(Disclosure: Broke-Ass Stuart and Tony Benna are friends.)

It’s not a spoiler to say that Andre Ricciardi, the titular Andre of Tony Benna’s documentary “Andre Is An Idiot,” does indeed die.  Given that he had Stage 4 Colorectal Cancer, Andre’s long-term survival was never open-ended.  Yet this Sundance Audience Award-winning documentary is not a totally grim and humorless tale but ultimately a comedy.  In fact, some reviews have praised Benna’s feature as one of the year’s best comedies.

San Francisco filmgoers will have a chance to see why for themselves thanks to the film’s upcoming Roxie Theater premiere.  To prepare viewers a little for this local debut, check out this e-mail interview done with the film’s director Tony Benna.  Learn why this film had to be a comedy and get more of a taste of Andre’s personality.  When distributor A24 eventually puts out its home video version of Benna’s film, there had better be a Deleted Scenes section and it better have footage of more crazy Andre ideas.

This writer’s questions are in bold while Benna’s answers are in regular type.  The material has been lightly edited for grammar and readability.

Broke-Ass Stuart’s (BAS):  What were your thoughts or feelings about death before you embarked on this project?

Tony Benna (TB):  One of the reasons I was not afraid to tackle the subject when Andre asked me to is because death has played a significant role in my life.  In Catholic grade school, I was an altar boy who was tasked with serving a number of funerals.  As you can imagine, standing over the dead bodies of local community members at the young age of 12 had a profound impact on me.  I had also lost three of my grandparents to cancer, one of whom was in hospice care in my living room during high school.  Ironically, I still hadn’t seriously considered my own mortality until making this film.

BAS:  Until your film came along, I had never heard of Andre Riccardi.  What well-known advertising campaigns, if any, had he been associated with?

TB:  Andre wrote and created many groundbreaking ads, from Super Bowl spots to viral campaigns.  His ideas were always WAY the fuck out there, and at times got the companies and agencies involved sued.  I think he relished the fact that he could use his irreverence and intelligence to flip brands and agencies on their head.  He was always looking for that subversive angle that would sell the job, but with a hidden “fuck you” to the client.

BAS:  In prior interviews, you’ve mentioned having worked with Andre before.  What was the wildest project you worked on together before making “Andre Is An Idiot?”

TB:  Any Andre project was going to be a wild ride, and that was something you anticipated.  I asked him once why he kept hiring me to direct, and he simply said, “You and your crew are not afraid to jump fences or break the rules to get the shot.”  That was true.  He loved that.

The craziest project had to have been the time he talked Twitter into hiring us to document the protests on the streets at the RNC and DNC during the 2016 Trump/Clinton/Sanders election.  We were tasked with interviewing civilians with loaded AK-47 rifles, members of the Hell’s Angels, Fuck The Police, skinheads, conspiracy theorists, Black Lives Matter, hard Left, hard Right…all in the same location.  As you can imagine, these were very heated events.  I remember Andre would point at a group burning a flag or cocking a machine gun and say “Let’s go talk to them.”  It was insane!

BAS:  How did you work with Andre in making this film?  Did he have input or give direction regarding what he wanted filmed?

TB:  Andre was the one with cancer, so I told him I would capture anything and everything he wanted to look into or do.  Giving Andre that freedom led us on an insane journey of “crazy Andre ideas”...which inevitably made the edit process very difficult as I had to figure out how to cut hundreds of hours of footage into a succinct and authentic 90-minute story.

BAS:  Death and how people face it has in the past received treatments ranging from reverence to gallows humor.  How did you find the tone you desired to make your film work?

TB:  From the moment Andre contacted me, he made it clear that the film “had to be a comedy.”  I knew we could lean into Andre’s personality for the humor.  But I also knew we were dealing with a very tough situation and had to look at both sides of the comedy/tragedy spectrum to make it work.

BAS:  What were Andre’s feelings regarding his personal death before he got the colorectal cancer diagnosis?  Did he take an attitude of “I’m gonna live forever” (sorry I can’t do an Irene Cara impression)?

TB:  I think Andre lived a lot like we all do.  He knew death would come eventually, but was caught off guard when it didn’t match his vision of the future.  We all tend to hamster wheel through life, thinking we will have time to do what we love.  But the fact is that no one is promised tomorrow.  Death is simply a part of life.

BAS:  What was the trickiest sequence to shoot for your film?  What made the process difficult?

TB:  The stop-motion animation was the most difficult part of the film by far.  The timeline was 6 weeks total, forcing me to work 18-hour days.  I was animating alone in my studio, and I was still grieving the loss of my friend Andre.  The ironic thing is that the animations add a lot of humor to the film, but I was in a really dark and lonely place when I created them.

BAS:  What sequence from your film do you expect will garner an “I can’t believe they filmed THAT” reaction from an audience?

TB:  Probably the “Death Yell” scene.

BAS:  In the years before his demise, the viewer sees Andre trying such unusual activities as practicing the scream he’ll give when he slips the mortal coil.  During the filming process, which of Andre’s unconventional activities caused your inner skeptic to emerge?

TB:  You never knew if Andre was joking or not.  So when he was adamant about going to Italy to get a head transplant, I was nervous.

BAS:  How did the filming process for this work change your relationship with Andre’s surviving friends and family?  Was there any degree of pushback given the sensitivity of people’s feelings regarding the subject of a loved one’s death?

TB:  Andre’s father did not want to be involved because he is very private.  I think his brother was a bit skeptical, but finally agreed.

We had filmed a beautiful session with a San Francisco Death Doula.  But she got cold feet, and asked us not to use the footage.  Beyond that, everyone was in, even though it was uncomfortable at times.

BAS:  Given the intense nature of the film’s subject matter, how did you avoid feeling emotionally overwhelmed during the process of making your film?

TB:  I didn’t avoid it.  I just jumped into the pain.  I truly think that was the only way to create the authentic, emotional story we have today.

(“Andre Is An Idiot” opens at the Roxie Theater on March 11, 2026.  Benna appears in person at the March 11 and March 13, 2026 screenings.  However, advance tickets are not available as both screenings are now At Rush.)