Tig Notaro on Sleeping Through the Oscar Nominations: ‘With My CPAP Machine Tubes Coming Out of My Head’ and Honoring Her Friend in ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’
Tig Notaro did not set her alarm to see if she achieved Oscar nomination glory.
“My wife happened to wake up at five in the morning, just so happened — she really did. She didn’t wake up on purpose,” Notaro recalls on the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast. “And there I am, snoozing, next to her, with my earplugs in, my eye mask on, my CPAP machine tubes coming out of my head.”
The nomination was for the film she produced, “Come See Me in the Good Light,” a documentary directed by Ryan White that follows the late poet Andrea Gibson (they/them) and her wife, Meg, as they navigate love, illness, and art. Notaro is one of the Oscar-nominated producers on the film alongside Jessica Hargrave and Stef Willen, but she speaks about the work the way she speaks about her real-life friendship with Gibson: something you show up for, repeatedly, always.
The writer, director and comedian’s self-mythology has never been about trying portray sainthood or a “perfect picture.” It’s about telling the truth with a straight face and letting the punch line do the damage. When jokingly asked if the nomination had transformed her into an unbearable awards-season creature, she didn’t hesitate. “I’ve always been insufferable, but this just gives me a reason for it all to make sense,” she deadpanned.
That’s the Notaro method. She’ll bring chuckles to the moment and then reveal the feeling underneath. She’ll joke about being “insufferable,” then, minutes later, describe a documentary process so carefully protected that it feels like a mission statement you wish were the standard for everyone in this world.
“This project has to be led fully by love and patience,” she shares. “There can’t be a weirdo rattling around in the production. It has to be all, all good.”
It’s also, quietly, an explanation for why “Come See Me in the Good Light” lands the way it does, like a hand on the back, offering comfort, and not a finger in the wound.
“There are sad moments, but there are also deeply funny moments that surprise people,” she says. “There’s a common vibe at the end of the movie, when people exit the theater — they’re so thankful, saying, ‘Thank you so much for making this movie.’ And there’s a sense of urgency that people feel to get back into life, do things right, and be more present. It fills people with a sense of hope.”
That hope is sincere, and not performative. Notaro came to the film with a documentary fan’s devotion and a friend’s responsibility — and, at least at first, with almost no awareness of the machinery that would soon swallow her calendar whole. Her relationship to awards culture, she admitted, used to be blissfully nonexistent.
“None, zero,” she quips when asked how familiar she was with the Oscar race. “I remember friends saying, ‘Oh, I’ll have more time after award season.’ I was like, ‘Award season? What is that?’ Now I’m like, full-blown in award season — it’s no joke.”
“When we made this film, it was independently financed,” she says. “Getting this movie made about my scrappy poet friend in the mountains of Colorado, and then winning audience favorite at Sundance, selling to Apple — that was just mind-blowing.”
But “Come See Me in the Good Light” isn’t simply a documentary that got made. It’s a documentary that chose its own ending — or, more accurately, refused the ending viewers expect from stories about terminal illness. Notaro notes that the decision was made by Gibson or Meg, but by filmmaker Ryan White and the team, who considered both the story and the timing.
“Ryan came to everybody and said, ‘Why do we need our hero to die?’” she recalls. “If we wrapped it up and submitted it to Sundance, then if it gets in, Andrea could see the film — because Andrea didn’t think that they were ever going to be able to see the movie.”
The team didn’t even tell Gibson or Meg they were submitting, Notaro said, so there wouldn’t be added disappointment if Sundance didn’t come through. When it did, the news landed with shock and sweetness.
“What was so beautiful was when the film wrapped, the crew continued to fly out to visit them,” Notaro says.
Notaro is blunt about the emotional trick grief can play — the one where you start believing your favorite outcome because you need it to be true. She knows that impulse. She also knows what it means to live on the other side of cancer. Notaro had cancer in 2012 and has spent years around people who look “healthy” until they’re suddenly gone.
Still, she found herself caught off guard by how quickly Gibson died.
“I will say, what is hard now is reflecting on the disappointment I have in myself, and I can’t believe I fell for it,” Notaro shares. “I did not believe Andrea would be gone as quickly as they were.”
Part of what seduced her, she said, was Gibson’s visible fight — including the footage of Gibson lifting weights while living with stage 4 ovarian cancer.
“You know what blows me away in the movie, too, is watching Andrea work out every day,” Notaro says. “That’s somebody with hope, and that is incredible to watch somebody pumping iron with stage four cancer.”
She further says, “I honestly thought we were going to make this movie, we’re going to put it out, people are going to be blown away, learn all about Andrea Gibson on a wider level, and Andrea is going to have another five to 10 years to be the rock star in the poetry world that they were.”
That sentence contains an entire alternate timeline, and the quiet ache of losing it.
Still, the Oscar nomination feels like a coronation to outsiders and a testament to a great person. “Every time I would see Andrea perform intense poetry, but there was also so much light-hearted, funny coming out of that mouth,” Notaro reflects. She talked about “the lines on Andrea’s face, whenever they smiled … it was just exquisite to look at” — and how the laughter, after the performances, became the real intimacy. “There’s depth, but there was nothing better than kicking back and laughing.”
Notaro holds onto the love.
Variety’s “Awards Circuit” podcast, hosted by Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay, Emily Longeretta and Michael Schneider, who also produces, is your one-stop source for lively conversations about the best in film and television. Each episode, “Awards Circuit” features interviews with top film and TV talent and creatives, discussions and debates about awards races and industry headlines, and much more. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or anywhere you download podcasts.
