Candy Tells Tales on Some of His Favorite Comics

John Candy on his favorite comics:

Eugene Levy: “I get Gene in trouble all the time. I’m always calling him up and saying, ‘Gene, I got this deal and took the liberty of signing your name.’ We’re like Kramden and Norton--I’m sort of wild and impulsive, he’s slow and incredibly meticulous. He can drive you crazy just by the way he orders food. You can eat an entire meal, have dessert and get the check and Gene’s still studying the menu. Once we went to an awards ceremony together with our wives, and he couldn’t figure out how to tie his bow tie. So he just asked everyone he saw along the way to help him--people in cars, the parking attendant, the theater ushers. Finally, we bought him one with an elastic band.”

Bill Murray: “What you see is what you get with Bill. He’s totally unpredictable. He’s the kind of guy who’d call me at 4 a.m. when the hostages were freed and say, ‘Thanks for being a Canadian.’ When I first came to Chicago to do Second City, Bill took me under his wing. He was a wonderful tour guide. He took me all over the city, showed me every landmark--we’d have a hamburger at the original McDonald’s, a pancake at the first International House of Pancakes. We went to every weird, seedy area imaginable. He’d always say, ‘This is my town, and this can be your town too!’ When we’d go to Wrigley Field, he knew every Cubs player that had ever lived. In fact, I had my first case of sunstroke seeing a Cubs game.”

David Letterman: “I was a little nervous about going on his show, because I’d heard that he could be hard on his guests sometimes. But the best time was when I followed Nastassja Kinski. She had her hair teased so it was sticking way up in the air and he made some remarks about it, so the interview wasn’t going well. I was in the guest room and when I saw her on the monitor, I couldn’t resist. I got some gel and stuck my hair straight up in the air too. I ran into her in the hall as she was leaving, and I told her, ‘Gee, I don’t know why he gave you such a hard time about your hair. It looks great to me.’ ”