Crane (34 page)

John worked with fellow Second City alumnus Dan Aykroyd in Steven Spielberg’s first bomb,
1941,
John Landis’s
The Blues Brothers,
and the perennial cable television favorite
The Great Outdoors,
which Annette Bening no doubt wishes she could remove from her distinguished résumé. When Aykroyd called John asking for a big favor, Candy’s automatic response was, “When and where?” Again, John didn’t bother to actually read the many-drafted “Valkenvania.” He simply wanted to lend a hand with friend Dan’s directorial debut. He joined Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, and Aykroyd in the cast, taking on dual roles
as a brother and sister.* The shoot was interminable, the budget bloated to $40 million, Chevy intentionally farted in front of the cast and crew, and Demi sulked. Aykroyd was overwhelmed, and John was busting his ass with constant wardrobe, hair, makeup, and gender changes. John Hughes and Tom Mankiewicz visited the set with script inserts and practical ideas like doing away with the playback monitors for each actor, which promoted the notion that everyone was the director. Someone at Warner Brothers sadistically renamed the film
Nothing but Trouble,
and when it was finally released, it was skewered by critics and roasted to cinders. Aykroyd never called John for another favor.

John Candy’s friendship and working relationship with John Hughes was different, however, and did pay dividends. Hughes was producing and Chris Columbus was writing and directing a dramedy for 20th Century Fox called
Only the Lonely.
It was an opportunity for Candy to work again with wunderkind Columbus after their twenty-two-hour marathon shoot on
Home Alone.
John had taken the Screen Actors Guild minimum for that extended day’s work, turning down Hughes’s offer of 1 percent of the gross. John never attached a price tag to a favor.
Home Alone
became the highest-grossing comedy ever at that time, with over $500 million in the till. Fox, Hughes, and Columbus knew they owed John a $5 million dollar favor. I read the beautifully written original screenplay by Columbus. Hughes Entertainment cast Anthony Quinn, Jim Belushi, and Bert Remsen in supporting roles, with Ally Sheedy as the love interest, and topped it all off with Maureen O’Hara, who came out of a twenty-year retirement to play John’s bigoted mother. O’Hara, who was both John Wayne and John Ford’s favorite actress, represented everything about movies that Candy loved—a sassy, funny, beautiful legend of the silver screen who was as quick and clever as he was.

The first day on the set, John found his doublewide, a movie star trailer that expanded to almost the size of my house, but he also found a problem: Maureen O’Hara had been tucked into a pitiful little dressing room that was normally used by a day player, not a living, breathing film icon. John thought it was insulting and imploded. There were no histrionics, just John politely knocking on Ms. O’Hara’s tiny trailer door.

“Hi, John,” said Ms. O’Hara cheerfully, as she pulled the tinny hatch open. She was excited about working with him.

“Maureen, you’re taking my trailer. Get your stuff out,” John said sternly but with great respect.

The Chongos went to work, switching out Candy’s clothing and duffle bags with Ms. O’Hara’s wardrobe and makeup. Ms. O’Hara didn’t know what had hit her, but she enjoyed her new digs. John, on the other hand, looked like André the Giant sitting inside a walnut shell.

John knew only too well how the show business chess game was played. He dealt with nonverbal insults, false promises, and flat-out lies from producers, assistant directors, production assistants, and production managers, who always played on the side of the cheap better than anyone. He knew they figured they were going to save a little money, and what the hell, Maureen O’Hara had been away from films for such a long time she wouldn’t know the difference between a doublewide and a double espresso. So instead of going to the production office and throwing some kind of star tantrum, John very quietly took care of what he saw as a problem by himself. When people in the front office heard what their star had done, they went into freak-out mode. Within an hour another doublewide was pulled up next to Miss O’Hara’s. The Chongos then moved John’s gear for the second time that day. Checkmate.

Like millions of other late-night television viewers, John was a huge fan of Johnny Carson, but he was so intimidated by Carson that he’d never been on his show. 20th Century Fox persuaded John to make his only
Tonight Show
appearance escorting Maureen O’Hara on behalf of
Only the Lonely.
Surprisingly for an actor who had attended major award shows, met and done business with sports and Hollywood legends, John was a nervous wreck. He paced backstage at NBC Burbank, muttering to himself that appearing with Letterman was easy—Letterman was a goof. But Carson, the King of Late Night? John felt unworthy. For all his bluster and assuredness, the thought of sharing a stage with Johnny Carson turned him to jelly, the armpits of his shirt soaked through, which was odd because John, like my dad, never perspired. His brain was firing escape plots at warp speed, which included one where he would sneak down the hallway, go out the exit into his black Mercedes sedan, and disappear into the night. I reminded him that it was too late to be Houdini, and besides, he couldn’t let Maureen O’Hara down, could he?

Doc Severinsen and the
Tonight Show
orchestra played the costars on, Carson guiding Ms. O’Hara to the freestanding chair closest to his desk. John relaxed a bit, a pressure valve opened by sharing the couch with Ed McMahon. Ms. O’Hara laughed easily and graciously as Carson made it clear that he considered her one of the great actresses of film and an idol of a bygone era. John mumbled a few partial answers to Carson, only too glad to throw it back to the lovefest happening between the film and television legends. Ed told John how much he had enjoyed meeting him. John, for his part, never wore that shirt again.

Unfortunately,
Only the Lonely
was one of the few ventures in which Hughes and Columbus stubbed their toes. The film was released in May, even though it was a fall picture, and did only fair box office business. It did, however, represent the first time John really looked like a star and leading man onscreen.