“My wife happened to wake up at five in the morning, just so happened — she really did. She didn’t wake up on purpose,” Notaro recalls on the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast. “And there I am, snoozing, next to her, with my earplugs in, my eye mask on, my CPAP machine tubes coming out of my head.”
The nomination was for the film she produced, “Come See Me in the Good Light,” a documentary directed by Ryan White that follows the late poet Andrea Gibson (they/them) and her wife, Meg, as they navigate love, illness, and art. Notaro is one of the Oscar-nominated producers on the film alongside Jessica Hargrave and Stef Willen, but she speaks about the work the way she speaks about her real-life friendship with Gibson: something you show up for, repeatedly, always.
The writer, director and comedian’s self-mythology has never been about trying portray sainthood or a “perfect picture.” It’s about telling the truth with a straight face and letting the punch line do the damage. When jokingly asked if the nomination had transformed her into an unbearable awards-season creature, she didn’t hesitate. “I’ve always been insufferable, but this just gives me a reason for it all to make sense,” she deadpanned.
That’s the Notaro method. She’ll bring chuckles to the moment and then reveal the feeling underneath. She’ll joke about being “insufferable,” then, minutes later, describe a documentary process so carefully protected that it feels like a mission statement you wish were the standard for everyone in this world.
“This project has to be led fully by love and patience,” she shares. “There can’t be a weirdo rattling around in the production. It has to be all, all good.”
It’s also, quietly, an explanation for why “Come See Me in the Good Light” lands the way it does, like a hand on the back, offering comfort, and not a finger in the wound.
“There are sad moments, but there are also deeply funny moments that surprise people,” she says. “There’s a common vibe at the end of the movie, when people exit the theater — they’re so thankful, saying, ‘Thank you so much for making this movie.’ And there’s a sense of urgency that people feel to get back into life, do things right, and be more present. It fills people with a sense of hope.”
That hope is sincere, and not performative. Notaro came to the film with a documentary fan’s devotion and a friend’s responsibility — and, at least at first, with almost no awareness of the machinery that would soon swallow her calendar whole. Her relationship to awards culture, she admitted, used to be blissfully nonexistent.
“None, zero,” she quips when asked how familiar she was with the Oscar race. “I remember friends saying, ‘Oh, I’ll have more time after award season.’ I was like, ‘Award season? What is that?’ Now I’m like, full-blown in award season — it’s no joke.”
“When we made this film, it was independently financed,” she says. “Getting this movie made about my scrappy poet friend in the mountains of Colorado, and then winning audience favorite at Sundance, selling to Apple — that was just mind-blowing.”
But “Come See Me in the Good Light” isn’t simply a documentary that got made. It’s a documentary that chose its own ending — or, more accurately, refused the ending viewers expect from stories about terminal illness. Notaro notes that the decision was made by Gibson or Meg, but by filmmaker Ryan White and the team, who considered both the story and the timing.
“Ryan came to everybody and said, ‘Why do we need our hero to die?’” she recalls. “If we wrapped it up and submitted it to Sundance, then if it gets in, Andrea could see the film — because Andrea didn’t think that they were ever going to be able to see the movie.”
The team didn’t even tell Gibson or Meg they were submitting, Notaro said, so there wouldn’t be added disappointment if Sundance didn’t come through. When it did, the news landed with shock and sweetness.
“What was so beautiful was when the film wrapped, the crew continued to fly out to visit them,” Notaro says.
Notaro is blunt about the emotional trick grief can play — the one where you start believing your favorite outcome because you need it to be true. She knows that impulse. She also knows what it means to live on the other side of cancer. Notaro had cancer in 2012 and has spent years around people who look “healthy” until they’re suddenly gone.
Still, she found herself caught off guard by how quickly Gibson died.
“I will say, what is hard now is reflecting on the disappointment I have in myself, and I can’t believe I fell for it,” Notaro shares. “I did not believe Andrea would be gone as quickly as they were.”
Part of what seduced her, she said, was Gibson’s visible fight — including the footage of Gibson lifting weights while living with stage 4 ovarian cancer.
“You know what blows me away in the movie, too, is watching Andrea work out every day,” Notaro says. “That’s somebody with hope, and that is incredible to watch somebody pumping iron with stage four cancer.”
She further says, “I honestly thought we were going to make this movie, we’re going to put it out, people are going to be blown away, learn all about Andrea Gibson on a wider level, and Andrea is going to have another five to 10 years to be the rock star in the poetry world that they were.”
That sentence contains an entire alternate timeline, and the quiet ache of losing it.
Still, the Oscar nomination feels like a coronation to outsiders and a testament to a great person. “Every time I would see Andrea perform intense poetry, but there was also so much light-hearted, funny coming out of that mouth,” Notaro reflects. She talked about “the lines on Andrea’s face, whenever they smiled … it was just exquisite to look at” — and how the laughter, after the performances, became the real intimacy. “There’s depth, but there was nothing better than kicking back and laughing.”
Notaro holds onto the love.
Variety’s “Awards Circuit” podcast, hosted by Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay, Emily Longeretta and Michael Schneider, who also produces, is your one-stop source for lively conversations about the best in film and television. Each episode, “Awards Circuit” features interviews with top film and TV talent and creatives, discussions and debates about awards races and industry headlines, and much more. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or anywhere you download podcasts.