A spoiler and a good one, for one of SundanceBest Movies of the Year: Ryan White’s loving, brilliant documentary “Come and see me in the good light” Does not end in darkness or death, or even in the way its own filmmakers and subjects expected it. Instead filmAs follows the genderqueer poet Andrea Gibson and their wife, colleague poet Megan Megan Falley, when they are struggling with Gibson’s aggressive ovarian cancer, is a celebration of life in all its messy glory.
When it’s white (“Pamela: A Love Story”, “The Keepers”, “Serena”) was brought to the film by Producer Tig Notaro (who went with him in our studio) and her producing partner Stef Willen, he expected the film to end with Gibson’s death. So did Gibson and Falley, who even jokes about it in the opening scene. The spoiler? Gibson was on hand to celebrate the film’s premiere at Sundance last week.
“It definitely developed into a movie other than I had in my head in the beginning, and I also think what Andrea had in their head,” White told IndieWire when he and Notaro visited the Indieview studio. “So I never met Andrea until I went there (to Gibson’s house) with a camera. Andrea and Megan completely trusted Tig and Steph, they said: “We chose filmmakers.” Jess (producer Hargrave) and I showed up in Colorado, pulled into the driveway, Andrea and Meg came out, hugged us, and Andrea told me: ‘Well, I guess you will be with me when I die, welcome to My home. “”
And Gibson, a talented sludge poet who also has a great width, would even joke about it during the film.
“That was the assumption all the time,” he said. “You know Andrea is very funny, has dark humor, (and) it became a humor throughout the movie, when Andrea would get a good cancer (level test) results, they would look at me and say like: ‘Oh, I’m Sorry, I destroy your movie, I might actually be like the miracle child. ‘
Eventually, White and Hargrave became so in love with their subjects that it actually helped to better guide the story they tried to tell. Not one about death, but something completely different. And why does it need the expected end?
“When we continued to film, we fell in love with Andrea and Meg,” White said. “They actually started saying” I love you “to us after our first photography. So the idea that someone we love would die while I shot them, was really scary and traumatizing. … we went into it and thought, at least I did, that it would be a movie about Andrea’s death. And while we shot it we began to understand, this is not a movie about dying. It is a movie about mortality, but it is about living and the time we have on earth. So why does the hero have to die in the end? ”
“Come see me in the good light“Premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently looking for US distribution.
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