Spalding Gray Movies
New England native Spalding Gray was raised in Rhode Island and schooled in Massachusetts. As a writer and actor inclined to serious spells of depression, he humorously integrated his anxieties and experiences into stage performances. He was often seated at a desk with only a microphone, notebook, and a glass of water. Within this minimalist aesthetic, Gray's monologues were simultaneously funny, touching, and scary. His wholly authentic style was influenced by Allen Ginsberg, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and the American autobiographical movement. After studying at Emerson College, Gray attended a workshop at the Open Theater in 1969. Though he appeared in a string of sleazy, forgettable films during the '70s, he mostly worked in experimental theater. In 1977, he co-founded the Wooster Theater Group in New York City. Two years later, he performed his first monologue: Sex and Death at the Age of 14.Gray traveled to Thailand to play a bit part in Roland Joffé's war drama The Killing Fields, and that experience grew into Swimming to Cambodia, an Obie award-winning one-man stage performance and a 1987 feature film directed by Jonathan Demme. Gray also earned two Independent Spirit Award nominations for the film and finally found a lucrative way to merge his talents for both writing and acting. After a brief appearance in David Byrne's True Stories, he showed up in random feature films over the next decade. Often playing a doctor, priest, professor, or other man of influence, he appeared in everything from mainstream romantic comedies (Straight Talk) to weepy melodramas (Beaches) to dramatic thrillers (Diabolique). Gray returned to theater in the late '80s to play the Stage Manager in a Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. He also started writing a novel, Impossible Vacation, an experience that grew into Monster in a Box, a one-man stage performance and feature film directed by Nick Broomfield.
During the '90s, Gray traveled to Malaysia to film John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon. He also showed up the independent films Drunks and Twenty Bucks. In 1993, he played a man who commits suicide in Steven Soderbergh's childhood drama King of the Hill. His memoir, Gray's Anatomy, was published by Random House a year later. That experience was made into a one-man stage performance and 1996 film directed by Soderbergh as the first original feature from the Independent Film Channel. During this time, Gray settled into home life with his wife and three children, and his experience as a stay-at-home dad grew into the monologue Morning, Noon and Night, which he performed at Lincoln Center in 1999. For his 60th birthday in 2001, he and his wife took a trip to Ireland that, unfortunately, ended with a car accident in which they were seriously injured. As his depression worsened, Gray wrote the monologue Black Spot about the experience. Following several suicide attempts, Spalding Gray was reported missing January 11, 2004. His body was found in the East River near Brooklyn March 7, 2004. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- 1970
Leading man John Rose finds himself faced with a difficult moral decision when he must choose between following his draft-dodging friends to Canada and living under the stigma of cowardice or doing his patriotic duty and risking his life. Look closely and you'll spot Spalding Gray as one of the radicals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Christine (Sandy McLeod) is a ticket-taker at a Manhattan porn cinema. Her ability to separate reel life from real life is seriously impaired in this slow, often silent, and ultimately enigmatic study of a lonely young woman who first despises the porn and then becomes fascinated with it and the clients who attend the shows. Her inclinations become more active than passive after she decides to follow an elegantly turned-out "businessman" from the theater into an adult video shop, where they begin talking and he invites her to a Yankee game (that dates this movie!). Once at the game, the man leaves for a moment, and Christine follows him again, this time to some sort of strange rendezvous. At this point, it is difficult for both Christine and the viewers to distinguish reality from fantasy, leaving everyone in limbo. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sandy McLeod, Will Patton, (more)
After Griffin Dunne's wife Brooke Adams is injured in a car crash, Dunne begins an affair with Adams' nurse Karen Young. You think that takes gall? Dunne also becomes best friends with Young's boyfriend Marty Watt. Believe it or not, Griffin Dunne is the most likeable character in the movie. After testing poorly at 110 minutes, Almost You was whittled down to 96 minutes. Those who have trouble wading through this prime example of mid-1980s self-indulgence are advised to keep an eye out for the brilliant monologist Spalding Gray in a supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brooke Adams, Griffin Dunne, (more)
- 1984
