RYAN WHITE ON ANDREA GIBSON DOCUMENTARY COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT Andrea Gibson in the documentary Come See me in the Good Light Story by By Ivana Brehas AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARIAN RYAN WHITE still remembers the words with which legendary poet Andrea Gibson greeted him on their first meeting. “We showed up in the driveway,” White recalls, “and Andrea came outside and gave me a hug and said, ‘I guess you’re gonna be with me when I die. Welcome to my home.” Thus began a creative and personal journey between the two artists that resulted in White’s new film, Come See Me in the Good Light, about Gibson’s final year of life after a diagnosis of terminal cancer. White is an experienced and accomplished filmmaker – his past work includes Pamela, A Love Story (2023) and Ask Dr Ruth (2019) – but he admits he was initially “a little afraid of Andrea” and the daunting undertaking of documenting someone who is dying. Yet Gibson, by instantly embracing and welcoming White, quickly put him at ease. “The magic of Andrea,” White reflects, “both as a person and as a poet, is how disarming they are. They have an innate way of making people feel at ease and comfortable, and they did that with me very quickly.” Come See Me in the Good Light began when White and his producing partner Jess Hargrave asked comedian Tig Notaro for an idea for a comedy film. “Honestly, we were pretty appalled when she pitched a cancer poetry film, which sounds like the opposite of funny on paper,” White laughs. “But Tig said, ‘Hear me out, you’re gonna want to hang up the phone, but this is one of the funniest people I’ve ever known in my life.’” Notaro sent through some clips of Gibson performing, and White was floored. “I’m not a big spoken word poetry person, so I had never even heard of Andrea,” he says. “But two weeks later, we were on a plane to Colorado. That’s how it all began.” Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how a “cancer poetry film” could be joyful. The film is deeply affecting, filled with heartbreaking, emotionally swelling moments at which it’s almost impossible not to cry. And yet, it’s also surprisingly funny. “It’s an emotionally heavy film in every emotion,” White agrees. “And that’s how Andrea lived their life.” Look up Gibson’s work, and you’ll find a treasure trove of poetry that is as incisive, witty, and emotionally vulnerable as the poet themself. Good Light features footage of Colorado’s Poet Laureate performing several of their works, such as ‘Boomerang Valentine’, in which the lonely author sardonically remarks: “My friend musters every bit of New Age jargon she can fit onto her tongue and says, What if you are the love of your life? I think, Oh my god, I hope that’s not true, because I am absolutely not my type.” The loves of Gibson’s life – from ex-girlfriends and friends to their partner Megan Falley – are crucial presences in the film. In an early scene, Gibson and Falley crack goofy, crude jokes about trying to use sex to get the cancer out of Gibson’s ovaries. “That scene was literally the first night of filming,” 6 White says. “That’s the day I met Andrea and Megan, and that’s how comfortable they were with us being in the room, from the very beginning.” These moments of levity recur throughout the film, demonstrating Gibson’s surprisingly life-affirming attitude to their own looming death. It’s as if the certainty of mortality invigorates Gibson into appreciating every moment they have left. Gibson’s influence rubbed off on White, who describes the experience of making Good Light as deeply transformative. “Before making this film, I was very uncomfortable with the concept of mortality, and terrified of delving into it,” he reflects. “Making this film, and meeting Andrea and Megan, fundamentally changed a lot about me. It’s hard to talk about without sounding cheesy, but there’s definitely a ‘before’ Ryan and an ‘after’ Ryan. All my loved ones around me say that they saw me change in making the film.” This impact is in no small part due to Gibson’s radical openness as a documentary subject. “Andrea was very different from most of my previous subjects,” White recalls, “in that they really showed no concern about what the finished film was going to be or how I was going to use footage. That almost never happens. Everything we wanted to film was always a ‘yes’ from Andrea… It was a really beautiful cracked-openness that I had never seen from a documentary subject before.” The process of making a film about someone with a terminal illness is inherently unpredictable. White and his team had no way of knowing how much time they had left to spend with Gibson, or how their film was going to end. On the crew’s second visit, Gibson received a bad result from their doctor. “The way that they internalised or JANUARY 2026 digested that was like, they were gonna die very soon,” White says. “It was like, ‘Are we even gonna be able to make the movie about this, or is Andrea’s life gonna end at any moment?’ But the only way I can describe it is, we didn’t care. We were so addicted to getting to go there and be around them that we were willing to put everything else aside– all our films, our personal lives – and go there every few weeks. We felt so alive when we were around them in that house in Colorado. We just wanted to be around it and document it, even if it became nothing.” Thankfully, it didn’t become nothing. Come See Me in the Good Light is an incredibly touching document of the final months of a brilliant artist’s life, and one that White hopes will leave audiences feeling just as transformed as he was. “We got to receive this gift by being around Andrea and Megan for their final year together, and my big hope is that we managed to bottle up that gift and share it with the audience. I think it can really shift people’s perception not only of mortality, but of the act of living, and how much you can fit into your time on this earth.” Despite the specificity of its subject matter – a queer spoken-word poet navigating ovarian cancer and making art in Colorado – Good Light feels universally resonant. With this film, White and Gibson remind us that grief and loss are inevitable, but so are love, laughter, and the relentless beauty of life. In screenings that White has attended so far, the film’s impact is already evident. “I’ve had people tell me after screenings that they had to run outside and call their partner, or child, or parent, and tell them they loved them.” Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia / INSP.ngo
7 Publizr Home