Andrea Gibson in “Come See Me in the Good Light”. Photo / Apple TV+
The poets didn’t think it would all be over so soon.
When Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley agreed to allow a camera into their home for a documentary about Gibson living with terminal ovarian cancer, they assumed that the filming would end when Gibson died. That was the most obvious way to tell the story, right? From start to finish.
So imagine the married couple’s surprise when director Ryan White and producer Jessica Hargrave told them in late 2024, roughly a year into shooting, that they had not only edited a final cut of the documentary while Gibson was still alive, but that it would premiere at the Sundance Film Festival just weeks later. The film captures how Gibson made the most of their time left with Falley.
“My hope was that it would end with a radical cure for cancer or a radical remission of some sort … but that’s not how documentaries work,” Falley said in a recent interview. “We were both really happy that it ended up being a love story. I feel grateful that that’s what they saw as the ultimate narrative happening underneath cancer and health and hospital and navigating all of that.”
Come See Me in the Good Light, which conveys Gibson’s courageous acceptance of impending death, is now streaming on Apple TV. Falley and the filmmakers spoke in separate interviews with The Washington Post in late October, three months after Gibson died at 49. Though the celebrated poet and queer activist lived to attend the Sundance premiere in January, where they received an outpouring of love and support from the teary-eyed audience, they could no longer hold their wife’s hand as she explained to a stranger over Zoom what it has been like to revisit these bittersweet memories.
“We’re all having a collective experience … I know that everyone involved in making this film is also now grieving Andrea,” Falley said. “I think we cultivated a love and an intimacy between us that perhaps transcended the normal level of professionalism and distance that you need in traditional documentary storytelling. We could not have made this film with that sort of boundary.”
Come See Me is remarkably intimate, taking place almost entirely between the couple’s home in Boulder, Colorado, and the hospital where Gibson was treated. The camera captures Gibson’s face lighting up as they scroll through their inbox to discover promising test results. It sees Falley tear up on a day when things start looking bad enough for the determined optimist’s resolve to break.
Some scenes are gruelling to watch. But most are funny, such as when Gibson and Falley joke in graphic terms about their sex life while seated at their dining table with Stef Willen, a friend and producer.
“That was the day we met Andrea,” White said while laughing, still tickled by the absurdity.
The journey begins with Willen, who thought Gibson’s pragmatic approach to living with a terminal illness might resonate with others. Willen casually mentioned making a film to another friend, comedian Tig Notaro, who immediately hopped on board and put out feelers in the documentary community. She hoped to hear from creative partners White and Hargrave, having admired their humanising portrait of actress Pamela Anderson in 2023’s Pamela, a Love Story.
“I knew that you’re either going to be in or you’re going to be out if you even begin to scratch the surface of this story,” Notaro said. “Ryan and Jessica got back to me three days later.”
White didn’t know much about Gibson’s body of work until he watched a performance of Guardian Angel Fish, their spoken-word ode to Falley. “It’s one of the most beautiful, hilarious, tugs-at-your-heartstrings, perfectly sculpted poems,” he said. “It was like stand-up meets music meets storytelling meets poetry.”
Still, White wasn’t convinced of the film’s viability as quickly as Notaro had been. “The only thing less commercial than one poet is two poets,” he quipped. Gibson’s appearance on a podcast hosted by Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle nudged White toward signing onto the project, as Gibson’s “brutal honesty, dark sense of humour and … everything they were saying was challenging my notions of what my loved ones’ death journeys would be like,” he said. By the time Gibson and Falley exited their home to greet the filmmakers on their driveway, White was sold.
“Andrea came outside and hugged us and said: ‘Welcome to my home. I guess you guys are going to be with me when I die,’” the director recalled. “And that’s how the film began.”
The couple never hesitated over their choice to appear in Come See Me, according to Falley. When Willen first approached them, Gibson had been experiencing vision problems that made it difficult for them to write. Participating in the film seemed like a welcome creative outlet.
“I don’t have one recollection of any time when we didn’t want them there or when we asked them to turn off the camera or anything like that,” Falley said. “I think the only creative note [Gibson] ever gave was that they didn’t want the film to have any villains – not even cancer.”
As treatment weakens Gibson’s body, at one point threatening to eliminate their vocal abilities altogether, the spoken-word poet grapples with the idea of losing their life’s passion. They spend a good portion of the film preparing for a live performance they hope they will be able to put on, not knowing whether their body will give out at the last minute. They ask Falley to critique their work, and vice versa, shedding light on a creative compatibility that bolsters their romance.
At their show, Gibson decides to perform “Guardian Angel Fish,” the poem expressing gratitude for Falley’s companionship. It’s a tearjerker of a moment for anyone watching – but especially Falley, who has seen the film multiple times while joining White and Hargrave at festivals. She tends to cry through the whole thing, she said, “and then I want to see it again the next night”.
“Even in this tremendous loss that I’ve experienced, there is such a truly rare privilege to being able to watch a film about my love, my partner, my spouse,” she continued. “That all of this exists, that I get to sit in an audience and see Andrea’s face 15 feet [tall] on a screen … that I get to watch other people fall in love with my person, there’s not a day that I’m not aware of the gift.”
She just didn’t think it would all be over so soon.
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