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00:00:10One time, when I was 13 years old, and I was spending a week at my grandparents' house,
00:00:14and I was locked in the bathroom one night, late after they had gone to sleep, and I was
00:00:18furiously masturbating the way 13-year-old boys do, and I suddenly had this urge to rub
00:00:24the head of my penis on the underside of the formica counter, because the top was smooth,
00:00:30and I assumed the bottom would be smooth as well, although I found out immediately that
00:00:34it was unfinished wood, and I got a whole bunch of splinters in the head of my penis.
00:00:38Now I couldn't wake my grandparents up and tell them that, obviously I would have rather
00:00:41died than do that, so I crept around their house until I found a pair of tweezers, and
00:00:46then I locked myself back in the bathroom, and I carefully removed all of the splinters
00:00:51from my penis, wrapped it in toilet paper, which obviously got blood on it, and went
00:00:56to sleep.
00:00:57Until now, that was probably the greatest mistake that I made, but not getting a colonoscopy
00:01:02when I turned 50?
00:01:03That one is a little bit bigger.
00:01:17That's all garbage.
00:01:18When I told my mother that I had colon cancer, the first thing she said was, what a fucking
00:01:24idiot.
00:01:25She said, that is the easiest cancer to stop, all you need to do is get a colonoscopy, and
00:01:31I may still defeat it, but if I don't, she's right.
00:01:34I'm a fucking idiot.
00:01:35I'm trying to get back, but you try me out sometime, but you try me out sometime.
00:01:42I'm going through this because I want to kind of make sure there's nothing sentimental or important
00:01:46that somebody else may want.
00:01:49After I'm gone, toilet paper.
00:01:52Maxell tapes.
00:01:53Andre is the most brilliant idiot that you've ever met.
00:01:57He's got a mind unlike most people I know.
00:01:59In fact, virtually everyone.
00:02:01I have a feeling somewhere in here I have a pair of Kim Kardashian's pants.
00:02:05Oh, this is fun.
00:02:07This is awesome.
00:02:09I started buying cash and storing it in here, and the idea was, in case of a massive earthquake,
00:02:18I would use this as currency, and I also included a little pipe with it.
00:02:25Andre just always has had a penchant for obscure facts and a curiosity.
00:02:31Yeah, this might be her pants.
00:02:34Kim Kardashian.
00:02:35Congratulations.
00:02:36I'm thrilled that you won one of the items from my Kim's Closet auction.
00:02:39And then it goes to the Life Change Community Church.
00:02:42And it's signed by Kim Kardashian.
00:02:44Now, my plan was to scrape her DNA off of them because you can't really wash pleather pants.
00:02:49And we could clone her from them someday.
00:02:54You never know what's going to come out of them.
00:02:56It could be quoting Nietzsche.
00:02:59It could be hot chicks picking up dog shit.
00:03:02It was either here or way the fuck out there.
00:03:06But the biggest Andre paradox was Janice.
00:03:18One day, we had been drinking in the bar for a few hours, and Janice, the bartender, approached Johnny and
00:03:23said,
00:03:24Look, I'm Canadian. I need a green card. Will you marry me?
00:03:29Because I was in my last year of college, my student visa was going to expire and I was going
00:03:34to get deported.
00:03:35Uh, so I thought, well, I need to ask Johnny D to marry me because he didn't like the ladies
00:03:41so much.
00:03:41So I thought that would be uncomplicated.
00:03:43And he's like, no, I'm not going to marry you. And I said, I'll marry you.
00:03:48And I was like, what?
00:03:50And she's like, are you sure you want to do this? Like, you know, there's no sex.
00:03:54It's purely platonic. But if you wanted to marry me, you could move into the apartment over the bar with
00:04:00me.
00:04:00I was like, great. Sounds wonderful.
00:04:01I figured it meant free drinks in the bar because I married the bartender.
00:04:05Which, you know, to Andre is me being like the Wizard of Oz.
00:04:08She promised me a trip to Mexico.
00:04:10That was the payment for the green card marriage.
00:04:12And I had to stay married to her for two years.
00:04:15I went to Haight Street and bought an old wedding dress from the Goodwill for $30 and twined it up
00:04:20with a string to make it fit.
00:04:22Andre was wearing a powder blue tux.
00:04:24I think his brother happened to be in town, flew in from Japan.
00:04:29We happened to be stopping over on the way back from New York to San Francisco.
00:04:35I was like, great. I'm getting married that night. It's perfect. You can come to my wedding.
00:04:39Is he serious? Because Andre being Andre, you never know what is serious and what is not.
00:04:44I was sort of interested in somebody who I was working with and Andre had a girlfriend who was at
00:04:49our wedding.
00:04:50My girlfriend didn't take it very well. As a matter of fact, she got drunk and spent the night in
00:04:53Golden Gate Park alone.
00:04:55So maybe some people had a sense that this might be something more than just a green card wedding, but
00:05:01I didn't.
00:05:02Who is this woman that he's marrying that I didn't know anything about? If he's marrying some woman out of
00:05:07a joke or a lark, then what do I say to our parents?
00:05:17I'm a super rule follower. So I immediately was afraid that I was going to get deported or we'd get
00:05:23caught or whatever it was.
00:05:24So I insisted that we had to just really in an intense way, get to know each other really fast
00:05:30and really well.
00:05:31We would stay up like till four in the morning, just talking about our past and our childhoods, quizzing each
00:05:37other.
00:05:38And which side of the bed would you have slept on? And what color would your toothbrush be? And what
00:05:42kind of milk do you prefer? Skim or whole?
00:05:44What did you do in the summers when you were a kid?
00:05:45Who was your fourth grade teacher?
00:05:47When did you learn to tie your shoes? You know, bunny ears or not? Just unnecessarily detailed.
00:05:52We anticipated that her INS interview was going to be very much like the newlywed game. So we went and
00:05:58tried out for it.
00:05:59Hi, I'm Gary Kroger, and I've been searching beautiful San Francisco for their very best newlywed couples.
00:06:05You know what? I found them. Please welcome Janice and Andre Ricciardi.
00:06:15If I could be any celebrity, I would love to be...
00:06:20Ozzy Osbourne.
00:06:21Michael Jackson's Chimp Bubbles.
00:06:24I love that movie!
00:06:26And you can't exactly cheat. We had discussed beforehand, how do we maximize our ability to maybe win this thing?
00:06:34We figured out a method for cheating, which was if there's an obvious true answer, pick that
00:06:39first.
00:06:40She's secretly in love with Stephen King.
00:06:43That's my wife!
00:06:44That is my wife!
00:06:46I don't know if I could hug you for now.
00:06:48If there isn't an obvious true answer, pick the nicer one.
00:06:52Four fifty points. Born perfect or needs a little work?
00:06:56Born perfect.
00:06:57Okay.
00:06:57All right!
00:06:58And if there isn't a nicer one, then pick the one that starts with the higher letter in the alphabet.
00:07:04Pepperoni or mushroom?
00:07:06Andre?
00:07:06Pepperoni.
00:07:07Perfect.
00:07:08And then we started to gain and gain.
00:07:10Counts his pennies or loses track of money?
00:07:13Mark?
00:07:13Counts my pennies.
00:07:14You do.
00:07:15Andre?
00:07:16Loses track of my money!
00:07:17You're on a roll then.
00:07:18Prefers an outside table.
00:07:19You're on a roll.
00:07:20Spontaneous!
00:07:20Boy, you're on a roll.
00:07:21All right.
00:07:22For 100 points and a trip to the Caribbean, he knows what she wants in bed or he needs to
00:07:27be told.
00:07:27All right, Andre, don't say anything.
00:07:29You've got 230 right now.
00:07:30In first place right now are the Christiansens.
00:07:32If you get this right, you're going to the Caribbean.
00:07:33Otherwise, say bon voyage to the Christiansens.
00:07:36I know!
00:07:37Okay!
00:07:43And using that simple strategy, we got ourselves a trip to the Sinesta Beach Resort on the island of Anguilla.
00:07:49That we had to fucking pay taxes on.
00:07:52Andre called me a couple of weeks later and he said, um, I have a problem.
00:07:56I fucked my wife.
00:07:59And I said, I'm sorry?
00:08:00And he said, well, I mean, we actually had sex.
00:08:03Now, it's supposed to just be a green card marriage, but now I fucked her.
00:08:07So now we're married on paper and we're actually, we had sex together, but it's not clear where our relationship
00:08:15is.
00:08:16And I'm really not sure what this kind of means.
00:08:19It was one of those things where we were just so impressed with ourselves.
00:08:22Like, we were just like, we are a good team.
00:08:36And then, Janice had to have her INS interview, and the interviewer was completely just a dick and humorless.
