All language subtitles for andre.is.an.idiot.2025.1080p.web.h264-cbfm

One time, when I was 13 years old

and I was spending a week at my
grandparents' house,

and I was locked in the bathroom
one night, late,

after they had gone to sleep,

and I was furiously masturbating,
the way 13-year-old boys do,

and I suddenly had this urge to rub
the head of my penis

on the underside of the
Formica counter,

because the top was smooth

and I assumed the bottom would be
smooth as well.

Although I found out immediately
that it was unfinished wood

and I got a whole bunch of splinters
in the head of my penis.

Now, I couldn't wake my grandparents
up and tell them that.

Obviously, I would have rather died
than do that.

So I crept around their house
until I found a pair of tweezers.

And then I locked myself back
in the bathroom,

and I carefully removed all of
the splinters

from my penis,
wrapped it in toilet paper,

which obviously got blood on it,
and went to sleep.

Until now, that was probably the
greatest mistake that I made,

but not getting a colonoscopy when
I turned 50 -

that one...is a little bit bigger!

Ah, it's all garbage.

When I told my mother that I had
colon cancer,

the first thing she said was,
"What a fucking idiot!"

She said,
"That is the easiest cancer to stop.

"All you need to do is get
a colonoscopy."

And I MAY still defeat it,
but if I don't, she's right -

I'm a fucking idiot.

I'm going through this because
I want to kind of make sure

there's nothing sentimental
or important

that somebody else may
want after I'm gone.

Toilet paper. Maxell tapes.

Andre is the most brilliant idiot
that you've ever met.

He's got a mind unlike most people
I know. In fact, virtually everyone.

I have a feeling somewhere in here,

I have a pair of
Kim Kardashian's pants.

Oh, this is fun. This is awesome!

I started buying hash and storing it
in here, and the idea was,

in case of a massive earthquake,
I would use this as currency.

And I also included a little
pipe with it.

Andre just always has had a penchant
for obscure facts and a curiosity.

Yeah, this might be her pants.
Kim Kardashian.

"Congratulations,
I'm thrilled that you won

"one of the items from my
Kim's Kloset auction."

And then it goes to the Life Change
Community church. "Thank you."

And it's signed by Kim Kardashian.

Now, my plan was to scrape her DNA
off of them,

because you can't really wash
pleather pants.

And we could...clone her from
them, someday.

You never know what's going
to come out of him.

It could be quoting Nietzsche,

it could be hot chicks picking
up dog shit.

It was either here
or way the fuck out there.

But the biggest Andre paradox
was Janice.

One day, we had been drinking in the
bar for a few hours,

and Janice, the bartender,
approached Johnny and said,

"Look, I'm Canadian. I need a
green card. Will you marry me?"

Because I was in
my last year of college,

my student visa was going to expire
and I was going to get deported.

So I thought, "Well, I need to ask
Jonny D to marry me,"

because he didn't like the ladies
so much,

so I thought that would be
uncomplicated.

And he's like,
"No, I'm not going to marry you."

And I said, "I'll marry you!"

And I was like, "What?!"

She's like, "Are you sure you
want to do this?

"Like, you know, there's no sex,
it's purely platonic.

"But if you wanted to marry me,

"you could move into the apartment
over the bar with me."

I was like,
"Great, sounds wonderful."

I figured it meant free drinks in
the bar

because I married the bartender.

Which, you know, to Andre, is me
being, like, the Wizard of Oz.

She promised me a trip to Mexico.

That was the payment
for the green card marriage.

And I had to stay married to her
for two years.

I went to Haight Street

and bought an old wedding dress from
the Goodwill for $30,

and twined it up with a string to
make it fit.

Andre was wearing a powder blue tux.

I think his brother happened to be
in town, flew in from Japan.

We happened to be
stopping over on the way back

from New York to San Francisco.

And I was like, "Great, I'm getting
married that night.

"It's perfect.
You can come to my wedding."

"Is he serious?!"
Because Andre being Andre,

you never know what is serious
and what is not.

I was sort of interested in somebody
who I was working with,

and Andre had a girlfriend
who was at our wedding.

My girlfriend
didn't take it very well.

As a matter of fact, she got drunk
and spent the night

in Golden Gate Park alone.

So maybe some people had a sense
that this might be something

more than just
a green card wedding, but I didn't.

Who is this woman that he's marrying
that I didn't know anything about?

"If he's marrying some woman out
of a joke or a lark,

"then what do I say to our parents?"

I'm a super rule follower,
so I immediately was afraid

that I was going to get deported or
we'd get caught or whatever it was.

So I insisted that we had to just
really, in an intense way,

get to know each other really fast
and really well.

We would stay up, like, until
four in the morning,

just talking about our pasts
and our childhoods,

quizzing each other and...

Which side of the bed would you have
slept on,

and what colour would your
toothbrush be, and...

What kind of milk do you
prefer? Skim or whole?

What did you do in the summers when
you were a kid?

Who was your fourth-grade teacher?

When did you learn to tie your
shoes? You know, bunny ears or not?

Just unnecessarily detailed.

We anticipated that our
INS interview

was going to be very much like
The Newlywed Game,

so we went and tried out for it.

Hi, I'm Gary Kroeger and I've
been searching

beautiful San Francisco for their
very best newlywed couples.

You know what? I found them!

Please welcome
Janice and Andre Ricciardi.

Hey. Welcome, welcome.
Good luck to you.

If I could be any celebrity,
I would love to be...

Ozzy Osbourne!

Michael Jackson's chimp Bubbles.
I knew that! I love that monkey!

I knew that!

And you can't exactly cheat.

We had discussed beforehand,

"How do we maximise our ability
to maybe win this thing?"

We figured out a method for
cheating, which was,

if there's an obvious true answer,
pick that first.

"She's secretly in love
with Stephen King."

That's my wife! Yeah!
That is my wife.

I don't know if I can hug you
for that one!

If there isn't an obvious true
answer, pick the nicer one.

For 50 points, born perfect
or needs a little work?

Born perfect. OK. All right! Woo!

And if there isn't a nicer one,

then pick the one that starts with
the higher letter in the alphabet.

Pepperoni or mushroom. Andre?

Pepperoni. Perfect.
Yeah! You get it.

And then we
started to gain and gain...

Counts his pennies or loses track
of money? Mark. Counts my pennies.

You do. Andre. Loses track of the
money! You're on a roll.

Prefers an outside table.
You're on a roll.

Spontaneous!
Boy, you are doing well.

All right, for 100 points and a trip
to the Caribbean -

he knows what she wants in bed,
or he needs to be told.

All right, Andre, don't say
anything. You've got 230 right now.

In first place right now are the
Christiansens.

If you get this right, you're going
to the Caribbean.

Otherwise, say bon voyage to the
Christiansens.

I know! OK!

And using that simple strategy,

we got ourselves a trip to the
Sonesta Beach Resort

on the island of Anguilla - that WE
had to fucking pay taxes on!

Andre called me a couple of weeks
later and he said,

"I have a problem. I've fucked my
wife." And I said, "I'm sorry?"

And he said, "Well, I mean,
we actually had sex.

"Now, it's supposed to just be a
green card marriage,

"but now I've fucked her, so now
we're married on paper

"and we're actually...
we had sex together.

"But it's not clear where our
relationship is,

"and I'm really not sure what this
kind of means."

It was one of those things where

we were just so impressed with
ourselves.

Like, we were just like,
"We are a good team."

