Film director Tony Benna has spent a lot of time on the festival circuit with his 2025 comedy/documentary André Is An Idiot about, of all things, cancer.
The A24-distributed film has been rolling out to theaters since March 6 with a local premiere at the Terrace Theater slated for March 26.
André Is An Idiot won the Audience Award at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival last year and has garnered many rave reviews with Esquire magazine calling the documentary “Comedy of the Year.”
In a recent interview, Benna said is elated to see the film connect with film festival audiences. And he’s really excited about it going into theaters.
“This is the real test,” said Benna, who lives in Charleston.
The journey began when Benna’s friend, San Francisco ad man André Ricciardi, found out he had stage 4 colon cancer. Upon revealing the diagnosis to his mother, she called him an idiot (hence the title).
Ricciardi’s next move was to reach out to Benna and Lee Einhorn, Ricciardi’s best friend and the eventual executive producer of the film, with the idea of making a comedy about his diagnosis.
Having cut his teeth on skating videos and animated interstitials as a kid before moving onto making short films, advertising and music videos as an adult, Benna was on board with the unorthodox project that would capture his friend’s irreverence and humor — despite the grim subject matter.
“I would have never thought my first film would be about a friend of mine with cancer,” he said.
But to Benna, Ricciardi was one of those rare people you meet.
“He’s such a unique character, such a unique friend. He views the world just differently than anyone else I’ve ever met.”
Naturally, one would assume a person would want a film charting their battle with colon cancer to be handled with the gravitas and heavy-handedness that it would deserve, maybe even with a healthy dose of pity.
“André wanted it to be funny. I remember he’d say, ‘If it’s not funny, I don’t want to do this.’ I would show him some edits, and he loved the funny ones, and then I’d show him a dramatic one and he’s like, ‘OK, next!’
“He just kept pushing the humor, which I loved. But for me, it had to really ride that line of comedy and tragedy because that’s what we were experiencing. The film isn’t really about cancer, it’s about André.”
Initially, Ricciardi wanted the project to focus on his friendship with Einhorn. Benna felt otherwise.
“I really was trying to just unpeel the onion to figure out what makes André tick, what makes him think the way that he thinks.”
During filming, Benna said he pondered an angle that veered in a more medical direction, conducting interviews with Ricciardi’s oncologist and multiple nurses at University of California San Francisco.
But Benna ultimately made a decision during the edit, keeping the focus on his friend, who passed away in December 2023.
“I just realized that if we start bringing the science into this, it becomes an entirely different film. So many docs are fear based. I just wanted to avoid that altogether.”
Benna was adamant about not making a “sad, dramatic cancer movie.” In fact to enhance the comedic and experimental “feel” for the movie, he chose to use stop-motion animation sequences with some help from local stop-motion artists Trent and Liz Shy, who donated their time and creativity to the project.
During post-production, Benna’s unorthodox approach to the film was met with some resistance by some who questioned his vision, seeing his stubbornness as potential career suicide.
“There were definitely times where I thought if this is not going to be an authentic portrait of André that even his daughters and his wife don’t agree with, then I failed. I’d be better off just burning the whole film down. You couldn’t put André in a box. Why would you put a movie about him in a box?”
Though the film keeps its focus on André and his diagnosis, Benna stressed the importance of colonoscopies and colon cancer research.
Recently, he and Einhorn went to Washington, D.C., with FightCRC (Fight Colorectal Cancer) to lobby Congress to get more funding and research.
“It’s really affecting the younger generation,” the director said. “In fact, it’s the number one out of all cancers. It’s killing more people under 50 than any other cancer right now, and it’s the least funded as far as research.”
That said, has Benna followed his own advice?
“Yeah. Not long after Sundance and I ran to get my colonoscopy, I didn’t want there to be a sequel called Tony Is A Bigger Idiot.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: 7 p.m. March 26 at the Terrace Theater, James Island. Tickets are $16 with a portion of sales donated to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. More: terracetheater.com
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