John Candy; The Life of : Laughing on the Outside

Actually, the author interviewed me for this book, as John and I were close friends. If it is found lacking in depth, it is only because John's actor friends closed ranks and very few would speak to Mr. Knelman about him, probably for fear of potential yellow journalism. In Toronto, Mr. Knelman is presently Arts critic for The Toronto Star and has an excellent reputation. At the time of writing, Mr. Knelman wrote for The Globe and Mail, Canada's most respected newspaper. Perhaps if more people had been aware of this, much more, insightful commentary could have been written. Mr. Knelman quoted me exactly and did not attempt to spin anything I said to him. It's really an indictment on journalism that so few trusted the author enough to grant interviews. Perhaps the definitive biography is yet to be written. I hope that Mr. Knelman revisit this project and update it some time. This book, under the circumstances, was as good as it could be and I am proud to be part of it. Jonathan O'Mara, Toront

All in all, I thought this was a pretty decent book. Even though the author doesn't speak much of John Candy's childhood, there is a lot about how he rose to becoming a star. The only things that I don't like in this book are:1. The author always spells words like "Honor" and "Favorite" like this: Honour; Favourite.2. The author acts like too much of a critic. He seems to have something against John Hughes and kind of makes him out to be a bad movie maker. He makes certain films like Ferris Beuler's Day Off and Uncle Buck seem like bad movies. He also says something like the Great Outdoors is a ripoff of National Lampoons Vacation. But the only thing those two films have in common is that they involve a family on a vacation and everything goes wrong, and that John Candy appeared in both of them.Other than that, this book was alright.

I really liked this book and in fact, couldn't put it down. I read it in one sitting. Martin Knelman did an excellent job in documenting what was really a very sad story. I grew up in Toronto and was a fan of John Candy, watching his career from the earliest days of SCTV. I found this book to be a very accurate and an interesting historical review of the Canadian TV and media industry. Candy clearly made an amazing number of poor career choices but was also taken advantage of by many people in the show business industry which is unfortunate. This book would make a good movie.