And then Janice had to have her
INS interview,

and the interviewer was completely
just a dick and humourless.

And he's like, "What proof of a
shared life do you have?"

And we're like,
"We bought a car together,

"we have insurance together,
we live together."

And then we mentioned, "Well, we
were on The Newlywed Game."

He was like, "Oh, well."

And he closes all his books up and
he's like,

"If you won The Newlywed Game,
there's nothing I can ask you

"that they didn't already ask you.
Have a nice life."

And then we knew we'd done it
and we'd passed

and everything was going
to be fine,

except that now I'm admitting
all this fraud.

We were in love at that point.
We started sleeping together.

I broke up with my girlfriend.
She broke up with her boyfriend.

It was like, "Well, how much harder
could having a kid be

"than winning The Newlywed Game?"

I've always called my dad "Andre".

I have always called him
by his first name.

I pretty much always call my
dad "Andre",

and I have since I was a little kid.

I think my dad is very unique,

and so my relationship with him
is very unique.

Some of my friends' parents,
they're just surprised

when they meet him because he'll,
like,

make crazy jokes or he swears a lot.

Well, my dad looks like someone
who lives on the street.

He had, like, huge hair. That was,
like, kind of his signature thing.

It's just Andre.

Close for us looks different

than it might for
other fathers and daughters.

We're not, like,
hugging or touching.

We're not really into
that as a family.

He wants a more cerebral
relationship with them.

You know, "Let's talk about the
Ottoman Empire,

"let's talk about all these
conspiracy theories,

"and let's talk about great books."

At one point I was recovering from
a surgery,

and so I was kind of immobile.

And my dad read me all of
Helter Skelter,

the book about the Manson murders.

The nurses would come in and out of
the room

and hear him reading this
to his daughter,

who was lying in the hospital bed.

And it was definitely, like,

a perfect encapsulation of our
relationship.

And I think that was a really
poignant moment for me.

If I had to describe Andre in one
word, it would be "insane".

Andre had creative gifts that he
could have done

a million things with.

He just happened to get into
advertising with those gifts.

"Say, shoot, darn and fudge instead
of BLEEP, BLEEP and BLEEP."

He's pitching ideas that would
get the company sued.

All right, bruv, how you doin'?
We're on our way.

We're going to have some fun.

Amber Duick is suing Toyota for
cyberstalking her in an ad stunt.

He was so talented that you
put up with his shit.

I remember one time we're working on
a massive project

for 20th century Fox, an ad campaign
for Planet of the Apes.

I think we called it
The Apes Are Getting Smarter.

The apes are getting smarter,
and of course...

And the human evolution and,
like... Jesus fucking Christ.

Andre's ranting, but the head of
Fox Film Entertainment

was like, "No shit."

You only have time in life to get
really good at a couple of things,

so you need to be really careful
what you get good at,

and I chose to get good
at...advertising?!

What the fuck is wrong with me?
What a waste of a life.

I can't tell you how inconsequential
advertising seems

once you are diagnosed with cancer.

Hi, everybody.
Here we are in my kitchen.

It's about 18 hours-plus before
I get my first colonoscopy, and...

I'll never forget that -
Katie Couric getting a colonoscopy,

live on Good Morning America,
or whatever show she was on,

because her husband had just
passed away of colon cancer.

I thought that's
what this experience

was going to be like for me.
I was joking around with the nurses

and the doctors,
as I always do when I'm nervous.

I made my usual joke, which was,
"I'm a drug addict.

"You gotta give me twice
the usual dose."

I give... I'd like to request
plenty of... No, I give...

I give you what you need.
..of sedation.

I give... No, I give you
what you need.

She had been drugged,
so she was kind of twilight.

The anaesthesiologist
knocks you out.

You're fully under
for about 15 minutes,

and they put a camera in
your ass and they look at

your polyps, or no polyps.

So this is the process
that I went through.

It's as clean as a whistle.

This is a perfectly
normal examination.

That wasn't bad at all. No, no.

But my colonoscopy was not a happy,
joyous, fun occasion

with laughter, like when
Katie Couric

did it live on television.

As I started waking up, there
was all this buzzing around me,

there was all this activity, and I
heard one guy saying to another guy,

"That was over 45 minutes.

"That's the longest
colonoscopy I've ever been to."

And I thought, that could be good,
that could be bad.

And I'm dopey and I'm
just waking up,

and I'm starting to realise
something's wrong.

And then the doctor came over
and said, "Hi, Andre.

"Erm, I hate to say this,
but we weren't able to

"perform a colonoscopy because..."

"..there's a mass in there so big
that we can't even get

"a paediatric camera in there."

And so I said,
"Well, what does that mean?"

And she said,
"Well, it looks cancerous.

"I don't know.
I put a tattoo on it" -

didn't tell me what the tattoo was,
but I guess that's

something they do -
"and I took a biopsy of it

"and we'll find out, and we'll
call you in a couple of days."

They hadn't done a biopsy,
they hadn't done anything.

And I was like, "How dare they just
blurt out that you have cancer?!"

They haven't confirmed anything.
It's not going to be true.

Maybe two, three days later,
the phone rang.

I saw it was Doctor... I don't know
what her name actually was

because I just had her in
my phone as "Ass Doctor".

So, staging-wise, what does
that mean?

Erm, what would that be?

Ah, fuck...!

Oh, fuck.

DISTANT: Well, if you chose to move
forward with treatment, you...

I went into the room afterwards,
expecting him to say,

"Oh, there's a polyp," or,
"Oh, there's...

"..something,
there's something small,

"there's the beginnings
of something.

"It's maybe stage one."

And he said it was stage four,

and he just was ashen.

I think just shocked, erm,

and I think stayed shocked

for a long time.

It's fascinating that I am dying
and I want to document it.

I want to learn from it.

One way to deal with it,
one way to obsess about my cancer

and my impending mortality without
focusing on the anxiety of it,

is to make this film.

103, take seven marker.

CREW CHATTERS

I think Andre is making this movie
ultimately because Andre wants

to do everything his way,
including dying, and this is Andre.

Andre interview, take one.

If somebody else
came to me and said,

"I have colon cancer and I want

"to make a documentary
about my own death,"

I don't know how I would
feel about that.

I would be sort of torn.

I would want to respect
their wishes,

but I would also think this is going
to get really personal and ugly,

and I'm not sure I would
want to show that for somebody else.

But for me? I'm all in.
I don't give a fuck, you know?

If you guys want pictures
of my colon,

I will gladly give you pictures
of my colon.

And I think for Andre,
he gets a kick out of it.

I was going to stick my tongue
in that, but I decided not to.

It's also saying
"fuck you" to convention.

What better way to spend his
final days on our planet?

Yesterday I was at the hospital
for six hours of chemotherapy,

something you can avoid, er, pretty
easily if you get a colonoscopy.

As you can see, I am shirtless.

Not just to show off my
wonderfully tan, er, buff physique,

but also to show you that I'm still
plugged in here,

and I'm still receiving
chemotherapy,

and I will be for the next 24 hours.

And then I have this ball
of chemotherapy,

and this is slowly emptying
over 24 hours.

When they're changing the
bags of the IVs,

they wear full protective gear,
including mask and gloves. Erm...

It's sort of ironic that this is

something you can't
get on your skin,

but they're putting it into
a port that delivers it directly

into an artery next to my heart
so that it can pump through my body.

Er, and that's something
you just get used to, I guess.

