
Me: Yes.
John: That’s how you stay on that inner path.
Me: Okay. And have you ever done that?
John: I did it every day—no, that would be a lie.
Me: Oh no! Busted, John!
John: But yes. I did it periodically, but a lot of times I was so off path I couldn’t even feel what was inside of me. That’s when I had to ask for help.
Me: Oh, good. That’s good. What about you, Erik? Do you have any questions for Mr. Candy?
Erik: Nope, we’ll be doing that later.
Me: All right. Well, thanks, Mr. Candy. It’s been a delight. I’m one of your biggest fans. My entire family mourned your passing.
John: Thanks for that, but just for the record, you’re not my biggest fan?
Me: What? Well who is, then?
John: Whaddya weigh, like 80 pounds?
This makes me crack up, of course. Hm. I guess he’s into vanity sizing.
Me: Oh, John. Flattery will get you everywhere.
John: Thank you. I’ll keep it up.
Me: Okay, Goodbye, then.
John: Ciao, Bella!
Jamie (to Erik): Don’t. Erik! He’s singing the Ghostbuster’s theme music, laughing. He was in the Ghostbuster’s Movie, wasn’t he? The first one?
Me: God, I don’t know. I just said I was his biggest fan, and I don’t even remember that!
Jamie (laughing): Oh no!
Me (whispering): Ssshhh. Don’t say anything.
Jamie (whispering back): You’re lucky he’d not in the room.
Me (whispering): I know. He probably hears me anyway.
Jamie: Somewhere he’s laughing really hard. I hear him.
Me (horrified): Oh no! Damn!
Watch this hilarious skit of John’s: Roy’s Food Repair