00:08:43And he's like, what proof of a shared life do you have?
00:08:45And we're like, we bought a car together, we have insurance together, we live together.
00:08:49And then we mentioned, um, well, we were on Newlywed Game.
00:08:52And he was like, oh, well, and he closes all his books up and he's like,
00:08:55if you won the Newlywed Game, there's nothing I can ask you that they didn't already ask you.
00:08:59Have a nice life.
00:09:00And then we knew we'd done it and we'd passed and everything was going to be fine.
00:09:05Except that now I'm admitting all this fraud.
00:09:08We were in love at that point.
00:09:09We started sleeping together.
00:09:10I broke up with my girlfriend, she broke up with her boyfriend.
00:09:13It was like, well, how much harder could having a kid be than winning the Newlywed Game?
00:09:19I've always called my dad Andre.
00:09:21I've always called him by his first name.
00:09:24I pretty much always call my dad Andre, and I have since I was a little kid.
00:09:37I think my dad is very unique, and so my relationship with him is very unique.
00:09:43Some of my friend's parents, they're just surprised when they meet him because he'll, like, make crazy jokes or he
00:09:49swears a lot.
00:09:50Well, my dad looks like someone who lives on the street.
00:09:55He had, like, huge hair. That was, like, kind of his signature thing.
00:10:00It's just Andre.
00:10:02Close for us looks different than it might for other fathers and daughters.
00:10:07We're not, like, hugging or touching. We're not really into that as a family.
00:10:14He wants a more cerebral relationship with them.
00:10:18You know, let's talk about the Ottoman Empire. Let's talk about all these conspiracy theories.
00:10:22And let's talk about great books.
00:10:23At one point, I was recovering from a surgery, and so I was kind of immobile.
00:10:28And my dad read me all of Helter Skelter, the book about the Manson murders.
00:10:34The nurses would come in and out of the room and hear him reading this to his daughter, who was
00:10:39lying in the hospital bed.
00:10:41And it was definitely, like, a perfect encapsulation of our relationship.
00:10:45And I think that was a really poignant moment for me.
00:10:49If I had to describe Andre in one word, it would be insane.
00:10:54Andre had creative GIFs that he could have done a million things with.
00:10:57He just happened to get into advertising with those GIFs.
00:11:01Say, shoot, Don, and fudge, instead of , and .
00:11:04He's pitching ideas that would get the company sued.
00:11:09Hold on, bro, how you doing?
00:11:10We're on our way.
00:11:12We're gonna have some fun.
00:11:13Amber Duick is suing Toyota for cyber-stalking her in an ad stunt.
00:11:18He was so talented that he put up with his shit.
00:11:20I remember one time we're working on a massive project for 20th Century Fox,
00:11:25an ad campaign for Planet of the Apes.
00:11:27I think we called it the Apes are getting smarter.
00:11:30The Apes are getting smarter, and of course, and the human evolution, and like,
00:11:33oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Andre's ranting.
00:11:35But the head of Fox Filmed Entertainment was like, no shit.
00:11:44You only have time in life to get really good at a couple of things.
00:11:48So you need to be really careful what you get good at.
00:11:51And I chose to get good at advertising.
00:11:54What the fuck is wrong with me? What a waste of a life.
00:11:57I can't tell you how inconsequential advertising seems once you are diagnosed with cancer.
00:12:04Hi, everybody. Here we are in my kitchen.
00:12:07It's about 18 hours plus before I get my first colonoscopy.
00:12:13I'll never forget that.
00:12:14Katie Couric getting a colonoscopy live on Good Morning America or whatever show she was on
00:12:20because her husband had just passed away of colon cancer.
00:12:22I thought that's what this experience was going to be like for me.
00:12:26I was joking around with the nurses and the doctors as I always do when I'm nervous.
00:12:30I made my usual joke, which was, I'm a drug addict. You got to give me twice the usual dose.
00:12:34I'd like to request plenty of sedation.
00:12:37No, I give you what you need.
00:12:38She had been drugged, so she was kind of twilight.
00:12:40The anesthesiologist knocks you out. You're fully under for about 15 minutes.
00:12:45And they put a camera in your ass and they look at your polyps or no polyps.
00:12:49So this is the process that I went through.
00:12:51It's as clean as a whistle. This is a perfectly normal examination.
00:12:55That wasn't bad at all.
00:12:57No, no.
00:12:57But my colonoscopy was not a happy, joyous, fun occasion with laughter,
00:13:02like when Katie Couric did it live on television.
00:13:06As I started waking up, there was all this buzzing around me.
00:13:10There was all this activity. And I heard one guy saying to another guy,
00:13:13that was over 45 minutes. That's the longest colonoscopy I've ever been to.
00:13:17And I thought that could be good. That could be bad. And I'm dopey. And I'm just waking up.
00:13:22And I'm starting to realize something's wrong. And then the doctor came over and said,
00:13:26Hi, Andre. I hate to say this, but we weren't able to perform a colonoscopy because...
00:13:32There's a mass in there so big that we can't even get a pediatric camera in there.
00:13:36And so I said, well, what does that mean? And she said, well, it looks cancerous. I don't know.
00:13:41I put a tattoo on it. Didn't tell me what the tattoo was, but I guess that's something they do.
00:13:46And I took a biopsy of it and we'll find out and we'll call you in a couple of days.
00:13:51They hadn't done a biopsy. They hadn't done anything. And I was like, how dare they just
00:13:55blurt out that you have cancer. They haven't confirmed anything. It's not going to be true.
00:14:00Maybe two, three days later, phone rang. I saw it was doctor. I don't know what her name
00:14:05actually was because I just had her in my phone as ass doctor. So staging wise, what does that mean?
00:14:12Um, what would that be? It would be stage four. And the stages are one, two, three, four.
00:14:19Oh, fuck. Once it's spread to different parts of the body, you can't do surgery to remove it.
00:14:39I went into the room afterwards expecting him to say, oh, there's a polyp or, oh, there's
00:14:45something. There's something small. There's the beginnings of something. It's maybe stage one.
00:14:50And he said it was stage four and he just was ashen.
00:14:57I think just shocked. Um, and I think stayed shocked for, for a long time.
00:15:35It's fascinating that I'm dying and I want to document it. I want to learn from it. One way to
00:15:42deal with it. One way to obsess about my cancer and my impending mortality without focusing on the
00:15:48anxiety of it is to make this film. Uh, 103 take seven marker. It's not just like, that's great.
00:15:55I think Andre is making this movie ultimately because Andre wants to do everything his way,
00:16:03including dying. And this is Andre. Andre interview. Take one.
00:16:09If somebody else came to me and said, I have colon cancer and I want to make a documentary about
00:16:14my
00:16:14own death. I don't know how I would feel about that. I would be sort of torn. I would want
00:16:19to
00:16:19respect their wishes, but I would also think this is going to get really personal and ugly. And I'm
00:16:25not sure I would want to show that for somebody else. But for me, I'm all in. I don't give
00:16:29a
00:16:29fuck. You know, if you guys want pictures of my colon, I will gladly give you pictures of my colon.
00:16:34And I think for Andre, he gets a kick out of it. I was going to stick my tongue in
00:16:41that,
00:16:41but I decided not to. It's also saying, fuck you to convention.
00:16:45What better way to spend his final days on our planet?
00:16:59Yesterday, I was at the hospital for six hours of chemotherapy, something you can avoid pretty
00:17:06easily if you get a colonoscopy. As you can see, I am shirtless, not just to show off my wonderfully
00:17:12tan buff physique, but also to show you that I'm still plugged in here and I'm still receiving
00:17:17chemotherapy. And I will be for the next 24 hours. And then I have this ball of chemotherapy.
00:17:25And this is slowly emptying over 24 hours. When they're changing the bags of the IVs,
00:17:33they wear full protective gear, including masks and gloves.
00:17:37It's sort of ironic that this is something you can't get on your skin, but they're putting it into
00:17:43a port that delivers it directly into an artery next to my heart so that it can pump through my
00:17:47body.
00:17:48And that's something you just get used to, I guess.
00:17:57Dying is surprisingly boring. This is like a vacation for me.
00:18:07That's a weird thing to say, but there's sort of this feeling of, oh my God, I have a terminal
00:18:12illness. I have an illness that, you know, in all probabilities is going to kill me within five years.
00:18:17And I feel part of me feels like the entire world should come screeching to a halt and I should
00:18:22feel
00:18:23different. And everything's now going to change into this I'm dying mode. And it didn't. And it isn't.
00:18:29I'm still unloading the dishwasher every morning. I'm still sitting in the same place looking at the
00:18:34same fucking websites. And there's something really fascinating about that to me, which is
00:18:39how mundane my own death is and how routine it feels already. And it's only been eight,
00:18:46ten weeks that I've been diagnosed with this.