Dying is surprisingly boring.

This is like a vacation for me.

That's a weird thing to say,
but there's sort of this feeling of,

"Oh, my God,
I have a terminal illness.

"I have an illness that, you know,
in all probabilities

"is going to kill me
within five years."

And I feel part of me feels like
the entire world should

come screeching to a halt
and I should feel different

and everything's now going to change
into this "I'm dying" mode.

And it didn't. And it isn't.

I'm still unloading the
dishwasher every morning.

I'm still sitting in the same place,

looking at the same fucking
websites.

And there's something really
fascinating about that to me,

which is how mundane my own death is
and how routine it feels already.

And it's only been eight, ten weeks
that I've been diagnosed with this.

Andre's surprisingly
positive about all this,

which is not anything any of us
would have ever called.

My wife was saying last night
that it's sad.

I don't think it's necessarily sad.

I mean, I think this, to me,
doesn't look like a disgusting ball

of chemotherapy hair.

To me, this just looks like
a cute little character, you know?

With a couple of googly eyes...

You know, I'm creating all
these little creatures

that now live in my house.

CREATURES COO AND LAUGH

The most serious thing
in the world is dying from cancer.

I mean, it's hard to think
of a more serious, draconian topic.

And yet, Andre's laughing and joking
and teasing and having fun.

So now he's got the most
painful situation,

and he's using a proportionate
amount of humour.

You know, it's not the
end of the world.

Am I in denial about it?
I don't even think so.

Like, go on, go on. You're free.

HE BLOWS

Whee!

There's really no cancer
in my family,

so I've thought about this
long and hard,

and I have some theories of
where it could have come from.

How I got cancer -
theory number one.

I ingested rat poison in Tompkins
Square Park in the early '90s.

I smoked cigarettes for 22 years.

Salami.

My mother gave it to me.

When she was eight, she and her
friends used to run behind

the trucks that sprayed DDT.

My mother was born with all the eggs
she would ever have in her life.

One of those eggs
that I was fertilised

and born from would
have been present

in my mother when she was
an eight-year-old girl.

Anyway, thanks, Mom.

Hey, can I get two slices of cheese?
Of cheese? Yep.

I'll have a pepperoni.
I got it.

You sure? You got it yesterday.
I got it.

I will always buy you pizza, Lee.

Even in death, I will buy you pizza.
Aww, thanks, man.

How are you going to do that?
I don't know.

We gotta figure that out.
We don't have much time.

Andre and I are not a couple
in the traditional term of

what someone might
think is a couple.

I consider Andre
to be soul-mate status.

There is that older brother,
younger brother dynamic.

Lee is the quintessential
older brother,

and I'm the quintessential
younger brother.

I invited Andre a couple
of years ago,

when I was scheduling a colonoscopy,
to come get a colonoscopy with me.

A couple's colonoscopy.

And my first thought was,
"OK, he wants me to hold his hand

"because he's scared
and he wants me to go with him

"and make it easier for him."

And so I said,
"I'm happy to drive you,"

you know, "whatever you need.
Tell me when it is."

And he said, "No, no, no, no,
I don't want you to drive me

"to the colonoscopy,
I want you to come with me

"and get a colonoscopy with me.

"We'll go in together.
It'll be like a spa day.

"We'll just do it
as a couple's thing."

We both would drink some liquids
and shit ourselves together.

SOUNDS OF DEFECATION

I thought for sure,
if there was anyone

that was going to get
a couple's colonoscopy with me,

it was going to be Andre.

Look, I'm not going to go get
a colonoscopy with my friend.

It's just a weird fucking thing.

I probably came home and said
to my wife, "Hey, by the way,

"Lee said we should go get
a colonoscopy together."

And my wife probably said something
to me like, "Are you fucking crazy?

"Why would you do that with
somebody else? That's insane."

I instantly, of course, thought,
"Oh, he's going to go do that

"with somebody else.

"Does he already have a
couple's colonoscopy in place?"

Cos why wouldn't he
want to go do this?

We need to do this.
This needs to happen.

We're at the age
where it needs to happen.

And almost to the day,
a year after that,

I was diagnosed with
stage four colon cancer

that had metastasised to my liver.

His rejection of that
couple's colonoscopy is

what led directly
to Andre having cancer.

Had I gone a year before, I probably
would have had cancer anyway,

but it probably would have
been really easy to treat.

I'm not angry that he
didn't get a colonoscopy.

I mean, his motto used
to be, "No cops, no doctors".

I think, obviously,
this could have been avoided

or it could have been less severe.

I was just as ignorant of it
as he was.

And it's not like it was
ten years late.

It was, you know, 18 months late
or something like that.

If he'd had a history of it in his
family, if he'd had symptoms...

But, no, I hadn't had one.
We're the same age.

He's very stoic and very much
doesn't put his own health first

in a lot of ways.

I mean, the long answer is,
if someone was going to die young,

it was probably going to be Andre.

SQUAWKING

He's also the kind of person
that would say, like,

"Oh, I'm supposed to die early.
That's what I was supposed to do.

"I've lived a crazy life," whatever.

Andre had a complex relationship
to drugs and alcohol over the years.

There were years where I drank
every night until I passed out.

I've probably done cocaine five,
six times in my life.

Done acid 100 times, 150 times
in my life.

I tried to do mushrooms
a couple of times a year,

just to clear out the cobwebs.

He never did cocaine.
He never did harder drugs.

I've dabbled in heroin.
I used to snort it.

I have used meth quite a bit.
Ecstasy, sure. Whatever, erm...

But nothing...
Nothing more serious than that.

Nothing more serious than, you know,
meth and heroin, I guess!

Andre never really took
great care of himself.

He used to smoke a ton.
I think he used to dip.

He drank A LOT.

And I think finally he had
a run-in with his doctor,

and the doctor's like,
"You gotta...you gotta start

"taking care of yourself."

I had quit drinking three years
before I got cancer.

I was waking up every morning
at five in the morning,

getting myself as high
as I could possibly get myself.

And then getting on the peloton
and riding for 45 minutes.

I lost 30lbs,
I was getting into shape,

I felt like I was
in the best shape of my life,

and about once a week
I would bleed out of my ass.

But I thought it was a haemorrhoid.

I just assumed this
is another haemorrhoid.

I had a Zoom appointment with some
doctor I've never met before.

They couldn't look
at his ass on Zoom.

He did not ask me to turn around
and open my ass up to him,

although I was prepared to.

So he just described his symptoms
and the doctor said,

"Oh, yeah, that sounds
like a haemorrhoid

"from the riding the
peloton too hard."

"There you go. Get some
Preparation H. You're done."

Turns out I wasn't in the best
shape of my life. I had cancer.

TOILET FLUSHES

When he first got his diagnosis,
we hunkered down.

I immediately was reading
every single list

of every nutritional
thing we might need,

and stocking the house with
all these protein drinks

and getting cookbooks
on cancer diets

and all this sort of thing.

My mom's a really great caretaker.

My dad would definitely not be

as brave and resilient as he was
if she wasn't there,

like, helping him every
step of the way.

He handles chemo really well.

He's kind of impervious to a lot of
the worst side-effects.

I absolutely prepared myself
for chemotherapy by making sure

I had hangovers for a good
35 years of my life.

The mental aspect of it is similar.

I feel like shit.
I feel like I'm going to die.

I need to put all that
out of my mind,

shut up about it and just keep
doing whatever I'm doing.

