What Cool Runnings had to say wasn’t revolutionary,” says the 1993 film’s director Jon Turteltaub. “It was just being said in a great way that really connected with people. A compliment from your friends is great, but when you hear Lewis Hamilton say it was life-changing, you go to your grave aware that, somehow, my work touched someone else’s life and made a difference. That goes way beyond box office success.”
Mention Disney’s bobsled classic to anyone who grew up in the early Nineties, and odds are, they’ll instantly hear its central jingle: “Nuff people say, they know they can’t believe, Jamaica we have a bobsled team.” It’ll also likely be accompanied by feelings of warm, cosy nostalgia – and not just because of the film’s regular airings on UK telly and near-constant ITV2 Sunday afternoon repeats.
Turteltaub’s family comedy, which turns 30 on 1 October, very loosely adapted the unlikely real-life story of the 1988 Winter Olympics and the debut of the Jamaican national bobsleigh team on the world stage. Playing fast and loose with the facts, he introduced us to Derice Bannock (Leon), Junior Bevil (Rawle D Lewis), Yul Brenner (Malik Yoba) and Sanka Coffie (Doug E Doug), four island athletes who discover an unusual way to make it as Olympic champions after their original route falls through.
Under the guidance of disgraced bobsled coach Irving “Irv” Blitzer (John Candy), the quartet defy the odds to become Jamaica’s first Olympic-qualifying bobsled team. They then swap their balmy paradise home for the frozen Calgary competition track, where the snowy weather perfectly matches the ice-cold snobbery of their spandex-clad opponents. By its close, Cool Runnings has subtly tackled themes of cultural difference, empowerment and racism, while never straying from its family-friendly ethos – and it’s also why the film would go on to become one of the decade’s most enduring underdog stories.
These days, Turteltaub has carved out one of the most eclectic filmographies in Hollywood, directing films as diverse as the Sandra Bullock romcom While You Were Sleeping and Jason Statham’s shark-attack movie The Meg. However, by 1992, he’d only three credits to his name, the most impressive being 3 Ninjas, a martial arts comedy that cashed in on The Karate Kid craze.
Cool Runnings was almost someone else’s film, too: British director Brian Gibson was originally slated to direct a more serious take, under the working title Blue Maaga. It had even begun the casting process alongside the movie’s producer, Dawn Steel.
“Before Disney took over and made it a family film, there were drugs, racism and the characters were getting laid a lot,” says star Rawle D Lewis, who was cast as the shy, wealthy Junior Bevil. “I saw it morph into the movie that it is now. It was something that had never been told before – Jamaicans in tights? People were like, ‘How’s this going to go under the Disney umbrella?’”
Lewis had originally been recruited as a script reader during auditions – an actor who’d perform off-camera while other actors came in to read for roles. As such, he had a ringside seat to casting, watching on as a wide array of stars threw their hats into the ring for a chance to appear in Disney’s latest. “They auditioned in London, New York and LA and saw different people that are now big who were then just coming up,” he remembers. “I saw Cuba Gooding Jr, Damon Wayans… I think Malik saw Tupac.”
Yoba’s audition saw him improvise what would become the film’s signature song, which was later written into the movie once he was cast as island tough guy Brenner. “Every Jamaican has a song in their heart, even if they can’t sing,” Yoba jokes. “I thought, I’m going to walk in here with a song regardless of whether or not I get the film. I just knew it was a realistic approach to playing any kind of Jamaican.”
Representing Jamaican culture on the world stage was a huge factor for the movie’s lead, Leon. Having spent time living in Jamaica, he was determined to do the island justice. “The thought that we were representing Jamaica in such a progressive way and letting people glimpse into a culture they were completely unaware of was important,” he says.
All four actors were practically set in their roles before the movie almost fell apart. After disappearing for eight months, Steel reemerged with a different script, one that had swapped its original, gritty feel for something more Disney-fied – and came complete with a brand new title, Cool Runnings. While its tone had changed, the chemistry of its stars helped the story survive the transition. “You could see their heart and warmth,” says Turteltaub, who joined as director and completed the casting process after the script had evolved. “No matter what they were saying or doing, you liked them. They had a sense of humour and fun to them and that can’t help but come out on screen.”
When Cool Runnings was a darker movie, Coach Blitzer was conceived as a grizzled character role, with Kurt Russell among the names considered. Once Disney reimagined the film as a whole, though, Blitzer took on a more comedic edge while retaining a slice of drama. John Candy had made his name with hit Eighties comedies including Spaceballs and Uncle Buck, but by the early Nineties his career had hit a plateau. While a bit part in Oliver Stone’s 1991 political thriller JFK let him flex some dramatic chops, Cool Runnings placed him back onto familiar ground, mixing humour with pathos by playing a washed-up former mentor who finds his way back to the big time.
“John was maybe the most delightful actor I’ve ever been around,” remembers Turteltaub. “I was a complete moron when I first met him; I couldn’t stop giggling at everything he said. I thought: ‘[I’m] not behaving like a director who’s in charge, [I’m] acting like a child who just met his hero’ – and that went on for weeks.”
“John was fantastic,” adds Leon. “He was so generous, forthcoming and genuinely happy to be doing that movie. I think it was because it gave him a chance to show a different side of himself.” Lewis has similar memories: “He took us under his wing and shared stories with us. [He] said ‘This is your movie. I’m just here to help it along.’ He literally played the coach to us.”
Going out of his way to arrange cast dinners, Candy even made each of his on-screen sledders CD mixtapes with curated songs that he felt represented their characters. “He also offered to take us salmon fishing in Alaska when the film was done,” recalls Yoba. “He was a classy guy.”
Father figure: John Candy cheers on the team in ‘Cool Runnings’
However, Yoba also noticed a sadness to Candy. “He was 42 at that point and had never taken a vacation in his professional career,” he remembers. “He said it was because he was afraid he’d never work again. That always stuck with me. At that time, he was probably the biggest he had ever been in his life and I recall he had a trainer on set with him and he was really struggling to lose weight. He was very insecure about his place in the Hollywood ecosystem. Most people would never imagine that would be the case for the great John Candy – but it was.”
“I know he had fears about his career and how he was perceived by people,” adds Turteltaub. “His whole life, John hated not being liked. He was afraid of it on a personal and professional level.” Turteltaub says that Candy’s inability to turn down autograph requests was evidence of this crutch in action. “John had trouble doing that because he felt like a bad person if he didn’t. That eats away at a person.”
Candy died from a heart attack in 1994, just five months after Cool Runnings’ release. “It’s a bit clichéd that the funny guy might not be the happy guy, but there’s a little truth to that,” continues Turteltaub. “John was a fun, happy person, but if you got really deep, there was a lot of sadness and anger under there.”
Meanwhile, Turteltaub had his own battles on the set, primarily when it came to Disney’s then-boss Jeffrey Katzenberg. He was worried that audiences might struggle to understand an authentic Jamaican cadence, so the accents used by the film’s central quartet became a near-constant point of contention.
Teamwork: Malik Yoba, Leon, Doug E Doug and Rawle D Lewis in ‘Cool Runnings’
If this movie was made [in 2023], there’s zero chance I’d get this job – and I probably shouldn’t get it