00:18:50Andre is surprisingly positive about all this, which is not anything any of us would have ever called.
00:18:54My wife was saying last night that it's sad. I don't think it's necessarily sad. I mean,
00:19:00I think this to me doesn't look like a disgusting ball of chemotherapy hair. To me, this just looks
00:19:06like a cute little character, you know, with a couple of googly eyes. You know, I'm creating all
00:19:13these little creatures that now live in my house. The most serious thing in the world is dying from cancer.
00:19:19I mean, it's hard to think of a more serious, draconian topic. And yet Andre's laughing and joking and
00:19:28teasing and having fun. So now he's got the most painful situation and he's using a proportionate
00:19:36amount of humor. Hey, you know, it's not the end of the world. Am I in denial about it? I
00:19:41don't even
00:19:41think so. Like, go on, go on, you're free. There's really no cancer in my family. So I've thought
00:19:58about this long and hard and I have some theories of where it could have come from. How I got
00:20:03cancer,
00:20:04theory number one. I ingested rat poison in Tompkins Square Park in the early 90s. I smoked
00:20:10cigarettes for 22 years. Salami. My mother gave it to me. When she was eight, she and her friends
00:20:16used to run behind the trucks that sprayed DDT. My mother was born with all the eggs she would ever
00:20:22have in her life. One of those eggs that I was fertilized and born from would have been present
00:20:28in my mother when she was an eight-year-old girl. Anyway, thanks, Mom.
00:20:34Hey, can I get two slices of cheese?
00:20:36Cheese?
00:20:36Yep.
00:20:37I'll have a pepperoni.
00:20:38I got it.
00:20:39Sure, you got it yesterday.
00:20:40I got it. I will always buy you pizza, Lee. Even, even in death, I will buy you pizza.
00:20:46How do you even do that?
00:20:48I don't know. We got to figure that out. We don't have much time.
00:20:53Andre and I are not a couple in the traditional term of what someone might think is a couple.
00:20:58I consider Andre to be soulmate status.
00:21:02There is that older brother, younger brother dynamic. Lee is the quintessential older brother
00:21:07and I'm the quintessential younger brother.
00:21:09I invited Andre a couple years ago when I was scheduling a colonoscopy to come get a colonoscopy
00:21:15with me, a couple's colonoscopy. And my first thought was, okay, he wants me to hold his hand
00:21:20because he's scared and he wants me to go with him and make it easier for him. And so I
00:21:26said,
00:21:27I'm happy to drive you, you know, whatever you need. Tell me when it is. And he said,
00:21:30no, no, no, no. I don't want you to drive me to the colonoscopy. I want you to come with
00:21:33me
00:21:34and get a colonoscopy with me. We'll go in together. It'll be like a spa day. We'll just do
00:21:39it as a couple's thing.
00:21:43We both would drink some liquids and shit ourselves together.
00:22:02I thought for sure if there was anyone that was going to get a couple's colonoscopy with me,
00:22:06it was going to be Andre. Look, I'm not going to go get a colonoscopy with my friend. It's
00:22:10just a weird fucking thing. I probably came home and said to my wife, hey, by the way, Lee said
00:22:15we
00:22:16should go get a colonoscopy together. And my wife probably said something to me like,
00:22:19are you fucking crazy? Why would you do that with somebody else? That's insane.
00:22:23I instantly of course thought, oh, he's going to go do that with somebody else.
00:22:27Does he already have a couple's colonoscopy in place? Because why wouldn't he want to go do this?
00:22:30We need to do this. This needs to happen. We're at the age where it needs to happen.
00:22:34And almost to the day, a year after that, I was diagnosed with stage four
00:22:39colon cancer that had metastasized to my liver.
00:22:42His rejection of that couple's colonoscopy is what led directly to Andre having cancer.
00:22:47Had I gone a year before, I probably would have had cancer anyway, but it probably would have been
00:22:52really easy to treat. I'm not angry that he didn't get a colonoscopy. I mean,
00:22:59his motto used to be no cops, no doctors. I think obviously that this could have been avoided or it
00:23:04could have been less severe. I was just as ignorant of it as he was. And it's not like it
00:23:10was 10 years late.
00:23:11It was, you know, 18 months late or something like that. If he'd had a history of it in his
00:23:14family,
00:23:15if he'd had symptoms. But no, I hadn't had one. We're the same age.
00:23:19He's very stoic and very much doesn't put his own health first in a lot of ways.
00:23:26I mean, the long answer is if someone was going to die young, it was probably going to be Andre.
00:23:34He's also the kind of person that would say like, oh, I'm supposed to die early.
00:23:36That's what I was supposed to do. I've lived a crazy life, whatever.
00:23:40Andre had complex relationship to drugs and alcohol over the years.
00:23:45There were years where I drank every night until I passed out. I've probably done cocaine five,
00:23:50six times in my life. Done acid 100 times, 150 times in my life. I try to do mushrooms a
00:23:54couple
00:23:55of times a year just to clear out the cobwebs. He never did cocaine. He never did harder drugs.
00:24:00I've dabbled in heroin. I used to snort it. I have used meth quite a bit. Ecstasy, sure, whatever.
00:24:08But nothing more serious than that. Nothing more serious than, you know, meth and heroin, I guess.
00:24:16Andre never really took great care of himself. He used to smoke a ton. I think he used to dip.
00:24:24He drank a lot. And I think finally he had a run in with his doctor. And the doctor's like,
00:24:31you've got to start taking care of yourself.
00:24:34I had quit drinking three years before I got cancer. I was waking up every morning at five in
00:24:41the morning, getting myself as high as I could possibly get myself.
00:24:48And then getting on the peloton and riding for 45 minutes. I lost 30 pounds. I was getting into
00:24:54shape. I felt like I was in the best shape of my life. And about once a week, I would
00:24:58bleed out of my ass.
00:25:03But I thought it was a hemorrhoid.
00:25:07I just assumed this is another hemorrhoid. I had a Zoom appointment with some doctor I've never met
00:25:14before. They couldn't look at his ass on Zoom. He did not ask me to turn around and open my
00:25:20ass
00:25:20up to him, although I was prepared to. So he just described his symptoms and the doctor said,
00:25:25oh yeah, that sounds like a hemorrhoid from the riding the peloton too hard. There you go. Get some
00:25:29preparation H. You're done. Turns out, I wasn't in the best shape of my life. I had cancer.
00:25:50When he first got his diagnosis, we hunkered down. I immediately was reading every single list of
00:25:57every nutritional thing we might need and stocking the house with all these protein drinks and
00:26:00getting cookbooks on cancer diets and all this sort of thing.
00:26:05My mom's a really great caretaker. My dad would definitely not be as brave and resilient as he
00:26:11was if she wasn't there, like helping him every step of the way.
00:26:25He handles chemo really well. He's kind of impervious to a lot of the worst side effects.
00:26:30I absolutely prepared myself for chemotherapy by making sure I had hangovers for a good 35 years
00:26:38of my life. The mental aspect of it is similar. I feel like I'm going to die. I need to
00:26:45put all
00:26:45that out of my mind, shut up about it and just keep doing whatever I'm doing. I think for people
00:26:50who
00:26:50don't have long periods of alcoholism in their lives and hangovers, this would be a much more
00:26:56challenging thing. He still looks good, I think, for someone who's been doing so much chemo and he
00:27:01doesn't have that like skinny look that I kind of expected. Things are going well with the cancer.
00:27:07The cancer is shrinking. The cancer is still responding to the chemotherapy.
00:27:13I've gained a bunch of weight back, which is good. I've actually reached the point now where perhaps
00:27:17I'm getting a little too much weight and I should go on a diet.
00:27:20I'm having a harder time with Andre's hair loss than he is. Basically, the back of his hair fell off.
00:27:26So when you look at him straight on, it looks like he still has his hair pulled back in a
00:27:30man bun.
00:27:30But the whole man bun is gone. And I don't think he cares.
00:27:37Andre has changed since his diagnosis and I thought that he would go angry. But
00:27:43cancer Andre's really nice. Some of it may have to do with all the weed he's eating.
00:27:49We've started spending way more time together. I used to go on solo exercise walks around the lake and
00:27:56now every single day together we go to the beach or the lake and we walk a couple miles and,
00:28:01you know,
00:28:01we talk about sometimes things other than cancer.
00:28:05Where's the most beautiful duck of all? Toasted marshmallow?
00:28:08Fuck you.
00:28:09Stop.
00:28:10What?
