Murray recounted witnessing a legendary director’s patience wear thin while working with Candy on a stage play.

Bill Murray watched John Candy drive famous director ‘out of his mind’: ‘Shamefully irresponsible’

Murray recounted witnessing a legendary director's patience wear thin while working with Candy on a stage play.

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January 19, 2026 4:00 p.m. ET

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Bill Murray and John Candy. Credit:

Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty (2)

Bill Murray once witnessed the late John Candy drive an iconic film director mad while they rehearsed a star-studded stage play.

In the Colin Hanks-directed, Ryan Reynolds-produced documentary *John Candy: I Like Me,* Murray opened up about his relationship with the Canadian legend, who died in 1994 after forging a successful career as a beloved comedy actor.

"As kind as John was to people that he was only going to be with for a minute, when you're working, you have to be professional," Murray said in the film, after starring with Candy in Ivan Reitman's 1981 movie *Stripes*. "You have to commit to doing the best you can."

He then told a story that he said exemplified Candy's ability to get so deep into a scene-stealing moment that he'd sometimes forget about fairness to other actors in the moment.

Bill Murray and John Candy in 'Stripes'.

Courtesy Everett Collection

"We did a stage reading, it was [for] Marilyn Suzanne Miller, great writer on *Saturday Night Live*. She wrote a play, and somehow Sydney Pollack was going to direct it," Murray remembered in the film of the *Tootsie* helmer, who died in 2008.

Murray remembered that there were "a bunch of famous actors in it," including Murray, Candy, Ray Liotta, and Kevin Kline.

"Candy had a scene where he was in the bathroom, talking, and he milked it so bad. He *milked* it. The timing was beyond comprehension. You couldn't believe it," Murray said in the documentary. "I'm watching it, I'm watching Sydney Pollack, who's going out of his mind, because John is just milking it, milking it, milking it, just having his own kind of fun. I'm laughing because I know Sydney is going to kill him."

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An off-camera member of production can then be heard talking to Murray about Candy "sucking" in the moment, though the actor clarified.****"It wasn't sucking, he was just milking. It wasn't like it wasn't funny, it was just that it was shamefully irresponsible to the idea that there might be another actor in the scene or in the whole play," Murray said.

The documentary included many more stories about Candy's life on and off set, with one portion featuring Macaulay Culkin reflecting on Candy's comforting paternal instincts he displayed toward the child star as they shot the 1989 John Hughes movie *Uncle Buck*.

Another portion saw Murray discuss a moment from the production of *Stripes* where Candy refused to take his shirt off during a mud wrestling scene that also involved women wearing bikinis.

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"The women got into it. They were all fit. They started pulling his ears and stuff. People would take a little advantage because they'd think you could do what you want to hurt him," Murray remembered in a section of the film that examined media scrutiny over Candy's body. "[They'd think that] he's so big, I couldn't possibly hurt him. He didn't like that, he didn't enjoy that. I understood that."

*John Candy: I Like Me* is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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Source: “EW Documentary”