I think for people
who don't have long periods

of alcoholism in their lives
and hangovers,

this would be a much
more challenging thing.

He still looks good,
I think, for someone

who's been doing so much chemo,
and he doesn't have that, like,

skinny look that I kind of expected.

Things are going well
with the cancer.

The cancer is shrinking.

The cancer is still responding
to the chemotherapy.

I've gained a bunch of weight back,
which is good.

I've actually reached the point now
where perhaps I'm getting

a little too much weight
and I should go on a diet.

I'm having a harder time
with Andre's hair loss than he is.

Basically, the back
of his hair fell off.

So when you look at him straight on,
it looks like he still

has his hair pulled back
in a man bun.

But the whole man bun is gone,
and I don't think he cares.

Andre has changed
since his diagnosis,

and I thought
that he would go angry.

But Cancer Andre's really nice.

Some of it may have to do with
all the weed he's eating.

We've started spending
way more time together.

I used to go on solo exercise
walks around the lake,

and now every single day, together,
we go to the beach or the lake

and we walk a couple of miles.

And, you know, we talk about...
sometimes, things other than cancer.

Where's the most beautiful
duck of all?

Toasted marshmallow?

DUCKS QUACK
Fuck you! Stop. What?

Part of it, I think,
is him having hope

and having a new appreciation
for his life

and our lives and his friends.

But part of it is also being
a stoic maturity.

As vulnerable as he looks,
talking about going to chemo,

he's still guarding the very
most vulnerable part of himself.

There's a lot of nitty gritty
we don't talk about.

He's not willing to talk
about pain and fear.

It's definitely hard for my mom.

Probably harder on her

than anybody else in the family.

But I don't know, we don't really
talk about, like,

how we're feeling about it
that much.

My parents keep a lot of the details
from my sister and me,

but I don't really want to know
a lot of details.

We don't really talk about
how we feel about it,

but we're both very happy

with how strong and resilient
he's being.

It's hard to decide how much
to tell the girls,

because we want to be honest
with them,

but we don't want to burden them.

I'm realising that I'm really good
in the immediate panic

of a situation like this,

but figuring out how to act,
longer-term, is harder.

I can't just swoop in and
fix everything,

and...

So that's when I have a harder
time figuring out my role.

I'm staying up till two in the
morning reading, you know,

Diane's Success Story:
"I'm a colon cancer survivor."

I like to think that
he'll beat this.

Maybe both of us are
in a little bit of denial.

And I think we like to label it
as hopefulness.

Once Andre told me his diagnosis,

there was a moment,

maybe a day or two,

where I was, like,
almost afraid to call.

But, like, there was things
that happened that...

Like, I saw something funny,

that it would be a thing that we
would need to talk about.

And I was standoffish
for a couple of days.

It was really eating at me.

Why was I treating him different
just because he had cancer?

There is an awkwardness
and an unease

that's always existed
between people and death.

Because we're aware of our mortality

and we don't know what happens
after we die,

it's taboo to talk about.

One thing about our friendship

and a coping mechanism that Andre
and I have always had

is that we find humour in shitty
situations.

From the beginning,
we sort of decided,

"Let's not change at all how we
speak to each other."

And once we did that,

we didn't have to change anything
about our friendship.

Hey, do you want to make a wish?

Mm-hm.
What would you wish for?

LAUGHTER

I don't know.

I don't know. What...?

LAUGHTER

Er, I can't think of anything.
I can't think of anything.

Let's keep the same irreverence
that I have applied

to absolutely everything in my life.

It's not like, all of a sudden,
"Guys, I'm dying, it's so sad.

"You've got to take this seriously."
Fuck that.

How's Andre's cancer?

It's goofy.
MOCK HOARSE: Oh, it's pretty good.

LAUGHTER

I don't know.

He's not wallowing in it.

We're actually having fun
with Andre dying.

And I know that sounds crazy to say,

but this is so very Andre -
to do it that way.

MOCK HOARSE: Come on, kids, you want
to take your picture

with anal cancer?

LAUGHTER

And then, when the anal cancer
takes its mask off,

it's just a real person
and it freaks the kids out.

My dad has always,
my whole life,

kind of joked about wanting
to be preserved -

like, cryogenic freezing
and freezing of the head

and freezing of the body -

to one day cure whatever killed him
and then be brought back to life.

The next decision I would have
to make

is whether I want to get my body
cryogenically frozen.

My whole body or just my head?

Is that it? Or is that...?

No, we only offer full body.

OK, well, that simplifies it.

I printed out my genome.

I printed these up for two reasons.

One, I wanted to copyright them
so that I own my own genome.

But the other thing is,

I thought it would be fun to have
a hard copy printed out

so that, perhaps at some point
in the future,

somebody could clone me or,
you know,

create a new me.

He comes up with a bunch of ideas
every day,

and most of them are just crazy
Andre ideas.

And then some of them come
to be actual things

that other people have done.

Andre is more Aristotelian
than Platonic.

He wants to know it all.

He also has this incredible knack

to be able to navigate the web like
nobody I've ever met in my life.

And in an era now of the internet,

he can conjure up the most
obscure knowledge

about almost anything.

There's a website for
the death yells.

I believe it's deathyells.com.

I didn't know how serious it
was at first, but it just...

It was an idea I had never heard of,

and it was that, you know,
you should really

work on your last words.

But this was a completely
new twist on it.

And whether this guy is a nut
or not

didn't make any difference.

It was like, "This seems like
something I should be doing

"now that I'm terminally ill."

So I called Lee

and I was trying to think
of funny ones

on the car ride up.

I mean, I've been talking
about my last words.

Yeah.
I just don't have any ideas.

Well, my father-in-law -

because we were there
when he passed,

and everyone was around,
and he just said,

"I'm really tired."

And literally, that's the last
thing I heard him say.

That's kind of complaining.

I guess this is our...?
Hey.

Ryan. Nice to see you.

Welcome to my office.

This will be the most
important sound

you will ever make on this earth.

The death yell.

And it's the last sound this earth
will hear from you. Mm.

And so it should be simple
and concise.

And it should really be, you know,
from the heart.

But also connect with your audience,
whoever that audience may be.

I've heard the story that
you don't really die

until nobody speaks your name
anymore.

The real death that happens is
when you're forgotten.

So I figure, with a good death yell,
you could extend your life...

Yeah.
..infinitely, potentially.

All you want is to inspire
the people around you

and have the people on
the other side...

Right.
..be excited to meet you.

Inspire the people around me
to do what?

Just to feel, you know?

To feel, "Wow, that was
a powerful force."

Not like,
"Oh, geez, that was awkward."

The death yell.
Yeah.

All right.
This is the place.

And if you hear the echo,
feel it back,

you kind of will know if it's right
or not.

Fuck, yeah, man!

No. No? Horrible.

RYAN SIGHS
Just take a deep breath,

close your eyes, and the first thing
that comes to mind.

So long, suckers!

Yeah. Like that? Yeah.

All right.
Yes.

That feels pretty good.
Yeah. All right.

Come and get me, spaceman!

Getting weird.

If you get on a roller-coaster

or you're on the freeway,
like, practise.

Just, like, somebody at their
last moment -

and they, you know, got hit
by a car -

like, they could go, "Ooh!

"Ooh! Bleurgh!"

It could be in the street, it could
be in an ice cream shop -

you'll never know.

And that's why you've got
to practise.