00:28:11Part of it, I think, is him having hope and having a new appreciation for his life and our lives
00:28:17and
00:28:17his friends. But part of it is also being a stoic Richardi.
00:28:25As vulnerable as he looks talking about going to chemo, he's still guarding the very most vulnerable
00:28:33part of himself. There's a lot of nitty-gritty we don't talk about.
00:28:40He's not willing to talk about pain and fear.
00:28:59It's definitely hard for my mom. Probably harder on her than anybody else in the family.
00:29:05But I don't know, we don't really talk about like how we're feeling about it that much.
00:29:11My parents keep a lot of the details from my sister and me, but I don't really want to know
00:29:18a lot of details.
00:29:28We don't really talk about how we feel about it, but we're both very happy with how strong and resilient
00:29:35he's being.
00:29:38It's hard to decide how much to tell the girls because we want to be honest with them,
00:29:44but we don't want to burden them.
00:29:51I'm realizing that I'm really good in the immediate panic of a situation like this,
00:29:56but figuring out how to act longer term is harder.
00:30:01I can't just swoop in and fix everything.
00:30:08So that's what I have a harder time figuring out my role.
00:30:16I'm staying up till two in the morning reading, you know, Diane's success story.
00:30:20I'm a colon cancer survivor.
00:30:23I like to think that he'll beat this.
00:30:28Maybe both of us are in a little bit of denial, and I think we like to label it as
00:30:33hopefulness.
00:30:45Once Andre told me his diagnosis, there was a moment, maybe a day or two, where I was, like, almost
00:30:50afraid to call.
00:30:51But, like, there was things that happened that, like, I saw something funny that it would be a thing that
00:30:56we would need to talk about,
00:30:57and I was standoffish for a couple days.
00:30:59It was really eating at me.
00:31:00Why was I treating him different just because he had cancer?
00:31:03There is an awkwardness and an unease that's always existed between people and death.
00:31:09Because we're aware of our mortality and we don't know what happens after we die, it's taboo to talk about.
00:31:16One thing about our friendship and a coping mechanism that Andre and I have always had is that we find
00:31:20humor in shitty situations.
00:31:23From the beginning, we sort of decided, let's not change at all how we speak to each other.
00:31:29And once we did that, we didn't have to change anything about our friendship.
00:31:34Hey, you want to make a wish?
00:31:35Mm-hmm.
00:31:36What would you wish for?
00:31:40I don't know.
00:31:44I don't know. What, uh...
00:31:47I can't think of anything.
00:31:48I can't think of it, I don't know.
00:31:52Let's keep the same irreverence that I have applied to absolutely everything in my life.
00:31:56It's not like, all of a sudden, guys, I'm dying. It's so sad. You've got to take this seriously.
00:32:00Fuck that.
00:32:01How's Andre's cancer?
00:32:02It's goofy.
00:32:03It's pretty good.
00:32:05I don't know.
00:32:07He's not wallowing in it.
00:32:10We're actually having fun with Andre dying.
00:32:13And I know that sounds crazy to say, but this is so very Andre to do it that way.
00:32:18Come on, kids. You want to take your picture with anal cancer?
00:32:24And then when the anal cancer takes its mask off, it's just a real person and it freezes the kids
00:32:28out.
00:32:30My dad has always, my whole life, kind of joked about wanting to be preserved, like cryogenic freezing and freezing
00:32:37of the head and freezing of the body to one day cure whatever killed him and then be brought back
00:32:44to life.
00:32:45The next decision I would have to make is whether I want to get my body cryogenically frozen, my whole
00:32:52body, or just my head. Is that it? Or is that...
00:32:55No, we only offer full body.
00:32:57Okay, well that simplifies it.
00:32:59I printed out my genome. I printed these up for two reasons. One, I wanted to copyright them so that
00:33:06I own my own genome.
00:33:08But the other thing is I thought it would be fun to have a hard copy printed out so that
00:33:12perhaps at some point in the future somebody could clone me or, you know, create a new me.
00:33:18He comes up with a bunch of ideas every day and most of them are just crazy Andre ideas.
00:33:25And then some of them come to be actual things that other people have done.
00:33:30Andre is more Aristotelian than Platonic. He wants to know it all.
00:33:34He also has this incredible knack to be able to navigate the web like nobody I've ever met in my
00:33:40life.
00:33:41And in an era now of the internet, he can conjure up the most obscure knowledge about almost anything.
00:33:52There's a website for the death yells.
00:33:57I believe it's death yells dot com.
00:34:00I didn't know how serious it was at first, but it just, it was an idea I had never heard
00:34:04of and it was that, you know, you should really work on your last words.
00:34:09But this was a completely new twist on it. And whether this guy is a nut or not didn't make
00:34:14any difference.
00:34:14It was like, this seems like something I should be doing now that I'm terminally ill.
00:34:18So I called Lee and I was trying to think of funny ones on the, on the car ride up.
00:34:23What you got? I mean, I've been talking about my last words.
00:34:25I just don't have any ideas.
00:34:26Well, my father-in-law, cause we were there when he, when he passed and everyone was around and he
00:34:30just said,
00:34:31I'm really tired.
00:34:32And literally that's the last thing I heard him say.
00:34:34That's kind of complaining.
00:34:38I guess this is our, Ryan, nice to see you.
00:34:43Welcome to my office. This will be the most important sound you will ever make on this earth.
00:34:48The death yell. And it's the last sound this earth will hear from you.
00:34:52And so it should be simple and concise and it should really be, you know, from the heart,
00:34:56but also connect with your audience, whoever that audience may be.
00:34:59I've heard the story that you don't really die until nobody speaks your name anymore.
00:35:05You, you, the real death that happens is when you're forgotten.
00:35:08So I figure with a good death yell, you could extend your life.
00:35:12Yeah.
00:35:13Infinitely, potentially.
00:35:14All you want is to inspire the people around you and have the people on the other side.
00:35:19Right.
00:35:19Be excited to meet you.
00:35:20Inspire the people around me to do what?
00:35:23Just to feel, you know, to feel, wow, that was a powerful force.
00:35:28Not like, oh, geez, like that was awkward.
00:35:31The death yell.
00:35:32Yeah.
00:35:32All right.
00:35:34This is the place.
00:35:34And if you hear the echo, feel it back.
00:35:36You kind of will know if it's right or not.
00:35:39Fuck yeah, man!
00:35:41No.
00:35:42No?
00:35:42Horrible.
00:35:43Take a deep breath.
00:35:45Close your eyes.
00:35:45And the first thing that comes to mind.
00:35:51So long, suckers!
00:35:54Yeah.
00:35:55Like that?
00:35:55Yeah.
00:35:56All right.
00:35:56Yes.
00:35:56That feels pretty good.
00:35:58Yeah.
00:35:58All right.
00:35:59Come and get me, spaceman!
00:36:02Getting weird.
00:36:03If you get on a roller coaster or you're on the freeway, like practice.
00:36:06Just like somebody at their last moment and they, you know, got hit by a car and like,
00:36:12they could go, it could be in the street, it could be in an ice cream shop.
00:36:19You'll never know.
00:36:20And that's why you got to practice.
00:36:21Like you want to go out with something that's strong and powerful.
00:36:28Fire in the hole!
00:36:29I'm coming to get you, God!
00:36:33Yeah.
00:36:44Yeah.
00:36:45That was pretty good.
00:36:46I got to sit down.
00:36:47You might actually die doing this.
00:36:50I feel like I taste blood in my throat.
00:36:54Good.
00:36:54Good.
00:36:55Yep.
00:36:58You, you mentioned a couple of weeks ago to me an idea that you had.
00:37:01Yes.
00:37:02Okay.
00:37:03Imagine this as a, as a big network, competitive, unscripted television show.
00:37:10So think of like The Voice, right?
00:37:12But this isn't The Voice.
00:37:14What this show is, it's called Who Wants to Kill Me?
00:37:17And the idea of the show is we bring in five or six people.
00:37:21Who have legitimate reasons for wanting to kill me.
00:37:27Maybe there's just a, an ex-girlfriend who hates me.
00:37:32A chef who really wants to cook with human flesh.
00:37:37Use me as a medical expert.
00:37:41Blow me up.
00:37:44Put me in a stadium, release the lions, and see how long I can fight them.
00:37:50And then America votes.
00:37:51And whoever they vote for gets to take my life.
00:37:53Because it would be much better to let anybody kill me.
00:37:57An amateur magician or a budding serial killer or an ex-girlfriend seem much more appealing to
00:38:04me than letting cancer kill me.
00:38:05But maybe that's not true.
00:38:07Well, I think, you know, you have a capacity to find the comedic in everything.
00:38:15Right.
00:38:16And so I would say, you know, the goal is to make enough room so that multiple feelings can
00:38:22be fully present at the same time.