One morning in the midst of a busy year for John, in which he filmed
Home Alone, Delirious, Nothing but Trouble,
and
Only the Lonely,
and while also hosting his weekly syndicated radio program,
Radio Kandy,
and supplying the voice of camp counselor John for NBC’s Saturday morning animated series
Camp Candy,
we sat in John’s office going through the mail stacked atop the well-worn trunk used by his character Del Griffith in
Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
As usual I was prodding him to respond to requests for autographed photographs when an envelope from Universal Studios caught his eye. He opened it with the serene expression of the Cheshire Cat and sniffed at the innards. “Mmmmmm,” he purred. “I love the smell of surrender in the morning.”

John handed me the contents of the envelope. It was a check. It was a check from Universal Studios. It was a check from Universal Studios signaling that its chief executives Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg and their raft of lawyers and accountants had given in, finally admitting that
Uncle Buck
had turned a profit. The pencil-pushing, ledger-thumping suits in the Black Tower of the Universal lot had waited as long as they possibly could to issue the check before John’s pit bull Century City attorney, Skip Brittenham, unleashed enough special effects for another Universal Studios Tour ride. The cause of John’s delight, the reason this would be a beautiful day in Brentwood, was his profit participation—a percentage of the net profits—from the exploits of every family’s nightmare relative, Uncle Buck. I knew everything would be good for at least the rest of the afternoon. It was a
check for the largest amount of money I’d ever seen: half a million dollars. “Pretty nice,” I said with a smile.

“Well, that’s as good as waving a white flag from the Black Tower,” John said gleefully. He was pleased with his victory in
Man v. Universal Bean Counters,
and I was happy he chose to share that pleasure with me.

“Lunch is on you,” I said.

*Although he won Emmys in 1982 and 1983 for “Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program” for
SCTV.

*John was nominated for a 1992 Razzie award for Worst Supporting Actress for his efforts.

33

In June 1991, I received a telephone call from Maricopa County investigator Jim Raines asking about my awareness of “an eight-millimeter camera and tripod that was owned by the victim.” In 1978, eight millimeter meant film, not video, and I told Raines about my dad’s various video cameras and recorders but also that he hadn’t used movie film, to my knowledge, since we had produced our home movie classic,
I Was a Teenager for the FBI,
in the ’60s or, perhaps, at my sisters’ high school graduations in the ’70s. I told Raines about his Nikon still camera as well as his Polaroid. I explained that in my possession were a three-quarter-inch videocassette recorder and monitor that I had secured from the apartment I shared with “the victim.” Patti had everything else.

Two months later, in the midst of another scorching Phoenix summer, Maricopa County district attorney Romley announced to the local press that within the next “three or four months, we will either have someone or say there isn’t enough evidence to go on.” Romley continued that his panel of reviewers had spent the previous few months surveying evidence, including interviews with subjects who had observed my dad and Carpenter having an argument at a night spot just days before the murder, and established “a couple of pieces of significant information” that could be heading toward an arrest. “John Carpenter is still the prime suspect, as far as I know, unless somebody has come up with something else,” said Romley. Even if there were no arrest at this time, Romley assured the public that the case would not be closed because “murder cases are never closed.”

Gary Fleischman in Beverly Hills jumped into the fray on behalf of his client Carpenter: “They’re barking up the wrong tree since day one with John Carpenter,” Fleischman said, repeating his client’s long-standing denial of wrongdoing.

Richard Romley had assumed control of the Maricopa County district
attorney’s chair in 1989, but with ongoing media criticism of what was so plainly an inept investigation at an all-time high, the heat on the “new” discovery team was ratcheted up. The
Arizona Republic
and the
Los Angeles Times
lavished scores of column inches retracing the developments over the past decade while soliciting remarks from Fleischman and Carpenter, who continued to maintain that Carpenter had been made a scapegoat for the Scottsdale Police Department’s shoddy work.

34

In 1991, Kari developed a rash that resembled sandpaper on an area three inches long by two inches wide at the top of her forehead just past her hairline and into her scalp. We both inspected the peculiar-looking eruption and figured it was some kind of dermatological problem, a bodily backlash to all the chemo and radiation she had endured. We went to the dermatologist who, upon examination and review of Kari’s chart, said very sympathetically, “This isn’t a dermatological matter. I wish it were. You’ve got to see your oncologist.”

Kari and I were immediately choked with fear. The Breast Center got her in quickly and did a biopsy. We waited. The next day the call came from Kari’s oncologist. He wanted to see her as soon as possible. The air was sucked out of our house. We were boarding the roller coaster again.

Later that afternoon, we stood with the oncologist. “This is cancer, I’m afraid.”

I looked at Kari, who drifted into an unfocused gaze then caught herself and concentrated on the doctor. Another surgical procedure would be performed—a scraping of the scalp where the cancer had surfaced. The roller coaster jerked as it built up speed. Kari and I were holding on again for dear life.

No sooner had the procedure been successfully executed than Kari developed pulmonary edema, which caused her great difficulty in breathing. We could both hear the wheezing in her lungs. Kari said she felt like she was trying to breathe through a water-filled snorkel. We made another visit to the Breast Center, and I watched as a physician delicately punctured her skin with a ten-inch needle, entering through her back and working the needle into her left lung. A viscous fluid made its way out
into a plastic bag, allowing Kari to feel almost instant relief. She gave me a little smile, but we both knew this episode was not a good omen.

Kari started chemo and radiation again, with a renewed resolve to endure the full regimen. I didn’t know which was harder for her—cancer’s return or surrendering control of her life. Weekends were again designated for camping out in the bathroom, but Kari had set her mind on obliterating the errant cells this time around. Her beautiful thick hair began falling like dandelion seeds, and her spirit also seemed to be cast adrift.