Like, you want to go out
with something

that's strong and powerful.

Bo! Ka-ka-ka-ka!

Clack-a-lack-a-lack!
Fire in the hole!

I'm coming to get you, God!

THEY SCREAM

Yeah. Yeah.

That was pretty good!
I've got to sit down!

You might actually die doing this.

LAUGHTER

I feel like I taste blood
in my throat.

OK. Good? Yeah.

You mentioned a couple weeks ago
to me an idea that you had.

Yes. OK.

Imagine this as a big, network,

competitive unscripted
television show.

So think of, like, The Voice, right?

But this isn't The Voice.

What this show is, it's called
Who Wants to Kill Me?

And the idea of the show is we bring
in five or six people

who have legitimate reasons
for wanting to kill me.

Maybe there's just an ex-girlfriend
who hates me.

A chef who really wants to cook
with human flesh.

Use me as a medical experiment.

Blow me up.

Put me in a stadium,
release the lions

and see how long I can fight them.

And then America votes,

and whoever they vote for
gets to take my life.

Because it would be much better
to let anybody kill me.

An amateur magician

or a budding serial killer

or an ex-girlfriend

seem much more appealing to me
than letting cancer kill me.

But maybe that's not true.

Well, I think, you know, you...

..have a capacity to find the
comedic in everything. Right.

And so I would say, you know,
the goal is to make

enough room so that
multiple feelings

can be fully present
at the same time,

that the tragic and the beautiful
and the comic -

that there's space for all of it.

There may be moments for you
to visit grief more fully.

You know, it is beautiful,
it is funny,

it is outrageous,

and it's also very sad that
you have cancer, Andre.

I've been collecting other people's

old photo albums since
I was a child.

I used to buy them at junk shops,
at antique stores,

at garage sales.

There's something profoundly private
about a photo album.

It's like this unfiltered look
at who they are

in a way that you just can't
get anywhere else.

This is really subtle
and hard to see

in an otherwise completely
boring album.

It's maybe 25 pictures of Christmas,

and there's nothing really
interesting about it.

But then there's this one mistake
in the album

that I'm sure they did not mean
to reveal.

And when I saw it,
it terrified me.

It's a picture of a family
standing around

in front of the Christmas tree.

And then, a few pictures later,

there's a second picture taken just
a second before that first one.

Only, in this second photograph,
you can see the head of somebody

who appears to be right behind
the woman, holding her up.

And when I first saw it,

it looked like there was just this
ghost behind the woman.

Why is there this woman behind
this other woman?

And as I looked at it, it seems
like she's wearing

a white uniform and
she has white hair.

And I realised she's probably
the housekeeper,

the maid, the helper.

And she's probably holding
this woman up

because the woman has polio
and can't stand -

and that was something that
they were ashamed of.

They're trying to hide it.

They're doing everything they can
to hide it.

People really tend to be very
private

about their weaknesses,

about their vulnerabilities.

So we paint the portraits that
we want people to see.

We create the vision of ourselves
that we want people to see.

But the most beautiful,

most fascinating portraits

are the ones that aren't the
idealised version.

They're the ones that show the flaws
that are in us

and tell that more complete story.

The thing about colon cancer is it
responds well to medicine.

Often people will go
into remission -

maybe not with stage four,

but stage one or stage two
or stage three cancer.

You'll feel like you beat it,
time will go by,

and then it comes roaring back.

And when it comes back,

it's much more aggressive,
it spreads much quicker

and it doesn't respond
to medication,

and you tend to die very quickly.

I responded really well to the chemo
from December, January

a year ago -

all the way through the summer.

But they had to keep reducing
the doses

of the chemo they were giving me
cos my platelets were so low.

I went almost eight weeks without
getting any chemotherapy.

My hair started growing back.

Only it's really not my hair -

it feels like somebody else's hair.

It's much thinner than my hair is,
it's much darker.

It's also sort of wispy and thin
and somewhat straight.

It's kind of strange that it's grown
back this way.

I imagine there's probably
some guy

walking around in the Midwest
losing his hair,

wondering who's finding it.

Well, it's me.
I'm finding your hair.

And thank you.

As the hair has grown back,
so has the cancer.

So, the healthier I look,

that means the sicker I probably am
right now.

You know, people see me
and they're like,

"Hey, you look great."

And I'm like, "Yeah, but I can feel
the cancer coming back

"in my liver again.

"If you put your hand right here,
you can feel a little tumour."

And, you know, that sort of thing.

And people don't like doing that
at lunch, I've noticed.

OK, so we are going
to the hospital

so I can get my usual
three-month scan.

Janice, you got anything to add?

I'm going for just straight-up
positivity -

and that this is all going
to be just excellent news.

She's going to give you a prize.

All excellent news and a prize.

That's what Janice is predicting.

I went in for the scans.

Then, two days after it,

while I was in the shower,

my phone started blowing up.

One of the texts was from
my oncologist,

and the first line of
her email said,

"So those scans were disappointing."

And I thought, "Oh, fuck."

So the things in the lungs
are really tiny.

The largest of these
pulmonary nodules

measures seven millimetres,

but I would say that the
vast majority are more

in the two, three millimetre range.

The liver is the part that is the
most concerning right now.

Mm-hm.

I think the oncologist gave us
the idea

that the spread to the lungs
and the adrenal glands

weren't as concerning

as what they called the
"innumerable tumours" in his liver.

And, you know, when a scientist
just uses the word "innumerable",

it seems frightening.

# Cancer's getting meaner

# And it ain't never been fun

# Supposed to get you
when you're old

# And now it gets you when
you're young

# Cancer's always been depressing

# Cancer's never been pleasant

# It don't care if you're a royal

# Don't care if you're a peasant. #

You know, every scan I've gotten
has been OK.

Things have just been sort of
smoothly going along.

And suddenly this catastrophe
happens.

And my first instinct was,

"Why don't we get out
and do something?"

And it just made sense to drive.

We could get out of San Francisco
for the first time in years.

We could see a bit of the country
that I've never been to.

I think most people would go
to Paris and Nice

and, you know,
go eat pizza in Naples.

And instead we saw a whole
lot of just nothing.

And I love nothing.

And I really wanted to spend
some time with Lee.

Girl from my high school died.

Mattress blew off the car
in front of her.

Really?
Yeah.

She died pretty, you know?

The idea that you, you know...
Yeah.

You want to... You want to leave
a pretty corpse.

Yeah.
I subscribe to that.

I mean, I think my corpse
is still fuckable.

Yeah.
But not, you know...

Sure. And I think as I lose
a little more weight,

as time goes on with the chemo...
Yeah.

..I'll look better and better.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

We drove for hours

and we got out to this dead lakebed,

this desert out in the middle
of nowhere,

and we could do whatever the fuck
we wanted.

LAUGHTER
Holy shit, dude!

Well...

Now what?

LAUGHTER

Let's do some drugs.

This is probably the farthest
I've been from a city

in my entire life.

Yeah, there's just nothing.

The first thing I noticed
was the silence.

I-I don't even know how to
sort of describe it.

I've never really experienced
silence like that before.

For the first time in maybe my life,

I was just alone with my thoughts...

..and all that nothingness.

And of course,
that made me think of death.

That's what I think death is.
I expect death to be empty.

And that was about as empty
as I've ever felt.

The other guys!
LAUGHTER

Crying at the beauty, my friend.

Crying at the beauty.

We just had a good time.

I ate some mushrooms.