00:38:25That the tragic and the beautiful and the comic, that there's space for all of it.
00:38:32There may be moments for you to visit grief more fully.
00:38:36You know, it is beautiful.
00:38:39It is funny.
00:38:41It is outrageous.
00:38:42And it's also very sad that you have cancer, Andre.
00:38:57I've been collecting other people's old photo albums since I was a child.
00:39:02I used to buy them at junk shops, at antique stores, at garage sales.
00:39:09There's something profoundly private about a photo album.
00:39:14It's like this unfiltered look at who they are in a way that you just can't get anywhere else.
00:39:21This is really subtle and hard to see in an otherwise completely boring album.
00:39:27It's maybe 25 pictures of Christmas and there's nothing really interesting about it.
00:39:35But then there's this one mistake in the album that I'm sure they did not mean to reveal.
00:39:42And when I saw it, it terrified me.
00:39:47It's a picture of a family standing around in front of the Christmas tree.
00:39:51And then a few pictures later, there's a second picture taken just a second before that first one.
00:39:58Only in this second photograph, you can see the head of somebody who appears to be right behind the woman
00:40:06holding her up.
00:40:08And when I first saw it, it looked like there was just this ghost behind the woman.
00:40:13Why is there this woman behind this other woman?
00:40:16And as I looked at it, it seems like she's wearing a white uniform and she has white hair.
00:40:22And I realized she's probably the housekeeper, the maid, the helper.
00:40:26And she's probably holding this woman up because the woman has polio and can't stand.
00:40:33And that was something that they were ashamed of.
00:40:35They're trying to hide it.
00:40:36They're doing everything they can to hide it.
00:40:39People really tend to be very private about their weaknesses, about their vulnerabilities.
00:40:44So we paint the portraits that we want people to see.
00:40:47We create the vision of ourselves that we want people to see.
00:40:51But the most beautiful, most fascinating portraits are the ones that aren't the idealized version.
00:40:57They're the ones that show the flaws that are in us and tell that more complete story.
00:41:08The thing about colon cancer is it responds well to medicine.
00:41:12Often people will go into remission, maybe not with stage four, but stage one or stage two or stage three
00:41:17cancer.
00:41:18You'll feel like you beat it, time will go by, and then it comes roaring back.
00:41:21And when it comes back, it's much more aggressive, it spreads much quicker,
00:41:25and it doesn't respond to medication and you tend to die very quickly.
00:41:28I responded really well to the chemo from December, January, a year ago, all the way through the summer.
00:41:36But they had to keep reducing the doses of the chemo they were giving me because my platelets were so
00:41:40low.
00:41:41I went almost eight weeks without getting any chemotherapy.
00:41:44My hair started growing back, only it's really not my hair. It feels like somebody else's hair.
00:41:50Um, it's much thinner than my hair is. It's much darker.
00:41:53It's also sort of wispy and thin and somewhat straight.
00:41:56It's kind of strange that it's grown back this way.
00:41:59I imagine there's probably some guy walking around in the Midwest losing his hair wondering who's finding it.
00:42:04Well, it's me. I'm finding your hair and thank you.
00:42:07As the hair has grown back, so has the cancer.
00:42:10So the healthier I look, um, that means the sicker I probably am right now.
00:42:16You know, people see me and they're like, hey, you look great.
00:42:18And I'm like, yeah, but I can feel the cancer coming back in my, in my liver again.
00:42:22If you put your hand right here, you can feel a little tumor and, you know, that sort of thing.
00:42:26And people don't like doing that at lunch, I've noticed.
00:42:30Okay, so we are going to the hospital so I can get my, uh, my usual three-month scan.
00:42:37Janice, you got anything to add?
00:42:40I'm going for just straight up positivity and, um, that this is all going to be just excellent news.
00:42:47She's going to give you a prize.
00:42:49All excellent news and a prize. That's what Janice is predicting.
00:42:56I went in for the scans. Then, um, two days after it, uh, while I was in the shower,
00:43:01my phone started blowing up. One of the texts was from my oncologist. And the first line of
00:43:06her email said, uh, so those scans were disappointing. And I thought, oh, fuck.
00:43:13So the things in the, the lungs are, are really tiny. The largest of these pulmonary nodules
00:43:19measures seven millimeters, but I would say that the vast majority are more in the, like,
00:43:25two, three millimeter range. The liver is the part that is the most concerning right now.
00:43:31I think that the oncologist gave us the idea that the spread to the lungs and the adrenal glands weren't
00:43:38as concerning as what they call the innumerable tumors in his liver. Um,
00:43:47and you know, when a scientist just uses the word innumerable, it seems frightening.
00:44:01Cancer's getting meaner. And it ain't never been fun. It's supposed to get you when you're old and
00:44:08now it gets you when you're young. Cancer's always been depressing. Cancer's never been pleasant.
00:44:15It don't care if you're a royal, don't care if you're a peasant.
00:44:21You know, every scan I've gotten has been okay. Things have just been sort of smoothly going along.
00:44:26And suddenly this catastrophe happens. And my first instinct was, why don't we get out and do something?
00:44:38And it just made sense to drive. We could get out of San Francisco for the first time in years.
00:44:43We could see a bit of the country that I've never been to.
00:44:48I think most people would go to Paris and Nice and, you know, go eat pizza in Naples. And instead,
00:44:55we saw a whole lot of just nothing. And I love nothing.
00:45:02And I really wanted to spend some time with Lee.
00:45:07A girl from my high school died. Mattress blew off the car in front of her.
00:45:10Really? Yeah. She died pretty. You know, the, the idea that you, you know, you want to,
00:45:17you want to leave a pretty corpse. Yeah. I subscribe to that. I mean, I think my corpse is still
00:45:22fuckable. Yeah. But not, you know. Sure. And I think as I lose a little more weight,
00:45:27as time goes on with the chemo, I'll look better and better. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that.
00:45:36We drove for hours and we got out to this dead lake bed, this desert out in the middle of
00:45:42nowhere,
00:45:43and we could do whatever the fuck we wanted.
00:45:51Well? Now what?
00:45:58Let's do some drugs. This is probably the farthest
00:46:02I've been from a city in my entire life. Yeah. There's just nothing.
00:46:09The first thing I noticed was the silence.
00:46:15I don't even know how to sort of describe it. I've never really experienced silence like that before.
00:46:26For the first time in maybe my life, I was just alone with my thoughts.
00:46:33And all that nothingness. And of course that made me think of death.
00:46:40That's what I think death is. I expect death to be empty. And that was about as empty as I've
00:46:45ever felt.
00:46:48Crying at the beauty, my friend. Crying at the beauty.
00:46:56We just had a good time.
00:47:00I ate some mushrooms. We sat around the fire.
00:47:05All of the tension was gone.
00:47:08He and I were just sitting out in the middle of nowhere, under the fucking Milky Way, having a good
00:47:14time.
00:47:21I wish I could feel like this all the time. I just wish I could feel without
00:47:28fear. You know, and I'm sure the fear will be back in 10 seconds, but that sensation of
00:47:34fear will be back in 10 seconds. It's okay.
00:47:37It's okay. It's okay.
00:47:42It's okay to stay with fear because I instantly start trying to push it away.
00:47:51I just start using the tricks that I have.
00:47:56But to sit with fear is a strange thing.
00:48:03I'm not afraid the way so many people are of dying.
00:48:12I'm afraid for the people that I'm leaving behind.
00:48:28I'm afraid of drinking.
00:48:48So, what I've been referring to this as is a piece of work, not necessarily a TV commercial,
00:48:53but something, could be a TV commercial, that is a colonoscopy encouragement piece.
00:49:03This is a way for me to see some redemption, to use the skills and the connections and
00:49:08the people and the tools that I have to actually save some lives.
00:49:24We know that you're a loud mouth, you're a pain in the ass, we know that you're an idiot.
00:49:30What's happening to you didn't necessarily have to happen, and so we want to create a
00:49:34campaign that encourages others to get a colonoscopy when they turn 45.
00:49:38Idea number one.
00:49:43And what we're trying to do is we're trying to break through every barrier in the psyche
00:49:46that men and women have.
00:49:48So, we do have a couple of current clients that we think we could partner with.
00:49:53As a first date?
00:49:55As a first date.
00:49:56Okay, Cupid lets us do outrageous work.
00:49:58Wow, that would be an amazing first date.
00:50:00It would be amazing, right?
00:50:00So, we've got Cheeky Cherry, we've got Pamplenus Caboose, we've got Pineapple Dump Truck.
00:50:05And where is the booty juice?
00:50:06We have it right here, great question, great question, I'm glad you, I'm glad you did it.
