Director Tony Benna turns a spotlight on terminal colon cancer at the Sundance Film Festival
Director Tony Benna (third from left) filming André Is an Idiot on location with André Ricciardi (fourth from left).
From his office at Hed Hi Studio on King Street, Tony Benna has birthed 30-second live-action creations that aired during the Super Bowl. He’s guided Beyoncé and Ozzy Osbourne as a go-to director for brands like Pepsi, Ben & Jerry’s, and Maytag. But the 44-year-old director, animator, father, and Charleston resident wasn’t fully pursuing the life he’d dreamed of when he was a teenager filming skating and snowboarding videos around his home in Reno, Nevada. “Some of my jobs were at the pinnacle of advertising,” Benna admits. “They were dream jobs, but to me, this film is much more fulfilling.”
He’s referring to André Is an Idiot, a 90-minute documentary that chronicles the last three years of advertising executive André Ricciardi’s life after he was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Upon learning of his imminent death, Ricciardi called Benna to pitch the film.
(Left) Ricciardi; (right) portrait of Ricciardi.
The “idiot” premise calls attention to how preventable colon cancer can be with regular colonoscopies—something Ricciardi failed to do. While the film chronicles lighter moments of his final years—getting high with Tommy Chong, trimming his unwieldy, medication-induced eyebrows at a salon—it also promotes a critical message: get a colonoscopy. Confessional moments find Ricciardi lamenting the wasting of his creative skills on advertising. But instead of “selling diabetes” to kids through ads for sugary drinks, his last act was intended to save lives. Ricciardi’s battle with cancer ended in December 2023 at the age of 55.
In the film, Benna melds footage of Ricciardi’s life with stop-motion animation of a model André, harnessing the frame-by-frame talent that launched Benna’s career. “I’ve always wanted to make feature films, and André wished he could have done work with more meaning,” says Benna. “This project gave us both the opportunity to do something we were passionate about, tell a larger story than an ad, and to give back.”
Benna’s Pepsi commercial for Beyoncé’s Super Bowl half-time show
After a year of working pro bono, the project got backing from A24 films (Moonlight, Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Sandbox Films, giving them the funds to complete the film festival application process. Benna delivered André Is an Idiot to Sundance at the 11th hour last fall. Of 16,000 submissions, only 100 were selected. Arriving at the festival in Utah this February, Benna was given a note card with a single pinhole—signifying the film was never removed from the selection board.
Benna with Ozzy Osbourne and Ricciardi.
But to him, winning felt out of the question. The night before the awards, he received an email with a ticket. He showed up the following day in a ball cap with no thought of giving an acceptance speech. Of 15 awards given yearly at Sundance, André Is an Idiot took home two: the Audience Award and the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award.
That sparked a life-changing season for Benna. Months later, he’s considering offers from major Hollywood studios to work on feature films, while awaiting news about which streaming service will pick up André Is an Idiot. “If you asked me years ago what my first feature film would be about, I would never in a million years have said ass cancer,” laughs Benna. “This story is about a man approaching death with humor and irreverence. It opens up a conversation about mortality and, hopefully, makes that easier for people to talk about.”
See Director Tony Benna's advertising work on his website - http://tonybenna.com/commercial.html
Roll Camera: Watch director Tony Benna’s Pepsi commercial for the 2016 Super Bowl half-time show starring Beyoncé at charlestonmag.com