We sat around the fire.

All of the tension was gone.

He and I were just sitting out
in the middle of nowhere,

under the fucking Milky Way,
having a good time.

So what I've been referring
to this as

is a piece of work -

not necessarily a TV commercial,
but something...

Could be a TV commercial.

Yeah, platform.

..that is a
colonoscopy encouragement piece.

Yeah.

This is a way for me to see
some redemption,

to use the skills and
the connections

and the people and the tools
that I have

to actually save some lives.

We know that you're a loudmouth,

you're a pain in the ass.

We know that you're an idiot.

What's happening to you didn't
necessarily have to happen.

And so we want to create a campaign

that encourages others to get
a colonoscopy

when they turn 45.

Idea number one.

LAUGHTER
All right!

And what we're trying to do is,
we're trying to break through

every barrier in the psyche
that men and women have.

So we do have a couple
of current clients

that we think we could partner with.

So...
As a first date?!

As a first date. Yeah.
Wow!

OkCupid lets us do outrageous work.

Wow, that would be an amazing
first date.

That would be amazing, right?
So we've got Cheeky Cherry,

we've got Pamplemousse Caboose,
we've got Pineapple Dump Truck.

Yeah. Where is the Booty Juice?

We have it right here.
Great question.

Great question.
I'm glad you...

I'm glad you...
Nice!

# I like to get my colon checked

# A colonoscopy. #

Assholes are everywhere.

We had this idea of just
doing PSAs... Yep.

..that are simply colonoscopy
reminders.

LAUGHTER

Every one of those is amazing,
by the way.

Every one of them is amazing.

The butthole idea, I think,
is really good,

and I think it's really funny
and I think it fits.

The thing I love about it
is the reminder.

Like, suddenly you'll be reminded
yourself,

when you see an asshole,
to get a colonoscopy.

Right. Or something that looks
like an asshole. Yeah.

I'm moving out to go to college.

This is where I grew up
and where my family is,

but I don't know if I'll ever
live here again.

The fact that he was diagnosed
at stage four...

And they are no dummies -

they Googled that beyond
what we told them.

But he doesn't want them
to see him

sick or weak or scary.

He doesn't want to scare them.

I'm not as honest as I should be
with my kids

about how sick I am.

When I'm lying on the couch
and I look like I'm dead,

and I'm pale and I haven't got up
all day and I don't have a voice,

I say, "What you're seeing
is the side-effects

"of the medicine, not the cancer."

But that's not always true.

All right. So I'm not going to
hug you, because fuck that.

Have a great time.

Do you want me to hug you?
No.

I'm happy to.
That's weird.

Well, I'm just...
That's not how we do it.

I'm not saying that.

Call me if you need anything at all.

Text me, don't call me -
I won't answer.

All right? I wish I was going
with you.

Bye.
See ya.

All right. Off they go.

As you may have noticed,

my eyelashes are particularly long.

And it's a side-effect of one of
the medications that I'm on,

but my lashes are sort
of horrifying.

They're sort of monstrous.

I keep saying I look like
fucking Snuffleupagus.

I do brush them.

My daughter, Delilah, gave me
a spoolie

and taught me how to use it.

OK, just open them
a little bit more.

OK, so like this?
Yes.

Tell me your friends aren't
all doing this right now

with their dads?

Yeah. No, that's good.

Much... Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.
LAUGHTER

Oh, my God, that is, like,
to die for.

Honestly, I love the attention.
but it's time to go. Yeah.

It's just dangerous.
I can't drive at night.

Oh, yeah.
I can't do anything.

No, I get it. Yeah, you're ready.
So...

And I trust you.

You can see!
Yeah, I can see!

You can see!
Oh, my God!

Doctor, what happened to my life?

I was a normal man!

You're still normal. It's just
a different stage now.

You're still normal, I swear.

My oncologist noticed that
the cancer cells

were no longer susceptible
to the chemo

that had been so successful
for the last year.

And they said they wanted
to do some radiation.

So I met the ass lady
at the hospital,

and she was just so chipper
and wonderful

and great at her job.

And she said, "In order to do this,

"I'm going to tape your
ass cheeks open

"and we're going to put a little
sticker over your anus

"so it doesn't get any radiation

"and you don't get any blisters
on your anus."

And then the next day I had
to come back.

And on the way to the hospital,
we passed my voting spot.

And this was election day.

Janice just became an
American citizen,

so we went in and we voted together.

We both got those
"I just voted" stickers,

and I'm holding the sticker
in my hand.

And I had this thought of,

"Wouldn't it be funny if, when I get
to the hospital,

"I put the sticker over
my own anus" -

as sort of a humble-brag
that I voted

and a nod to the fact that this
is an awkward situation.

And wouldn't it be a funny surprise?

And then I'm in the room

and I'm getting in the
hospital gown,

and I have the sticker out.

And I hesitated at the last minute

because it just felt like I was
sexualising the situation

in a way that may make the
radiologist uncomfortable.

Five years ago, I wouldn't
have hesitated.

I hesitated.

And it would have been
devastatingly humiliating,

because the guy who brought me in,
who was giving me the MRI,

was not the same funny, calm,
normal nurse

that I'd had the day before.

It was this humourless dude

who just didn't smile once
the whole time.

And I thought, "Thank God I don't
have an 'I just voted' sticker

"on my asshole right now."

I've done 50-something rounds
of chemo.

I'm pretty good at chemo.

It makes me tired,
it makes me crabby,

it turns me into an asshole
for a couple of days,

but I can handle it.

I've learned how to do it.

I cannot do radiation.

The side-effects got worse
and worse and worse.

I lost 20lbs.

I was cramping really badly
in my stomach.

It kept me from sleeping more than
half an hour at a time

for, like, two weeks -
which is like torture.

It was fucking hell.

This is the first time

that I've really been in physical,
emotional pain.

I never know what to write to you.

"Hey, how's it going?"

Cos I call you, and this is how
you answer the phone.

"Hey, what's up?"
Yeah. No matter what.

No matter what.
Yeah.

Yeah.
"Yeah, I'm good.

"I just got stabbed in the neck
and I'm bleeding out of my ass,

"but what's up?"

"But it's better than it was
20 minutes ago."

Make it funny.
Yeah.

I mean...
Which is fine,

but sometimes I do wish you would
just be like, "Dude..."

And I think I liked the text that
was so... Miserable.

I didn't like it, but I was like...
It was real, you know?

I mean, I talk to my shrink
about this all the time.

I don't think anybody's like,
"Don't laugh at your situation."

Yeah. Obviously there's
psychological issues

going on here.
Yeah.

But I'm lucky that I have
this vehicle now,

which is myself.

I'm not laughing at other people
with colon cancer.

I'm not laughing at other people
who go through this. Yeah.

But for me, it makes it much easier.

And at some point,

if I ever get a colostomy bag...
Yeah.

..you know, there's going
to be endless jokes.

Already written.
I'm sure.

And those are going to be
funny jokes... Yeah.

..and we're going to have a lot of
fun with it

and it's going to be revolting
and disgusting. Yeah.

And, you know, we're going to do
all that stuff. Uh-huh.

I look forward to that, you know?

Because I really don't look forward
to having to shit in a bag

that's strapped to my body.
Right.

You know what I mean?
So what's the upside?

Well, now at least we get to tell
all these jokes. Yeah.

And I can take it out
in a restaurant

and play it like a balloon -
letting the air out.