00:50:12Nice!
00:50:12I'd like to get my colon checked, for colonoscopy.
00:50:19Assholes are everywhere.
00:50:20We had this idea of just doing PSAs that are simply colonoscopy reminders.
00:50:28I will say this enough.
00:50:29Every one of those is amazing, by the way.
00:50:32Every one of them is amazing.
00:50:34The butthole idea, I think, is really good, and I think it's really funny, and I think
00:50:37it fits.
00:50:38The thing I love about it is, it's the reminder.
00:50:41Like, suddenly you'll be reminded yourself when you see an asshole to get a colonoscopy.
00:50:46Right.
00:50:46Or something that looks like an asshole.
00:50:48Yeah.
00:51:01I'm moving out to go to college.
00:51:06This is where I grew up and where my family is, but I don't know if I'll ever live here
00:51:11again.
00:51:16The fact that he was diagnosed at stage four, and they are no dummies, they googled that
00:51:22beyond what we told them.
00:51:24But he doesn't want them to see him sick or weak or scary.
00:51:29He doesn't want to scare them.
00:51:33I'm not as honest as I should be with my kids about how sick I am.
00:51:37When I'm lying on the couch and I look like I'm dead and I'm pale and I haven't gotten
00:51:41up all day and I don't have a voice.
00:51:43I say, what you're seeing is the side effects of the medicine, not the cancer.
00:51:48But that's not always true.
00:51:52All right.
00:51:53So, I'm not going to hug you because fuck that.
00:51:56Have a great time.
00:51:57Do you want me to hug you?
00:51:58I'm happy to.
00:51:59That's weird.
00:51:59Well, I'm just, I'm not saying that.
00:52:02Call me if you need anything at all.
00:52:04Text me.
00:52:04Don't call me.
00:52:05I won't answer.
00:52:05All right.
00:52:06I wish I was going with you.
00:52:07Bye.
00:52:08See ya.
00:52:18All right.
00:52:20Off they go.
00:52:26As you may have noticed, my eyelashes are particularly long and it's a side effect of one of the
00:52:33medications that I'm on, but my lashes are sort of horrifying.
00:52:36Uh, they're sort of monstrous.
00:52:38Uh, I keep saying I look like fucking Snuffleupagus.
00:52:42Uh, I do brush them.
00:52:44My daughter, Delilah, gave me a spoolie and taught me how to use it.
00:52:47Okay, just open them a little bit longer.
00:52:49Okay, so like this.
00:52:50Yes.
00:52:51Tell me your friends aren't all doing this right now with their dads.
00:52:55Yeah, no, that's good.
00:52:56Much?
00:52:57Yeah.
00:52:57Yeah.
00:52:58Oh, yeah.
00:53:00Oh, my God.
00:53:03Oh, my God.
00:53:04That is like to die for.
00:53:07Honestly, I love the attention.
00:53:09Yeah.
00:53:09But it's time to go.
00:53:10It's just dangerous.
00:53:11I can't drive at night.
00:53:12No, yeah.
00:53:12I can't do one either.
00:53:13I can't see.
00:53:14I get it.
00:53:14So, yeah, you're ready.
00:53:16And I trust you.
00:53:19You can see.
00:53:20Yeah, I can see.
00:53:20Oh, my God.
00:53:22Doctor, what happened to my life?
00:53:25I was a normal man.
00:53:26You're still normal.
00:53:27It's just a different stage now.
00:53:29You're still normal, I swear.
00:53:34My oncologist noticed that the cancer cells were no longer susceptible to the chemo that
00:53:41had been so successful for the last year.
00:53:43And they said they wanted to do some radiation.
00:53:46So, I met the ass lady at the hospital, and she was just so chipper and wonderful and great
00:53:53at her job.
00:53:54And she said, in order to do this, I'm going to tape your ass cheeks open, and we're going
00:54:01to put a little sticker over your anus so it doesn't get any radiation and you don't
00:54:05get any blisters on your anus.
00:54:10And then the next day I had to come back, and on the way to the hospital, we passed my
00:54:15voting spot, and this was election day.
00:54:17Janice just became an American citizen, so we went in and we voted together.
00:54:21We both got those, I just voted stickers, and I'm holding the sticker in my hand, and
00:54:25I had this thought of, wouldn't it be funny if, when I get to the hospital, I put the sticker
00:54:31over my own anus as sort of a humble brag that I voted, and a nod to the fact that
00:54:37this
00:54:37is an awkward situation, and wouldn't it be a funny surprise?
00:54:40And then I'm in the room, and I'm getting in the hospital gown, and I have the sticker
00:54:43out, and I hesitated at the last minute because it just felt like I was sexualizing the situation
00:54:51in a way that may make the radiologist uncomfortable.
00:54:53Five years ago, I wouldn't have hesitated, I hesitated.
00:54:58And it would have been devastatingly humiliating because the guy who brought me in, who was
00:55:03giving me the MRI, was not the same funny, calm, normal nurse that I had the day before.
00:55:09It was this humorless dude who just didn't smile once the whole time, and I thought, thank
00:55:14God I don't have a, I just voted sticker on my asshole right now.
00:55:30I've done 50 something rounds of chemo, I'm pretty good at chemo, it makes me tired, it
00:55:33makes me crabby, it turns me into an asshole for a couple of days, but I can handle it.
00:55:38I've learned how to do it.
00:55:39I cannot do radiation.
00:55:45The side effects got worse and worse and worse.
00:55:48I lost 20 pounds.
00:55:50I was cramping really badly in my stomach.
00:55:53It kept me from sleeping more than half an hour at a time for like two weeks, which is
00:55:59like torture.
00:56:00It was fucking hell.
00:56:05This is the first time that I've really been in physical, emotional pain.
00:56:17I never know what to write to you.
00:56:20Hey, how's it going?
00:56:22Because I call you and this is how you answer the phone.
00:56:25Hey, what's up?
00:56:26Yeah.
00:56:27No matter what.
00:56:28No matter what.
00:56:29Yeah.
00:56:30Yeah, I'm good.
00:56:31I just got stabbed in the neck and I'm bleeding out of my ass, but what's up?
00:56:34But it's better than it was 20 minutes ago.
00:56:36Make it funny.
00:56:37Yeah.
00:56:37I mean.
00:56:38Which is fine, but sometimes I do wish you would just be like, dude.
00:56:41And I think I liked the text that was so.
00:56:44Miserable.
00:56:44I didn't like it, but I was like, it was real.
00:56:47You know?
00:56:47I mean, I talk to my shrink about this all the time.
00:56:50I don't think anybody's like, don't laugh at your situation.
00:56:53Yeah.
00:56:54Obviously, there's psychological issues going on here.
00:56:56Yeah.
00:56:57But I'm lucky that I have this vehicle now, which is myself.
00:57:00Yeah.
00:57:01I'm not laughing at other people with colon cancer.
00:57:03I'm not laughing at other people who go through this.
00:57:05Yeah.
00:57:05But for me, it makes it much easier.
00:57:08And at some point, if I ever get a colostomy bag.
00:57:12Yeah.
00:57:12You know, there's going to be endless jokes.
00:57:14Already written.
00:57:14I'm sure.
00:57:15And those are going to be funny jokes.
00:57:17Yeah.
00:57:18And we're going to have a lot of fun with it.
00:57:19And it's going to be revolting and disgusting.
00:57:22Yeah.
00:57:22And, you know, we're going to do all that stuff.
00:57:24Uh-huh.
00:57:24I look forward to that, you know, but because I really don't look forward to having to shit
00:57:30in a bag that's strapped to my body.
00:57:32Right.
00:57:33You know what I mean?
00:57:33So what's the upside?
00:57:35Well, now at least we get to tell all these jokes.
00:57:37Yeah.
00:57:37And I can take it out in a restaurant and play it like a balloon letting the air out.
00:57:42Meeeeee.
00:57:43I feel like that might get stinky if you do that.
00:57:45Even better, you know?
00:57:47But again, going back.
00:57:48Is the cancer starting to be less funny?
00:57:50Yeah, literally.
00:57:52Yes and no, but it shouldn't.
00:57:53It should be funnier now.
00:57:55The more the cancer fucks me up, the funnier it should be.
00:57:57Because it's one thing if you're feeling fine and you're cracking jokes at the radiologist.
00:58:02It's another thing if you look like death and you feel like death and you're crapping
00:58:06your pants every 20 minutes and you're still making jokes.
00:58:09That, that is victory.
00:58:10That is how you beat fucking cancer.
00:58:15So what happens if in a couple of months or years you are in really terminal decline,
00:58:21you can't get out of bed, you're in excruciating pain and you realize it's just not fun anymore
00:58:27and you want to end it?
