‘It was a little scary at times’: the hilarious, heartbreaking film about one man’s riotous death | Film

When André Ricciardi turned 50, his best friend Lee made him an unusual proposition: what if they went for a colonoscopy together? In the United States, both men were old enough to access the health check, and Lee had visions of them happily farting in adjacent toilets while the drug emptied their bowels, then chatting on hospital beds while tiny cameras scanned their anal passages. André was always up for the ridiculous stuff, but on this occasion he surprised Lee: he said no.

“I was 100 percent shocked,” Lee says today. “I actually got jealous because I thought he must have arranged to go with someone else!” But André had not made any further plans for a colonoscopy. He just thought it was a crazy idea and for once he was reasonable. This turned out to be the stupidest thing he ever did. Eighteen months later, disturbed by blood in his stools, André underwent a colonoscopy. It turned out he had stage 4 cancer.

“I hadn’t spoken to André in probably five years,” says Tony Benna, director of a moving – and hilarious – new documentary called André Is an Idiot. “Then I get this email from him and Lee saying, ‘We have a great idea for a movie. Can we meet on Zoom?'” Benna was excited. He had worked with André, a maverick advertising designer from San Francisco, on numerous projects. “We’d tour with Ozzy Osbourne, or meet Eminem, or hang out with the guitar tech from the Rolling Stones. And somehow you’d connect that to the soap opera Dove or something.”

The next day, on screen, André says to him: “I have cancer and I will probably be dead in three years. Do you want to make a film about that?”

It was a lot to process, Benna said. He didn’t particularly want to make a tearful film about cancer, but he had I always wanted to do one about André. “He’s one of the craziest people I’ve ever met. He had so many crazy stories. I wanted to get to the bottom of it.”

And so, Benna soon discovered, Andre actually once bought a pair of Kim Kardashian’s old leather pants at auction in hopes of cloning her DNA. He really had to remove splinters from his penis after a masturbation experiment gone wrong in his grandparents’ bathroom. He actually read Helter Skelter, a book about the Manson murders, to his daughter while she was recovering from surgery in the hospital.

Then there was the marriage story. In the 1990s – during what his friends call Andre’s “bathrobe era” since he spent an entire year wearing one – he was drinking when he overheard the waiter asking a friend to marry him so she could get a green card. The friend refused, so André said, “I’ll do it!”

Andre had a girlfriend at the time (“She didn’t take it very well”) and Janice the bartender was also dating someone, so the marriage had to be strictly platonic. Yet somehow, this fake couple ended up making their way onto Newlyweds, the American game show in which couples compete to show how well they know their new partner. André came up with an ingenious plan: when they were asked multiple-choice questions separately, each selected the answer that, according to its first letter, came last in the alphabet.

“I don’t know how legal it was,” Janice laughs today. Probably not much – but it worked. The couple won a vacation to the Caribbean where, against all odds, they fell in love.

Although Andre, with his messy hair and explosion of ideas, is the star of the film, Janice is the quiet hero, always there crossing her fingers for positive test results, keeping the house running, and nursing Andre back to health as he gets sicker and sicker. His presence adds emotional depth to what might otherwise be a series of farcical adventures, of which there are many. At one point, Andre plans to make a hard copy of his genome so he can come back as a clone. He visits a teacher of “death screams” – basically, a rehearsal of the last sound you will ever make on Earth. And he hosts a TV show called Who Wants to Kill Me? in which contestants compete for the chance to finish off Andre in an imaginative way (fed to lions? cooked by a chef with a weakness for human flesh?).

“He was so serious about this idea that we went to Hollywood to pitch it,” says Benna. “We got turned down, so he went out on Hollywood Boulevard, asking people if they wanted to watch this show, so we could go back and say, ‘Look, all these people want to see it!'” He wouldn’t really let someone turn him into soup, would he? Benna laughs. “You never knew. It was a little scary sometimes – because you didn’t know if he was actually going to get a head transplant.”

Part of Benna’s job was simply to follow Andre around. “If he wanted to go to a radon mine and breathe radioactive air, we went. If he wanted to do a crystal healing session, we did. If he wanted to do nine grams of mushrooms, we were OK with that.”

It’s a lot of fun. Benna uses stop-motion animation to recreate certain scenes. In one of them, clumps of hair that fell out from André’s chemo treatment come to life. When Andre’s father, an extremely private man, refuses to appear on camera, they hire a lookalike. This is the legendary weed smoker Tommy Chong.

The pace is frenetic, but there is meaning. “We’re all going to experience this at some point,” Benna says. “And there are different ways to approach it. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to be angry. You can approach it with humor, with friends, with art. I think that message resonated.”

At the beginning, André says: “You only have time in life to become good at one or two things – and I chose advertisement. What’s wrong with me? What a wasted life! » But he has the opportunity to find meaning in his work by creating a campaign encouraging men to have their colon checked (it revolves around everyday objects that look like sphincters).

André is forced to confront difficult aspects of his past. The love he has for his two daughters is undeniable, but it is not always affectionate. He never kisses them. “He doesn’t talk about pain and fear,” says one, “which is difficult for my mother.”

But it’s Andre’s conversations with his therapist, Peter, that take the film to another level. Peter loves André’s jokes but realizes that they are often a defense mechanism to avoid confronting difficult emotions. “You are much more than your irreverent humor,” he tells André.

“Without Peter, I’m not sure the film would have made much sense,” Benna says. “Peter helped Andre grieve, but he also let his family grieve. Andre learned to be vulnerable and humble. This allowed him to appreciate the life he lived and the love that surrounded him.”

“I was surprised how willing he was to talk,” Janice says. “The film was a wonderful way for him to reflect on his journey and what was valuable in his life.”

André copes incredibly well with chemo. “I prepared by having the worst hangover in 30 years,” he says in the document. But ultimately, it no longer works. His belly swells, his hair grows back wilder than ever and he develops long eyelashes. He begins to resemble a wild mystic sitting on top of a mountain. And the changes aren’t just physical: spiritually, his transformation is even greater, providing the film with a powerful climax and sense of closure.

“He had so much more to do,” says Janice, who lost her soul mate in December 2023. “So many more stories, so much creativity. And he would have made a great grumpy old man.”

When Janice learned the film won the Audience Award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, she stopped her car and cried. No one expected the film to be shown there. Benna hadn’t even responded to RSVPd. “There was a standing ovation and it was surreal, like I was floating,” he says. “People came to me and said they wish they had seen him once the diagnosis was made because they would have felt less scared, less angry, less isolated.”

And then there’s everyone who had a colonoscopy because of the movie. “At least three dozen people said the film saved their lives because they were screened and detected early.”

Lee asked Andre, shortly before his death, how he summed up the previous three years. “André said: “The best years of my life”. Janice, who was in the room at the time making a sandwich, shouted, “Mine too!” Lee realized it was the same for him.

Despite the heartbreaking outcome, they had spent three precious years creating countless memories with their crazy friend. “It brought us all together in a very intense and emotional way,” says Lee. “I honestly think that was always part of Andre’s master plan.”