In early 1994, the comedian John Candy died of a heart attack in his sleep in Durango, Mexico, while filming Wagons East, a movie everybody agrees was a turkey in the raw. It was no surprise that Candy kicked the bucket-he was a whale of a guy, tipping-hey, breaking the scales at 400-plus pounds. And Candy was well-known for his ability to party all night-he did everything to excess-drank, smoked, overate, took drugs-and all this on top of a family history of heart disease: His dad Sidney died before reaching forty. Just before his death Candy was having severe chest pain, his hip joints were totally shot, and he was having trouble breathing. Candy was lucky to have made it to forty-three.
The dust-jacket calls Martin Knelman a "cultural journalist", and I guess that's why there's a four-page "filmography" of Candy's oeuvre at the end of the book. Most of the forty-eight movies listed are real dogs-in some cases quite literally, i.e. Kavic the Wolf Dog (1978). But even Candy's "best" films, Splash (1984), Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), and Cool Runnings (1993) are, by anyone's standard, tame and middlebrow stuff.
So how come before he died, Candy was able to command $3 million for a picture? And, if you stump up $30 to buy this book are you going to find out the answer to that question?
Martin Knelman doesn't really answer very clearly. According to him, Candy had an uncanny ability to connect with working-class Americans and make 'em come to the movies. That seems to have made him a "bankable" star who could attract investment cash to entertainment projects.
Knelman writes a lot about Candy's "dark and brooding" side; he's depicted as a "complex and troubled" man who's constantly suspicious that people were trying to rip him off, which of course they were.
In his final years, he's shown as an imperious, high-handed, paranoid, reclusive, flighty, and plagued with self-doubt. In other words, the blue-collar lad from Toronto's east end became just another run-of-the-mill, mid-level Hollywood celeb.
Candy (when alive) clearly didn't return Knelman's calls (most direct quotes are scalped from news clippings) and neither did most of the actor's close friends.
For some reason, Knelman gives a complete list of interviews he did for the book, and the list is interesting mostly for who's not on it. Few of the old Second City troupers and none of the SCTV regulars (especially the ones who've gone on to stardom) were interviewed, but we do get a whole bunch of hangers-on and peripheral players.
But there are no big celebs here, no burning insights, no really outrageous behavior that makes a star bio book worth the bucks.
Still, while Knelman doesn't make the earth move with John Candy revelations, there are a few incidents in the "neat stuff you never knew before" category:
1. Candy was actually "seriously considering" doing the lead role in the film version of Paul Quarrington's Whale Music. Knelman speculates that Candy found the tale of the paranoid rock musician-hermit a little too close to home and backed away from it, giving up the role to Maury Chaykin.
2. Candy was also toying with the lead role in a screen adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, which is apparently drifting around out there waiting to be made into a movie.
3. Candy was also considering doing a film biography of the 1920s actor Fatty Arbuckle, whom Knelman calls "the tragic innocent victim of a Hollywood scandal."
In a way it's a pity that Candy isn't the innocent victim of some Hollywood scandals as well; this is a book that could do with some. 

Harold Fiske is former news editor of The National Examiner, a cheap supermarket tabloid. He's also a hanger-on, peripheral player, and very minor celebrity.