André Is an Idiot (Storyville, BBC Four)
TELEVISION
FRANCES WILSON
‘When I told my mother that I had colon cancer,’ André Ricciardi says, ‘the first thing she said was “What a f***ing idiot – that is the easiest cancer to stop. All you have to do is get a colonoscopy.”’
André is a 52-year-old former adman living in San Francisco, and André Is an Idiot (Storyville, BBC Four) is his record of dying.
Why, he now wonders, did he spend his life doing something as pointless as advertising, but he clearly has an instinct for it because this film is a commercial for colonoscopies, a form of public service television.
It is also an act of redemption. Because André screwed up, he’ll do what he can to save other people. Two years earlier, his best friend booked them both in for a routine colonoscopy, which would have detected his cancer at an earlier, treatable stage, but André skipped the appointment. So he really is an idiot but, as one of his other friends says, he’s ‘the most brilliant idiot I’ve ever met’.
A pot-smoking eccentric with wild grey hair (now coming out in handfuls), André is in many ways a genius: it was he who came up with the notorious promotional video for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, in which an ape in an African village picks up and fires an AK-47. His real genius, however, is for laughing. He has enjoyed every minute of his life so far, and is determined to keep the gags coming until the last breath leaves his body.
For most of the film André addresses the camera in a room lined with colour- coded books. He begins with a well- rehearsed story about masturbating as a child, and then muses over the meaning of life.
He is not a religious man, and his thoughts about death are various. Should he be cryogenised? Could he be cloned? How about a Viking-style funeral pyre? Can his ashes be scattered in outer space? What should his last words be?
He performs a ‘death yell’ across an empty valley, and comes up with an idea for a TV show called ‘Who Wants to Kill Me?’, in which five contestants with legitimate reason for wanting André dead compete for the prize of ending his life. Why, he wonders, should cancer be given the honour?
His therapist, who is interested in why André needs to make everyone laugh all the time, spends most of their sessions laughing. ‘We’re actually having fun with André dying’, another of his mates admits. André, who puts the word fun into funeral, is surrounded by man-child mates who clearly adore him.
He met his Canadian wife Janice 30 years ago when she worked in a bar. Needing a green card, she asked his gay friend Johnny to marry her. Johnny declined but André , who already had a girlfriend, offered to help out. He assumed that Janice would show her gratitude by giving him a lifetime of free drinks.
The couple, who have two charming teenage daughters, were clearly well- suited and watching Janice maintain the levels of jollity André requires is agonising. Stoical to the point of saintliness, Janice’s thoughts about life interest me far more than his thoughts about death. I wonder how she felt when he compared his current state to the kind of feel-good movie he hates: a man only discovers how much he loves his wife when he gets a terminal illness.
André Is an Idiot, which had a good reception at the Sundance Festival last summer, is a curious brew. I tried to get into the spirit of it all, but at 90 minutes the film is way too long. As André gets more and more fragile, his stream of jokes about bums becomes tiresome.
My guess is that he is too Californian for a mainstream British audience, but his overall message is clear.
