Documentary director Ryan White has made movies throughout a number of genres, from portraits of popular culture figures like Pamela Anderson and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, to true crime documentaries like “The Keepers” and “Into the Hearth: The Misplaced Daughter.” He shared at IndieWire Honors, held at Nya West in Hollywood on December 4, that the overwhelming recognition of his newest movie “Come See Me within the Good Gentle” has been all of the extra significant for what it represents within the present documentary panorama.
“Sadly, it’s not an understatement to say what a troublesome place the documentary trade and the documentary market is in proper now,” stated White, throughout his acceptance speech for the Amplify Award. “A large thanks to everybody at Apple TV, particularly Molly Thompson and Rose Ermer Knipp, who considerably insanely purchased this documentary that led with the phrases ‘poetry’ and ‘most cancers’ and ‘queer non-binary,’ which aren’t precisely descriptors which can be flying off the cabinets proper now. And we want extra execs like them and for studios and streamers to step up and purchase unbiased documentaries like this that aren’t simply feeding the algorithm.” He added, “there are plenty of unimaginable unbiased documentaries on the market not getting purchased proper now.”
The movie, documenting the love story between poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, as the previous’s well being is on the decline, was not even the kind of movie that White and his producing accomplice Jessica Hargrave (who was current on the occasion) have been even inquisitive about making initially once they reached out to comic Tig Notaro to collaborate. “We’d been asking Tig for years to deliver us a comedy documentary,” stated the director. “So when she introduced us a poetry most cancers movie, we have been appalled. However Tig is all the time proper. It ended up being the funniest movie that we’ve ever gotten to make, and we laughed nonstop whereas we have been making it.”
Along with Hargrave, who he has been making each considered one of his initiatives with since they have been youngsters, White shouted out “Come See Me within the Good Gentle” editor Berenice Chavez within the viewers. “If there’s any documentary filmmakers in right here, you understand that your editor is your copilot. So Berenice deserves as a lot credit score for the ultimate minimize of this movie as I do,” he stated.
Lastly, White counseled Gibson and Falley for opening up in an sudden means. “They have been going by a interval of their lives, a interval of sickness and nearing finish of life that I believe we’re taught culturally must be a extremely darkish, unhappy time. And so they have been doing it with such humor and pleasure and dancing,” he stated. To the late Gibson, “We miss and love you want loopy, however thanks a lot for sharing your story with us.”
See White’s full acceptance speech from the 2025 IndieWire Honors above.