00:58:28You know, can I just drink Drano if I want?
00:58:30Can I do an assisted suicide drinking Drano and then instead of donating my body to science,
00:58:35I donate it to television.
00:58:37Am I allowed to do that?
00:58:38I don't know.
00:58:39I'm sorry, donate your body to television?
00:58:41Instead of science.
00:58:42Everybody's okay if you want to donate your body to science, but if you want to donate
00:58:46your body to television, people get all squirrely about that.
00:58:48How do you donate your body to television?
00:58:50I don't know.
00:58:50That's what I'm looking into now.
00:58:52Maybe they need a corpse for something.
00:58:54So you're saying if you want to die officially along the prescribed legal way,
00:58:59But you want control over your death.
00:59:00Do you have to donate your body to science or it's expected that you will?
00:59:04No, I think it's expected.
00:59:05Like, I think it's okay to say, I want to be an organ donor or I want to be,
00:59:09I want to donate my body to science.
00:59:11You know, nobody bats an eye at that.
00:59:12That's legal.
00:59:13So once again, for Andre, you're going to do things your way.
00:59:17So if you're going to donate your body.
00:59:18Doesn't science have enough bodies?
00:59:20Look, I'm not suggesting that you get conventionally buried in a Christian cemetery.
00:59:25Right?
00:59:26I'm not suggesting that.
00:59:27I haven't decided yet.
00:59:28When do you think you'll start making some of these decisions?
00:59:31I don't know.
00:59:32I got to work on it.
00:59:33Standard burial.
00:59:34I'm not for it all.
00:59:35I don't give a shit.
00:59:37I'm not against cremation, but if we're going to do cremation,
00:59:39I would rather have a funeral pyre, like out in a field somewhere where you just throw me on the
00:59:44fire and burn me.
00:59:46They've sent people's ashes into space.
00:59:49I like that.
00:59:50I would rather have my whole body sent into space, though.
00:59:53I know that would be expensive because I would weigh a lot more.
00:59:57But if there was a way to just drift around for 50,000 years, a million years, that would be
01:00:02amazing.
01:00:05When I talk about life and death issues with you, not just now, but all your life and my life,
01:00:11we often flit back and forth from the absurd to the real, but now it's like the shit is hitting
01:00:18the fan.
01:00:18It's real.
01:00:18The rubber hits the road.
01:00:20This is real.
01:00:20This is real.
01:00:21Andre had trepidation asking me about being on camera.
01:00:25I mean, I'm happy to do it, but I'm private, nothing like my father.
01:00:31My father is one of the most intensely private people in the world.
01:00:35The thought of going on camera and discussing his illness, his weakness, he would never do.
01:00:40And I respect that, and I understand who he is and why he wouldn't do that.
01:00:45This kind of crazy, vulnerable, dark humor, everything out there project is utterly opposite who he is as a person.
01:00:58Being on a movie that he doesn't control is just shocking to him.
01:01:03It's just unthinkable.
01:01:05Andre, I think, knows not to directly ask him.
01:01:08When Andre directly asked him, would you be willing to be in the movie?
01:01:13Larry said, I'd rather do chemo.
01:01:36So the solution was to clearly get Tommy Chong to play his father, because he looks exactly like him.
01:01:44And he couldn't be more opposite a kind of person.
01:01:57Is being vulnerable weak?
01:02:00No.
01:02:01No, it's actually strong.
01:02:03Strength.
01:02:04Yeah.
01:02:05Vulnerable means being real.
01:02:07See, had you been my father, this would be a very different conversation, because so much of this I had
01:02:14to find on my own.
01:02:16I think Andre really appreciates what his father gave him.
01:02:21But yeah, it was definitely opposite dad day.
01:02:52I'll take any kind of problem.
01:02:53and turn it into a joke.
01:02:55Yeah.
01:02:56I mean, that's a life philosophy.
01:02:57The fucking Buddha should have said that.
01:03:00He probably did.
01:03:01He probably did.
01:03:02I probably got it from somewhere.
01:03:05But yeah, that's a whole, that's a philosophy that I've done it all my life.
01:03:12And if I can laugh at it, and I can get other people to laugh at it, how bad could
01:03:15it fucking be?
01:03:21I hate to infantilize Andre, but caregiving is a lot like having the responsibilities of having a toddler again.
01:03:32He's not a toddler.
01:03:32He'd kill me if I was comparing him to a toddler.
01:03:35But, you know, making a lot of snacks, trying to get somebody to eat, the occasional tantrum.
01:03:40You know, it's not tumbling and playdates.
01:03:42It's hospital and hospital.
01:03:44Hi, I was hoping you might have a minute to help me schedule a paracentesis appointment for my husband.
01:03:49Yeah, for, um, Mr. Charity.
01:03:51Yeah, but he's a regular already, yes, for Andre.
01:03:54It gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that I'm helping.
01:03:58I love that with my kids.
01:04:00That's where I shine.
01:04:06I'm picking up three prescriptions for Andre, Richardi.
01:04:10Is it Andre?
01:04:11Andre, yeah.
01:04:12I have, like, six.
01:04:13Six? Oh, it's me lucky.
01:04:15I guess I'll take them all.
01:04:16Thanks.
01:04:17So this one, this one, and this one go together?
01:04:19Yep.
01:04:20Okay.
01:04:20So the one that says two in quantity goes with the kit?
01:04:23That's correct, yeah.
01:04:24Okay.
01:04:25Thank you so much.
01:04:26Thanks for spending half your day with me.
01:04:27Bye.
01:04:36Just last night, he was lying there, and I was bringing him a peach or something, and he said,
01:04:41you know, I'd be dead by now if it weren't for you.
01:04:44Well, I was sort of, oh, pshaw, you know, like, there's no reason you'd be dead.
01:04:48You just wouldn't, your fridge wouldn't be as full.
01:04:50And you wouldn't get rides everywhere.
01:04:51And he said, no, you just take such good care of me, and I don't know what I'd do without
01:04:58you.
01:04:59And you make me really happy.
01:05:02And that was a big one.
01:05:04I've been lying on that couch for weeks, and Janice has been doing fucking everything and driving me and doing
01:05:12all that stuff.
01:05:13And I think Janice's experience is very different than mine of what's going on.
01:05:18You know, in a lot of ways, it's much easier to be the patient than the caretaker.
01:05:22How about that?
01:05:24I don't know.
01:05:25I don't know.
01:05:26I'm just making snacks.
01:05:28It's more than making snacks.
01:05:29And I think you take the burden, so much of the burden and the pain that I'm in on yourself,
01:05:38which, you know, isn't easy.
01:05:45Anyway, he is much more vulnerable now, which is not something he would have ever wanted.
01:05:54But he's sort of willingly vulnerable, which is super surprising.
01:06:03I feel like the character in a cheesy 90s movie who's overworked and stressed and then has some traumatic brain
01:06:10injury or gets cancer and becomes a complete human being, you know, finally fall in love with his wife or
01:06:17finally realize that everything he needed he already had.
01:07:03And it's the kind of movie that I despise, and yet I'm experiencing that.
01:07:09Okay, we can do this.
01:07:11Good-ish news.
01:07:12Good-ish news.
01:07:13We'll just put a big fake face on, we'll tell lots of jokes, and who gives a fuck?
01:07:20That's the attitude.
01:07:22It is.
01:07:29You know, I like to think, well, this is just these current rotten symptoms doing something, and we'll solve that,
01:07:35and then he'll get back to sort of normal, normal cancer.
01:07:38Normal cancer was easy in retrospect.
01:07:42But this, this, this shit's scary.
01:07:51Okay, you're all right?
01:07:54Yeah.
01:07:56I mean, that was, that was pretty bleak, but...
01:08:04But, um...
01:08:05Clinical trials means...
01:08:06I know, but Janice, I'm dying.
01:08:09Like, the reality of the situation is, I'm dying, and we have to face that.
01:08:15You know?
01:08:16No, thank you.
01:08:18What's that?
01:08:19No, thank you.
01:08:24We're okay, Janice.
01:08:26We're gonna be okay.
01:08:27Yep.
01:08:27We got time still.
01:08:28Yep.
01:08:30Yes, please.
01:08:31We still got time.
01:08:33Yes, please.
01:08:36Well, good job.
01:08:38Alrighty, I'll see you in a bit.
01:08:39Okay.
01:08:48The other day, he was sitting on the couch, and he just had his head in his hand, and he
01:08:53just said, I don't want to do this anymore.
01:08:58And I started saying, you know, come on, like, one more day.
01:09:02Let's, let's, let's just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
01:09:06You can do this.
