One of Macdonald’s oldest friends, comedian Harland Williams, reveals in the film via interview excerpts that the comedian quietly battled stomach cancer in the 1980s. In 2013, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and only told his family, his agent and his ex-wife, choosing to hide it from the public and even his closest friends. He was prescribed dexamethasone, which caused him to gain considerable weight. “I was always taught that the nature of art was to hide, not to reveal. What they’re doing now is ‘confessional comedy,’ but when people confess things and they’re told how brave they are, because they have cancer or something and they talk about it, well, everyone has cancer. This is not uncommon at all. The brave thing to do if you have cancer is to not talk about it,” Macdonald says in the document.
He was inspired by Richard Farnsworth, the journeyman actor who, after secretly battling terminal cancer, committed suicide with a gun in October 2000. “I remember Richard Farnsworth was a former actor and he did a David Lynch movie called ‘The Straight Story.’ It was based on a guy who, in real life, drove his lawn mower across the state to visit his brother, who was dying. It was Richard Farnsworth’s last film,” says Macdonald. “He was very fragile, riddled with cancer. Anyway, the fact is that Richard Farnsworth was nominated for an Oscar for the film, and if he had said he had cancer, he would have won, for sure. But instead, he didn’t say it. In fact, no one knew; he hid it from everyone. He didn’t want to cause people distress, so I thought, ‘Wow, how cool amazing to go through this alone.”
Gn entert
