Panorama: André Is an Idiot

Featuring a post-film discussion with filmmaker Tony Benna and executive producer Lee Einhorn. 

"Get a fucking colonoscopy" we're told at the end of André is an Idiot, a wildly entertaining documentary collaboration between director Tony Benna and his friend, the terminally diagnosed title character. When André Ricciardi (a self-deprecating, witty, successful San Francisco advertising executive) learns that he has stage 4 colon cancer at age 52, he regrets he waited too long for a procedure that might have saved his life. 

But he also resolves to document his final journey in his own way — with his acerbic sense of humor and absurdist temperament (punctuated by Benna's uproarious stop-motion animation), often pointed at himself and his predicament. His therapy sessions and interviews with his wife, Janice, are particularly revealing and poignant — grounding André's superficially irreverent project in his efforts to protect his family during an increasingly painful time... and in his wish to never be forgotten.