01:09:08And then he looked up at me, and in his other hand, he had his phone, and he said, no,
01:09:12I'm
01:09:12talking about the Wordle.
01:09:15We found this doctor in Italy who claims that he is absolutely ready to perform a head transplant
01:09:22from one human to another.
01:09:26They warned us that his work is very controversial.
01:09:28My feeling is, look, if you're gonna put my head on another body, don't put it on, like,
01:09:32a 30-year-old's body.
01:09:34Put it on a 10-year-old's body so that I get those extra 20 years to live and to
01:09:39enjoy
01:09:39myself.
01:09:40And I really wanted to go to Italy and meet this guy and, and at least, uh, have a consultation
01:09:46with him.
01:09:47But I'm too sick to go to Italy right now.
01:09:49And what that made me realize was, time is passing, and I'm getting sicker and sicker,
01:09:57and if there's anything I need to do, I need to do it immediately.
01:10:01And, um, that's a scary revelation, you know?
01:10:05Much rather than getting my head transplanted on a boy's body.
01:10:15One of the reasons my recent health problems have been so disconcerting to Janice is the
01:10:23physical manifestation of my illness, which is my belly keeps swelling with this fluid
01:10:28because my liver is starting to fail.
01:10:30If there wasn't that physical representation of it that's constantly there to remind her,
01:10:34then it's my behavior, and I'm pretty good at putting on a happy face and doing the best
01:10:39I can do.
01:10:40The issue is, um, it's harder to lie about it now.
01:10:46Hello, Peter.
01:10:48Andre.
01:10:49Are you surprised to hear my voice?
01:10:51I'm delighted to hear your voice.
01:10:53Oh my God.
01:10:55Where the fuck have you been?
01:10:56No, I'm kidding.
01:10:57I've been trying to.
01:10:58It's available to you.
01:11:00I know, I know, I know.
01:11:01I'm absolutely joking.
01:11:02It's been fucking tough, Peter.
01:11:05Like, we've, we've entered that next phase of cancer.
01:11:09And I met with, with, with a nurse who was just absolutely spectacular, like the ass doctor.
01:11:16And she told me I need to relax my second sphincter because that's really tight and that's where
01:11:22a lot of the blood's coming from.
01:11:24So, so I'm trying to do that.
01:11:25I mean, you know, and, um, what the last month and a half has been like is, you know,
01:11:32when the girls have been here, the girls sitting at the counter eating dinner, hanging out with
01:11:36their mother and I'm on the couch making jokes.
01:11:39You know what I mean?
01:11:40Trying to participate the way I used to.
01:11:42But it's obvious that I'm not able to do what I used to do.
01:11:46You know what I mean?
01:11:47It's, I'm not fooling anybody, but I still feel that need to act that way.
01:11:53When I can no longer make Tallulah laugh, then I feel like I've crossed over a line and
01:11:59there's really no purpose for me to be here.
01:12:02I don't know what I feel about that.
01:12:03On the one hand, I get it.
01:12:05You know, it is, if you can't make Tallulah laugh, you're not Andre anymore in some ways.
01:12:13Right.
01:12:13But I think you still feel you need to be able to make me laugh.
01:12:19Yeah.
01:12:20And I think you are more than your irreverent humor.
01:12:28So I think part of the process for you is relaxing.
01:12:34You mean my second sphincter?
01:12:36Yes.
01:12:37Yes.
01:12:39No, no, I'm sorry.
01:12:40I don't mean to make a joke when you're telling me not to fucking make jokes.
01:12:45I get it.
01:12:46Yeah, I think you're right.
01:12:48I think it's time to really be honest about the severity of what's going on.
01:12:54And I'm trying to write this little piece for the end of the film that sort of sums up
01:13:02where I am and what's going on, you know, whatever.
01:13:05I don't know what it's going to be.
01:13:07And it's fascinating.
01:13:08It's so weird to sit down and start writing, you know, whatever that message is, that final
01:13:16transmission.
01:13:18Right.
01:13:19But it's also forcing me to think about a lot of this stuff.
01:13:25I just, it's so hard to see pain in the faces of the people that I love.
01:13:30You know what I mean?
01:13:30It just, it's so difficult for me to not feel like, it's not even letting people down.
01:13:38It's that I just don't want them to hurt.
01:13:40And I know they have to.
01:13:41And I know they're going to.
01:13:43I understand that.
01:13:44But that doesn't mean they have to today, you know, and...
01:13:49Well, I actually think one of the gifts you offer your daughters is the chance to grieve
01:14:00a father.
01:14:01But that is not a destructive thing to do.
01:14:04If it goes well, that is a powerful and deepening process.
01:14:15It's sad, isn't it?
01:14:17Be generous and let them feel sad.
01:14:21Yes, that's true.
01:14:23That's the line.
01:14:24That's the takeaway from this.
01:14:26Be generous and let them be sad.
01:14:30Yes.
01:14:31That's hard.
01:14:32That's really hard.
01:14:34I know it is hard for you.
01:14:45Have you had my shoulder blades and hang me out to dry?
01:14:52I'm a mess and I need someone to help me out with that.
01:15:02Please remember to feed the cat.
01:15:10Please remember that I'm never coming back.
01:15:36Ow.
01:15:38How do old people do this?
01:15:40Isn't there an app for this?
01:15:41Can I do this on my iPhone?
01:15:44There are a couple of these pills that I don't take every day, just because, you know, fuck it, right?
01:15:50Like, rules are for rule followers.
01:15:52I just don't want to take them.
01:15:54I don't know.
01:15:54It just doesn't feel right.
01:15:55Like, taking two of those giant potassium pills every day seems like too much.
01:16:00Do I need that much potassium?
01:16:01Does anybody need that much potassium?
01:16:04Do that one all by a shelf.
01:16:12I'm kind of hoping I was going to choke.
01:16:14Looks like Vicodin, but is not Vicodin, and what a fucking letdown that was.
01:16:18I usually have, as part of my medication, a 7 a.m. bung hit as well.
01:16:26Watch me.
01:16:47I mean, honestly, at this point, if Andre were to get all earnest and heartfelt and serious about his cancer
01:17:01and about dying all the time,
01:17:05none of us would know how to deal with him.
01:17:07You know, it's not him.
01:17:13Hey, T, can you look in that cabinet and see if there's any Skittles?
01:17:17Skittles.
01:17:27I got these holes in my hand, and I've been trying to find the best hole to hide Skittles in.
01:17:35Jesus Christ.
01:17:38I think I'll do better than that.
01:17:45That's good.
01:17:49I just want to make people laugh.
01:17:54You know, I just want to make people feel good when things are bad.
01:18:01Do your new classes start today, tomorrow?
01:18:05No.
01:18:06When do they start?
01:18:07I haven't chosen it yet.
01:18:10But I'm just going to take one.
01:18:12Just once they can come home and see me in the holes in my head.
01:18:16Yeah.
01:18:24I appreciate that you're reducing your schedule to spend time with me.
01:18:28It's very sweet of you.
01:18:30It is.
01:18:35I'll see you later.
01:18:36Goodbye.
01:18:37Bye.
01:18:37I love you, too.
01:18:45I haven't figured out the right way...
01:18:48to be a calming force with this new prognosis.
01:18:55I don't know how to...
01:19:06I guess I've just...
01:19:10had all this sort of anticipatory grief.
01:19:15And now it's...
01:19:19really happening.
01:19:23And my, you know, cheerleader hopeful denial stuff is no longer appropriate.
01:19:32And, you know, telling someone it's going to be okay...
01:19:37is sort of the natural way you want to comfort someone.
01:19:42But it's not.
01:19:46So...
01:19:48So what do you say?
01:20:17I sat with fear today.
01:20:20I didn't run from it or try to defeat it.
01:20:24Instead, I greeted it like a friend.
01:20:26And I let it wash of me again and again.
01:20:31Terrifying me.
01:20:34But it was okay.
01:20:36My fear is insignificant compared to the love all around me.
01:20:43I wept for the first time in years.
01:20:46It was remarkable.
01:20:49I thought I needed suffering, but instead I got bliss.
01:20:54My heart has never been more open.
01:20:56And my fear of death, while still tapping at my window, feels a bit more familiar and a little less
01:21:03powerful.
01:21:12So long, suckers!
01:21:28I loved you.
01:21:32I love you, man!
01:21:34I love you, man!
01:21:37I love you, man!
01:21:43And make it last like time
01:21:46And get a fight
01:21:47Oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:21:52Oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:21:54Oh, oh, oh.
01:21:56Oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:21:57Oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:22:00Oh, oh, oh.
01:22:02Oh, oh, oh.
01:22:13I'm falling apart
01:22:18I'm falling apart
01:22:20I'm falling apart
01:22:43I'm falling apart
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