Cancer is no laughing matter … except for André Ricciardi, it is. “André Is an Idiot,” by Tony Benna, is a painfully funny, poignant film about Ricciardi’s final journey toward death. The title of the documentary, playing at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center starting on May 1, refers to Ricciardi’s self-proclaimed idiocy for avoiding a routine colonoscopy two years earlier. By the time he finally gets one, he receives an unexpected diagnosis — Stage 4 colon cancer at only 50 years of age.
Ricciardi, a relentlessly wisecracking iconoclast, has an audacious, irreverent sense of humor in his very lifeblood. Although he uses his humor as a defense against the harsh reality of his cancer, his whiplash-fast comments never obscure or skim over his feelings; rather, they express them with an emotional punch. While he may make fun of himself and the reality of his situation, he does not downplay it. Wondering what he will say next keeps us engaged throughout the film, which he has made as an unconventional public service announcement to encourage viewers to get colonoscopies whenever possible after age 45.
The film also serves as a sort of journal for him to deal with his anxiety. Instead of writing about his intimate feelings, Ricciardi speaks about them openly to us, with a strange humor, as he goes through diagnosis, chemo, radiation, and the process of facing his fears and contemplating dying: “Once you get the diagnosis of cancer, it’s fascinating that I’m dying, and I want to document it. I want to learn from it.”
He navigates the absurd reality of his life with dark humor. At one point, he makes a pact with his best friend, Lee, to keep doing what they’ve always done, making fun of any bad situation. “Let’s keep the irreverence I’ve always applied to my life,” says Ricciardi. The ease with which they talk about the morbid topic could be uncomfortable if they didn’t find their humor genuinely funny. Lee remarks, “We’re having so much fun with André dying. I know that sounds crazy to say, but it’s so very André to do it that way.”
And that way is what he does. We follow Ricciardi as he searches for ways to cope with his cancer, from eating well to smoking a great deal on his bong, which could be to deal with the cancer … but is certainly part and parcel of his semi-reformed hedonist lifestyle. He explains that his ability to recover from the discomfort of chemo comes from all the practice he’s had from doing so with hangovers.
Ricciardi shares, too, the reality of his day-to-day life, which includes a lot of resting, slow walks, and taking meds: “Dying is surprisingly boring. I’m still unloading the dishwasher. Something fascinating to me is how mundane death is.”
Ricciardi’s wife, Janice, is the emotional lynchpin of the film. The two initially married on a lark. Janice, a Canadian who worked at a local bar, needed a green card and, one night, asked the friend Ricciardi was sitting with whether he would marry her. The friend wouldn’t, but Ricciardi said sure. “I figured it meant free drinks in the bar because I married the bartender,” he reports. The two, however, truly fell in love, and the marriage turned out to be a strong one.
Janice is a self-proclaimed rule follower, in contrast to Ricciardi’s unorthodox attitude toward life. She speaks openly and genuinely of her “we can beat this” attitude and slipping into caretaker mode as a way of avoiding the reality of his dying.
While the couple doesn’t hide Ricciardi’s cancer from their teenage daughters, they choose not to share many details. Talking to his therapist on the phone, he says he uses humor to shield them from the pain. The therapist tells him, “Be generous and let them be sad,” reminding him that he doesn’t have to make them laugh all the time. And while Riccardi agrees, he can barely stop himself from joking about it.
Ultimately, this fascinating, moving, sometimes uncomfortable, and often amusing film can’t help but make us contemplate our own death, how we might handle it, and the bravery it took Ricciardi and those closest to him to share it with others.
“André Is an Idiot” screens at the M.V. Film Center starting on May 1. For more information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.