The film adaptation of Stephen King’s horror thriller Thinner is not considered one of the best King adaptations, but it does tell an interesting story.
The story revolves around a morbidly obese lawyer named Billy Halleck, who accidentally runs over an elderly Romani woman while driving under the influence. Due to his connections, Halleck manages to escape serious legal consequences, but the Romani woman’s father, Tadzu Lempke, places a curse on him by touching his cheek and saying “thinner.”
As a result, Halleck begins losing weight rapidly and uncontrollably, even though he continues to eat normally. Desperate to break the curse, he seeks help from various sources, including the law, medicine, and eventually the Romani community. However, as his weight continues to plummet, Halleck’s life spirals into chaos, leading to a gripping and supernatural tale of revenge and redemption.
The film had a long hard road to getting made as it was constantly being rejected by studios and it spent a good five years in development hell. But, when the movie finally did get made, Robert John Burke was cast in the lead role. However, King originally wanted John Candy to star in the film.
This bit of information was revealed on the exclusive special features on the recently released Thinner Blu-ray in a commentary track featuring an interview with producer Mitchell Galin. He explained that they actually reached out to John Candy and made an offer. This was not a joke, they also wanted to use the opportunity as a means to help the actor lose weight. Galin explained that a legitimate effort was made to cast Candy, but it didn’t work out. He said:
“We did reach out to [John] Candy’s people. Steve’s comment was like, ‘We’ll pay him a nice chunk of money, and we’ll save his life.’ (laughs) And for whatever reason – Candy was either busy, or he didn’t spark to [the material]… I really have no idea. At some point, you put it out there, if it doesn’t get the response you want, at the end of the day, I really don’t care. Unless it’s something needful, a person that can help you in the process of moving forward.”
Taking the part would have required John Candy to go significantly outside of his comedic wheelhouse, and do some dramatic acting. Galin continued, saying:
“The fact is he didn’t spark to the material or didn’t want to do it; whatever the reason, you respect it, and you go, ‘These people make decisions all the time, make those creative decisions.’ And you got to be respectful that they know what they can do and what they can’t do. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, but that’s not for you to make that determination. So, we did reach out to him, we didn’t get positive feedback, and then we started the process of looking for the lead, and I was a big fan of Robert Burke.”
Robert John Burke ended up wearing a fat suit and had extensive makeup work done for the scenes early in the film when the character was at his biggest. The makeup and stuff didn’t look very good, but over the course of shooting the film, the actor did end up losing 20 pounds.
Had Candy taken the role, it would have been a very ambitious thing, but for the actor to lose so much weight over the short course of filming seems unpractical. But, I can’t help but wonder how things would’ve turned out had Candy said yes.
Joey Paur
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