It’s late November — a time of falling leaves, family gatherings and my annual viewing of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” For most audiences, the 1987 film is a Thanksgiving classic about a rerouted flight, missing rental car and an impossibly long road trip from St. Louis to Chicago.
But for me, it’s a reminder of my dad and the sound of his laughter — full-bodied, contagious and always loudest when John Candy showed up on screen.
My late father, who was extremely critical of most comedians, loved Candy. But it was only after watching the recently released documentary “John Candy: I Like Me” that I understood why he loved him so much: My father saw himself in Candy.
When Candy died of a heart attack at just 43 in 1994, the narrative was that his weight, smoking and drinking finally caught up with him.
But the documentary reveals another story. What killed Candy might have been less about his size and more about his family history, unresolved trauma and the effects of how others treated him because of his weight.
While his lifestyle may have hastened his death, Candy’s behaviors were likely driven by mental health struggles, which only made it harder to manage his physical health.
Candy was often described as a man who lacked the discipline to make the changes to “get healthy.” But the reality was far more complex. Candy’s father, who would have been considered “normal weight,” died of a heart attack at 35, which suggests Candy could have inherited a genetic predisposition for heart disease.
My dad, like Candy, was a large man. He loved to make jokes and connect with strangers. He was a lot like Candy’s characters —genuine, big-hearted and slightly offbeat but also vulnerable and sympathetic in a way that drew others.
He also carried trauma and the anxiety tied to losing a father too soon — my grandfather also died of heart disease.
Candy often spoke of being doomed to the same fate as his father. What he and my father felt wasn’t unusual. Early loss, like losing a parent, raises the risk for chronic illness and early death. Candy’s body carried more than weight — it carried the grief of a 5-year-old child who never got to grow older alongside his dad.
Candy, who also endured a lifetime of public fat-shaming, tried diet after diet, losing and regaining weight in cycles that research now links to increased cardiovascular risk, regardless of body size at baseline.
The stigma attached to his weight also posed a risk as shame and stigma activate the same stress pathways as fear or danger, flooding the body with hormones that strain the heart over time.
In his final years, Candy’s anxiety worsened as he juggled more movie roles while co-owning a Canadian football team. He experienced frequent panic attacks, which are now known to independently raise the risk of heart disease.
Whether he was worried about his imminent death or the anxiety drove him closer to it, the stress he carried without appropriate treatment, no doubt, further compromised his health.
Candy’s death was tragic but not unique. Too often, people in larger bodies are told that weight loss is the only prescription, even when it masks more serious risk factors.
Others, like my father, focus so intensely on weight loss that they miss more effective treatments for the underlying condition. Both paths are paved by a system that confuses body size with health.
My father may have lost the weight in his later years, but his congestive heart failure persisted. Without the pacemaker he desperately needed, he died at 64 in 2013, just three months before he was going walk me down the aisle.
We can’t know for sure what would have changed if the world had seen Candy or my father differently, but we can change how we see others like them now.
If we don’t, we’ll keep losing good people to conditions that might have been prevented if only we’d paid attention to the full spectrum of their ailments.
Joanna Buscemi is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at DePaul University’s College of Science and Health with an expertise in the intersection between health and mental health. She is also a lifelong John Candy fan.