Meeeeee!

I feel like that might get stinky
if you do that.

Even better, you know?

But again, going back...

Is the cancer starting to be
less funny?

Yeah, literally.

Yes and no. But it shouldn't.

It should be funnier now.

The more the cancer fucks me up,
the funnier it should be.

Because it's one thing
if you're feeling fine

and you're cracking jokes
at the radiologist.

It's another thing if you
look like death

and you feel like death

and you're crapping your pants
every 20 minutes

and you're still making jokes.

That is victory.

That is how you beat fucking cancer.

So what happens if, in a couple of
months or years,

you're in really terminal decline,
you can't get out of bed,

you're in excruciating pain,

and you realise it's just not fun
anymore and you want to end it?

You know, can I just drink Drano
if I want?

Can I do an assisted suicide,
drinking Drano,

and then instead of donating
my body to science,

I donate it to television?

Am I allowed to do that?
I don't know.

I'm sorry. "Donate your body
to television"?

Instead of science.

Everybody's OK if you want to
donate your body to science.

But if you want to donate your body
to television,

people get all squirrelly
about that.

How do you donate your body
to television?

I don't know. It's what
I'm looking into now.

Maybe they need a corpse
for something.

So you're saying if you want to die,
officially,

along the prescribed legal way...

But you want control over
your death.

..you have to donate your body
to science,

or it's expected that you will?
I think it's expected.

Like, I think it's OK to say,
"I want to be an organ donor"

or, "I want to donate my body
to science".

You know? Nobody bats an eye
at that. Right.

That's legal. So, once again,
for Andre,

you're going to do things your way.
Well...

So, if you're going to donate
your body...

Doesn't science have enough bodies?

Look, I'm not suggesting that you
get conventionally buried

in a Christian cemetery.

Right? I'm not suggesting that.

I haven't decided yet.

When do you think you'll start
making some of these decisions?

I don't know. I gotta work on it.

Standard burial I'm not for at all.

I don't give a shit.

I'm not against cremation,

but if we're going to do cremation,
I would rather have a funeral pyre,

like, out in a field somewhere

where you just throw me on the fire
and burn me.

They've sent people's ashes
into space.

I like that.

I would rather have my whole body
sent into space, though.

I know that would be expensive

because I would weigh a lot more.

But if there was a way to just drift
around for 50,000 years,

a million years,
that would be amazing.

When I talk about life and death
issues with you -

not just now, but all your life
and my life -

we often flit back and forth
from the absurd to the real.

But now it's like the shit
is hitting the fence.

It's real. This is real.
The rubber hit the road.

This is real.
This is real.

Andre had trepidation asking me
about being on camera.

I mean, I'm happy to do it -
but I'm private.

Nothing like my father.

My father is one of the most

intensely private people
in the world.

The thought of going on camera
and discussing his illness,

his weakness, he would never do.

And I respect that, and I understand
who he is

and why he wouldn't do that.

This kind of crazy, vulnerable,
dark humour...

..everything-out-there project
is utterly opposite

who he is as a person.

Being on a movie that he doesn't
control is just shocking to him.

It's just unthinkable.

Andre, I think, knows not
to directly ask him.

When Andre directly asked him,

"Would you be willing to be
in the movie?"

Larry said, "I'd rather do chemo."

So the solution was to clearly get
Tommy Chong to play his father.

Because he looks exactly like him,

and he couldn't be more opposite
a kind of person.

Is being vulnerable weak?

No, no, it's actually strong.

Strength, yeah.

Vulnerable means being real.

See, had you been my father,

this would be a very different
conversation.

Because so much of this I had
to find on my own.

I think Andre really appreciates
what his father gave him.

But, yeah, it was definitely
Opposite Dad Day.

I'll take any kind of problem
and turn it into a joke.

Yeah. I mean, that's a life
philosophy.

The fucking Buddha should've
said that.

He probably did.
He probably did.

He probably got it from somewhere.

But, yeah. That's a whole...

That's a philosophy.

I've done it all my life.

And if I can laugh at it

and I can get other people
to laugh at it,

how bad could it fucking be?

I hate to infantilise Andre,

but caregiving is a lot like having

the responsibilities of having
a toddler again.

He's not a toddler.

He'd kill me if I was comparing him
to a toddler.

But, you know, making a lot
of snacks,

trying to get somebody to eat,
the occasional tantrum.

You know, it's not tumbling
and playdates -

it's hospital and hospital.

Hi, I was hoping you might have
a minute to help me schedule

a paracentesis appointment
for my husband.

Yeah, sure. Is he a regular already?

Yeah, he's a regular already.

Yes. Poor Andre.

It gives me a lot
of satisfaction

to know that I'm helping.

I loved that with my kids.

That's where I shine.

I'm picking up three prescriptions
for Andre Ricciardi.

You said Andre?
Andre, yeah.

I have, like, six.
Six?

Oh, isn't he lucky? I guess I'll
take 'em all, thanks.

So this one, this one and this one
go together? Yep.

OK. So the one that's a two
in quantity

goes with the kit?

That's correct, yeah.
OK.

Thank you so much.
Thanks for spending

half your day with me.
Yeah. Bye.

Just last night, he was lying there,

and I was bringing him a peach
or something.

And he said, "You know, I'd be dead
by now if it weren't for you."

I was sort of, "Oh, pshaw,"
you know?

Like, "There's no reason
you'd be dead.

"You just wouldn't... Your fridge
wouldn't be as full

"and you wouldn't get rides
everywhere."

And he said,

"No, you just take such
good care of me

"and I don't know what I'd do
without you.

"And you make me really happy."

And that was a big one.

I've been lying on that couch
for weeks,

and Janice has been doing
fucking everything

and driving me and doing
all that stuff.

And I think Janice's experience
is very different than mine

of what's going on.
Mm.

You know, in a lot of ways

it's much easier to be the patient
than the caretaker.

I doubt that!

Mm, I don't know. I don't know.
I'm just making snacks.

It's more than making snacks.

And I think you take the burden -

so much of the burden and the pain
that I'm in -

on yourself.

Mm.

Which, you know,

isn't easy.

Yeah. Anyway...

He is much more vulnerable now,

which is not something he would've
ever wanted.

But he's sort of willingly
vulnerable,

which is super surprising.

I feel like the character
in a cheesy '90s movie

who's overworked and stressed

and then has some traumatic brain
injury or gets cancer

and becomes a complete human being.

You know, finally fall in love
with his wife

or finally realised that everything
he needed, he already had.

And it's the kind of movie
that I despise.

And yet I'm experiencing that.

OK, we can do this.

Goodish news. Goodish news.

We'll just put a big fake face on,

we'll tell lots of jokes.

And who gives a fuck?

That's the attitude.

It is.

You know, I like to think,

"Well, this is just these current
rotten symptoms doing something,

"and we'll solve that.

"And then he'll get back
to sort of normal.

"Normal cancer."

Normal cancer was easy
in retrospect,

but this shit's scary.

OK. You all right?

Yeah.

I mean, that was...
that was pretty bleak, but...

..but...

Clinical trials means...

I know. But, Janice, I'm dying.

Like, the reality of the situation
is I'm dying.

And we have to face that, you know?

No, thank you.
What's that?

No, thank you.

We're OK, Janice.
We're going to be OK.

Yep.
We got time still.

Yep.

Yes, please.

We still got time.
Yes, please.

Well, good job.

All righty. I'll see you in a bit.
OK.

