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Canadian Bacon
U.S. Movie poster for Canadian Bacon
Directed by	Michael Moore
Produced by	Michael Moore
Written by	Michael Moore
Starring	Alan Alda John Candy Bill Nunn Kevin J. O'Connor Rhea Perlman Kevin Pollak G.D. Spradlin Rip Torn
Music by	Elmer Bernstein Peter Bernstein
Cinematography	Haskell Wexler
Editing by	Michael Berenbaum Wendey Stanzler
Distributed by	Gramercy
Release date(s)	September 22, 1995
Running time	91 min
Language	English
Budget	$11 million
IMDb profile

Canadian Bacon is a 1995 comedy/satire, and the only fictional film written, directed and produced by Michael Moore. It was the last film released to star John Candy.

A U.S. president (played by Alan Alda), faced with falling public opinion ratings {i.e. closing down cold war defense industries}, decides to go to war to distract voters from domestic troubles and invigorate the economy, a plan supported by his National Security Advisor Stuart Smiley (played by Kevin Pollak) and General Dick Panzer (Rip Torn). The problem with this plan is that, with the demise of the Soviet Union, there's no one left to go to war with. But some brainstorming by Smiley leads to an attempt to start a cold war with Canada ("everyone hates Canadians"), using media manipulation as the main tool to stoke the passions of the US public. Unfortunately, a local sheriff, Bud B. Boomer (John Candy, a Canadian in real life), in a town along the US/Canada border, takes it a bit further.

Tagline: You surrender pronto, or we'll level Toronto. Another tagline on the poster was Help America Fight the Canadians.

• Alan Alda as The President/Norman Bates
• John Candy as Sheriff Bud B. Boomer
• Rhea Perlman as Deputy Honey
• Kevin Pollak as National Security Advisor Stuart Smiley
• Rip Torn as General Dick Panzer
• Kevin J. O'Connor as Roy Boy
• Bill Nunn as Kabral Jabar
• G. D. Spradlin as R. J. Hacker
• James Belushi as Charles Jackal

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)

The movie was filmed in Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara Falls, Ontario. The Parkwood Estate in Oshawa was the site for the White House, and Dofasco in Hamilton was the site for Hacker Dynamics. The scene where the American characters look longingly home at the US across the putative Niagara River is, in fact, them looking across Burlington Bay at Stelco steelworks in Hamilton, Ontario.

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• The film is noted for its high number of cameos by Canadian actors. As an example, Dan Aykroyd, who is Canadian, appears in the movie uncredited as an Ontario Provincial Police officer. He stops Sheriff Boomer's truck which has anti-Canadian graffiti painted on it in English and lets Boomer and his "heroes" go after the truck has been spraypainted with the graffiti translated into French.
• Oliver North appears at the end in a photograph with Stuart Smiley as the newly-elected president.
• The sequences in the American President's war room are strongly influenced by Stanley Kubrick's black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
• Director Moore appears in a fake news broadcast as one of a group of redneck, gun-toting Americans ready to go to war against Canada. One of his lines is "It's time we put the 'America' back in 'North America'!"
• The end credits state that no Canadians were harmed during the making of the movie, and thank Johnny La Rue for the opening helicopter shot of Horseshoe Falls. This is a reference to a running gag on SCTV where LaRue (a character played by John Candy) famously went over budget for his talk show ("Street Beef") by insisting on ending the show with a long shot from a rented helicopter. The credits say: "Johnny La Rue, you finally got your crane shot".
• This film was shot before Wagons East!, but was released a year later.
• A joke that pervades the movie is the irony that Canadian actors in it are playing Canadian-hating US civilians.
• When the two Mounties in the park are discussing the correct placement of prepositions in a sentence, the second Mountie suggests the phrasing of a sentence in the "preferred Queen's English" as "Get back thee from whence thou camest." The correct grammar in that setting would actually be "to whence."
• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are called the Royal Mounted Canadian Police (RMCP) in this movie
• In one scene where anti-canadian propaganda is shown on US TV has pictures of well known Canadian actors in the US include William Shatner and Alex Trebek

• Dr. Strangelove
• The Mouse that Roared
• Wag the Dog, a 1997 film about a war devised for similar reasons
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which also features war between the U.S. and Canada

• Canadian Bacon at the Internet Movie Database
• Ebert & Roeper Film Review (Flash Video)