Chosen One of the Day: Barf the Mog in Spaceballs

We all love Chewbacca. Chewie is a wonderful, frustrated fuzzball and we adore him. Now they say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but I’m going to go a step further and say that maybe space-parody is the highest form of flattery? And to that end, today we’re talking about Barf in Spaceballs. 

Barf’s a mog! He’s half-man, half-dog! He’s his own best friend! And like Chewbacca, Barf was played by a gem of an actor. 

I’m a child of the late '80s and early '90s and John Candy was my hero. Whether he was coaching a Jamaican bobsled team or getting Catherine O’Hara back to her neglected child, the dude was perfect. 

When he’s introduced in Spaceballs, it’s inside of the Eagle 5 (Lonestar’s Winnebego — I mean, Millennial Falcon), wearing a worksuit, paws stuffed into some dirty, busted Converses, bushy-tailed, dancing to Bon Jovi, and eating something out of a bucket that says Barf. 

I could spend 400 words on the way Candy moves in this suit, I think, like he’s a teen dancing at prom in an '80s romantic comedy. I could write a poem about his delivery of "they've gone to plaid." 

Barf is the heart and soul of Spaceballs, and no one can tell me otherwise.