Two years ago, former Atlantans and veteran documentarians Ryan White and Jessica Hargrave felt like there was a paucity of funny documentaries. So they hunted for subject matter with humor.
Their friend, comic Tig Notaro, offered an idea that didn’t sound remotely funny on its surface: profile respected poet Andrea Gibson, who was dying of ovarian cancer.
Despite initial skepticism, they trusted Notaro, already known for revealing her own breast cancer in a comedy special, and flew to Boulder, Colorado to meet Gibson (who identifies as nonbinary) and their partner Megan Falley.
After White and Gibson hugged, Gibson said, “Welcome to my home. I guess you’ll be with me when I die.”
The resulting documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” now available on Apple TV+, is up for an Oscar for best documentary feature. Hargrave and White will be at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood Sunday to find out if they will pocket their first Academy Award after 15 documentaries and two decades in the business. It’s their first Oscar nomination.
“It’s a childhood dream come true,” said White in a recent Zoom interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The little kid in me is freaking out. My dear mom Peggy would let me stay up late at night when I was 4 or 5 to watch the Oscars. I bought every Oscar book, got every Oscar VHS tape I could find with a selection of previous ceremonies. I had all the winners memorized.”
Hargrave said she and Write always seek doc ideas that intrigue them, “this Venn diagram of impact and eyeballs.”
Credit: APPLE TV+
Credit: APPLE TV+
Cancer and poetry seemed like topics not quite Venn diagram-worthy. Yet when Hargrave and White watched tapes of Gibson performing on stage, they were mesmerized.
“They were so incredible on stage,” Hargrave said. “It disrupted my preconceived notion of what poetry is. It was funny and irreverent. Our interest was piqued.”
They quickly brought a camera crew to tape Gibson and Falley together.
White said he was admittedly terrified: “I was really afraid to even entertain making this film because I’m not someone comfortable facing mortality. It felt very invasive. But within minutes, I realized these were my people. We got along so well. I was laughing so hard. I came in with this lens that this was supposed to be sad. They weren’t viewing this that way at all.”
Instead, Gibson saw the dark humor in their plight and valued even the little things, whether it was their perpetually broken mailbox, their dogs, or gazing at the moon at night.
The first scene shot shows up early in the movie, where the couple jokes about sexual positions curing cancer. “You never get something that special on Day 1,” White said. “This was something rare to have such organic, cracked-open documentary subjects.”
Credit: APPLE TV+ SCREENSHOT
Credit: APPLE TV+ SCREENSHOT
The movie was initially conceived as a portrait of Gibson and the end of their life. But it ended up “encompassing a bigger picture,” Hargrave said. “We view it as a love story and more about life than death. Megan was a welcome surprise to us as we got to know her. The story was very much about their relationship.”
With death awaiting, time was of the essence. “We were lucky we got a year with them,” White said. “It could have been two months. We maximized our time as much as possible because every second we shot was special and sacred.”
Surprisingly, Gibson didn’t die while Hargrave and White were taping the documentary. They decided to end the movie on a more positive note and sped through post-production to get it into the Sundance Film Festival. Gibson was able to attend the screening several months before they died last July.
“That was the most special day of my entire filmmaking career,” White said. “If you had asked me a year prior, we never would have believed that was possible.”
Credit: APPLE TV+
Credit: APPLE TV+
Atlanta Roots
White, a former Dunwoody resident, and Hargrave, who grew up in Decatur, became fast friends in fourth grade at Kittredge Magnet School in Atlanta, which brought together bright children from around DeKalb County.
They remained besties at Chamblee High School, where being nerdy was embraced and diversity was a fact of life. “That was the most formative part of my life,” White said.
The connection White and Hargrave made at those schools has remained rock solid for decades as friends and business partners.
“Ryan just said something beautiful to me,” Hargrave said. “We talked before about having a shared brain. He said this morning he feels like we have a shared heart.”
In eighth grade, she recalled a teacher reprimanding the two of them. “We were communicating without speaking out loud, yet we still got in trouble,” she said. “We can still do that on set. I can look at him and know what he’s thinking and he can do the same with me.”
As kids, they would shoot films with White’s mom’s clunky VHS camera. White also became quite adept at photography, crediting teacher Dave Smiley for his insights and guidance.
“I remember seeing Ryan’s images and thinking there was always more there than meets the eye, like he always had more to say,” Smiley said.
White attended Duke University, which had a department specializing in documentaries. He fell in love with the art of telling true stories and spent years under the tutelage of Shelly Jones, a documentarian who covered topics such as Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal.
By 2007, he and Hargrave kickstarted their way into creating their own documentaries, the first one about pickup soccer. In 2014, they landed their first HBO doc, “The Case Against 8,″ about the effort to overturn California’s Proposition 8 law banning same-sex marriage.
But their big breakthrough was the 2017 true crime docuseries “The Keepers,” about the unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a nun and teacher in Baltimore. “It was a big hit and a career maker,” White said.
They have also done documentaries about sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer (“Ask Dr. Ruth”), a Mars rover (“Good Night Oppy”) and actress Pamela Anderson (“Pamela: A Love Story”).
“We are entirely independent,” Hargrave said. “We’re fortunate we’re able to be selective now. We work on only a couple of projects at a time and we put our whole selves into each one.”
Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
“Come See Me in the Good Light” on March 5 received a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding documentary and was named one of the National Board of Review Top 5 Documentaries of 2025,
But Oscar oddsmakers are currently favoring Netflix’s “The Good Neighbor,” about a “stand your ground” murder case in Florida, to win best documentary feature.
“I know people say it’s an honor to be nominated and don’t mean it,” Hargrave said. “But I assure you I do. It’s truly an honor to be nominated. We’re so thrilled and we’re going to have fun either way.”
If you watch
“Come See Me in the Good Light,” available on Apple TV+
“The 98th Academy Awards,” 7 p.m. EST, Sunday, March 15
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