ANDRE SIGHS

The other day, he was sitting
on the couch

and he just had his head
in his hand

and he just said,

"I don't want to do this anymore."

And I started saying, you know,

"Come on." Like, "One more day.

"Let's just keep putting one foot
in front of the other.

"You can do this."

And then he looked up at me,

and in his other hand
he had his phone.

And he said, "No,
I'm talking about the Wordle."

We found this doctor in Italy

who claims that he is
absolutely ready

to perform a head transplant
from one human to another.

They warned us that his work
is very controversial.

My feeling is, "Look, if you're
going to put my head

"on another body,

"don't put it on, like,
a 30-year-old's body.

"Put it on a ten-year-old's body

"so that I get those extra 20 years
to live and to enjoy myself."

And I really wanted to go to Italy
and meet this guy

and at least have a consultation
with him.

But I'm too sick to go
to Italy right now.

And what that made me realise

was time is passing and I'm getting
sicker and sicker.

And if there's anything
I need to do,

I need to do it immediately.

And that's a scary revelation,
you know?

Much rather be getting
my head transplanted

on a boy's body.

One of the reasons my recent
health problems

have been so disconcerting to Janice

is the physical manifestation
of my illness,

which is my belly keeps swelling
with this fluid

because my liver's starting to fail.

If there wasn't that physical
representation of it

that's constantly there
to remind her,

then it's my behaviour.

And I'm pretty good at putting on
a happy face

and doing the best I can do.

The issue is

it's harder to lie about it now.

Hello, Peter.
Andre.

Are you surprised to hear my voice?

I'm delighted to hear your voice.
LAUGHTER

Oh, my God, where the fuck
have you been?

No, I'm kidding. I've been trying
to be available to you!

I know, I know, I know.

I'm absolutely joking.

It's been fucking tough, Peter.

Like, we've entered that next phase
of cancer. Yeah.

And I met with a nurse who was just
absolutely spectacular.

Like, the ass doctor.

And she told me I need to relax
my second sphincter

because that's really tight

and that's where a lot of the
blood's coming from.

So... So I'm trying to do that.
Uh-huh.

I mean, you know...!

And what the last month and a half
has been like is...

You know, when the girls
have been here,

the girls sitting at the counter,
eating dinner,

hanging out with their mother,

and I'm on the couch making jokes.

You know what I mean?

Trying to participate
the way I used to.

But it's obvious that I'm not able
to do what I used to do.

You know what I mean?

I'm not fooling anybody.

But I still feel that need
to act that way.

When I can no longer
make Tallula laugh,

then I feel like
I've crossed over a line

and there's really no purpose
for me to be here.

I don't know what I feel about that.

On the one hand, I get it.

You know? It is...

If you can't make Tallula laugh,

you're not Andre anymore
in some ways. Right.

But I think you still feel you need
to be able to make me laugh.

Yeah.

And I think you are more than...

..your irreverent humour.

So I think part of the process
for you

is relaxing.

You mean my second sphincter?

Yes.
Yes.

No, no, I'm sorry.

I don't mean to make a joke
when you're telling me

not to fucking make jokes.
LAUGHTER

I get it.

Yeah, I think you're right.

I think it's time to really be
honest about the severity

of what's going on.

And I'm trying to write
this little piece

for the end of the film

that sort of sums up where I am
and what's going...

You know, whatever. I don't know
what it's going to be.

And it's fascinating.

It's so weird to sit down
and start writing,

you know, whatever that message is -

that final transmission.

Mm-hm.

But it's also forcing me to think
about a lot of this stuff.

I just... It's so hard to see pain
in the faces

of the people that I love,
you know what I mean? It just...

It's so difficult for me
to not feel like...

It's not even letting people down.

It's that I just don't want them
to hurt.

And I know they have to.

And I know they're going to.

I understand that. But that doesn't
mean they have to today.

You know?

And...
Well... But...

I actually think...

..one of the gifts you offer
your daughters...

..is the chance to
grieve a father,

that that is not a destructive
thing to do.

If it goes well, that is a powerful
and deepening process.

I don't know.

It's sad, isn't it?

Be generous and let them feel sad.

Yes, that's true.

That's the line.
That's the takeaway from this.

"Be generous and let them be sad."

Yes.

That's hard. That's really hard.

I know it is hard for you.

# Grab me by my shoulder blades

# And hang me out to dry

# I'm a mess

# And I need someone
to help me out with that

# Please remember to feed the cat

# Please remember
that I'm never coming back

# Ooh

# Ooh. #

Ow!

How do old people do this?

Isn't there an app for this?

Can't I do this on my iPhone?

There are a couple of these pills
that I don't take every day.

Just because, you know, fuck it.

Right? Like, rules are for
rule followers.

I just don't want to take 'em.

I don't know, it just doesn't
feel right.

Like, taking two of those giant
potassium pills every day

seems like too much.

Do I need that much potassium?

Does anybody need that
much potassium?

Do that one all by itself!

Kind of hoping I was
going to choke.

Looks like Vicodin but
is not Vicodin,

and what a fucking letdown
that was.

I usually have, as part of
my medication,

a 7am bong hit as well.

Much better.

Stelio, would you like
a bong hit?

No, no.
Are you sure?

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, at this point,

if Andre were to get all earnest
and heartfelt

and serious about his cancer

and about dying all the time...

..none of us would know
how to deal with him.

You know? It's not him.

Hey, T, can you look
in that cabinet

and see if there's any Skittles?

I got these holes in my hand

and, er, I've been trying to find
the best hole

to hide Skittles in.

Jesus Christ!
I think it's this one.

I think I'll do better there.

TALLULA LAUGHS
That's good.

I just want to make people laugh.

You know? I just want to make people
feel good when things are bad.

Do your new classes start today?

Tomorrow?
No.

When do they start?

I haven't chosen it yet.

But I'm just going to take one.

Just one, so you can come home
and see me

and the holes in my hand?
Yeah.

Thank you. I appreciate that you're
reducing your schedule

to spend time with me.

It's very sweet of you.
TALLULA LAUGHS

It is.

I'll see you later.
Goodbye. I love you.

Bye. I love you, too.

I haven't figured out
the right way...

..to be a calming force with
this new prognosis.

I don't know how to...

I guess I've just...

..had all this sort of
anticipatory grief.

And now it's...

..really happening.

And my, you know,

cheerleader-hopeful-denial stuff
is no longer appropriate.

And, you know, telling someone
it's going to be OK...

..is sort of the natural way you
want to comfort someone.

But it's not.

So...

So, what do you say?

I sat with fear today.

I didn't run from it
or try to defeat it.

Instead, I greeted it like a friend

and I let it wash over me
again and again...

..terrifying me.

But it was OK.

My fear is insignificant compared
to the love all around me.

I wept for the first time in years.

It was remarkable.

I thought I needed suffering,
but instead I got bliss.

My heart has never been more open,

and my fear of death,

also tapping at my window,

feels a bit more familiar and
a little less powerful.

So long, suckers!

# I look back

# It had been a long night

# Sitting by the fire

# Soon it will be light

# It may only last a moment

# But a moment can last a lifetime
in your mind

# I find it's on the telly

# What are they trying to sell me?

# Wake up

# Time's gone by

# I'm falling down

# Every night

# I look back

# It had been a long night

# Sitting by the fire

# Soon it will be light

# It may only last a moment

# But a moment can last a lifetime
in your mind. #