In this odd mix of social commentary, forbidden romance, police action thriller, and teenage delinquency, a well-meaning social worker slowly careens off the charts when a 15-year-old teen is about to receive a stiff sentence as an accessory to a crime. Bobby (Gary McCleery) is driving the getaway car when his two brothers run into trouble in a robbery and shoot a policeman to death. The trio of siblings is quickly apprehended, and Bobby is thrown in jail until the judge can decide whether to try him as an adult or not. Not a moment behind it all is Laura (Margaret Klenck), a young woman who runs a non-profit agency dedicated to making sure young teens are not given adult sentences for their criminal behavior. When it looks like Bobby will get a life sentence, Laura cannot accept the inevitable and asks a close friend (and drug-runner) to help her out - and then she walks into the sheriff's office with a gun and gets Bobby out of jail. Her drug-running friend spirits them off to Florida, where Laura and Bobby hide out and begin a romantic entanglement - just another mistake in a long series of mistakes that have placed the two in a dangerous and impossible situation. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary McCleery, John Seitz, (more)
The Killing Fields is a romanticized adaptation of an eyewitness magazine story by New York Times correspondent Sidney Schanberg. Covering the U.S. pullout from Vietnam in 1975, Schanberg (Sam Waterston) relies on his Cambodian friend and translator Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor) for inside information. Schanberg has an opportunity to rescue Dith Pran when the U.S. army evacuates all Cambodian citizens; instead, the reporter coerces his friend to remain behind to continue sending him news flashes. Although his family is helicoptered out of Saigon (a recreation of the famous TV news clip), Dith Pran stays with Schanberg on the ground. Racked with guilt, Schanberg does his best to arrange for Dith Pran's escape, but the Cambodian is captured by the dreaded Khmer Rouge. Accepting his Pulitzer Prize on behalf of Dith Pran, Schanberg vows to do right by his friend and extricate him from Cambodia. The rest of the film details Dith Pran's harrowing experiences at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, and his attempt to escape on his own. The Killing Fields won Academy Awards for Hang S. Ngor (a Cambodian doctor who lived through many of the horrific events depicted herein), cinematographer Chris Menges, and editor Jim Clark; an Oscar nomination went to Roland Joffe, who made his directorial debut with this film. Spalding Gray, who played a small role in the film, later elaborated on this experiences in his one-man stage presentation Swimming to Cambodia. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Waterston, Dr. Haing S. Ngor, (more)
- 1985
This is an undistinguished, avant-garde film by director, editor, and narrator Ken Kobland that may confuse most viewers at best, and turn off others at worst. Ostensibly expressing a post-liberal depression, there is long monolog of an apparently disillusioned worker and some polemics written across the screen, as well as spoken, that are depressing indeed. Kobland throws in long takes of frying an egg or moving through an apartment, or the studied introduction of an orchestra as it is tuning up with the screen blank. Do other sequences, such as the sound of someone urinating or the view of a young man picking at his pimples in deep concentration, also represent a post-liberal funk? When the clips from Citizen Kane and footage of bombings and atrocities in World War II are added in, most viewers will indeed leave puzzled by it all.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Willem Dafoe, Spalding Gray, (more)
Director David Byrne (of Talking Heads) takes an outside-looking-in glance at Texas and Texans in True Stories. Casting himself as the protagonist/narrator, Byrne adopts what he thinks is "standard" western garb and drives his red convertible into the small town of Virgil. Here he observes the town's preparations for celebrating Texas' sesquicentennial, taking time out to introduce us to several of the local oddballs. Swoosie Kurtz plays Miss Rollings, the Laziest Woman in the World; Alix Elias is The Cute Woman, who decorates her home in the most hideously "sweet" manner imaginable; John Goodman is talent-contest entrant Louis Fyne, who harbors dreams of being a C&W star; Spalding Gray is Earl Culver, a vegetable-obsessed civic leader; Jo Harvey Allen is The Lying Woman; and so it goes. The script by Southerners Byrne, Beth Henley and Steven Tobolowksy strives to avoid subtlety. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Byrne, John Goodman, (more)
- 1986
- PG13
This modest teen comedy has the usual themes revolving around sex: how to handle it, how to relate to it, and how to do just about everything except engage in it. The focus is on two teenagers, one is the serious Natalie (Jennifer Connelly). She has her eyes set on becoming President of the U.S. and one day heads off to Washington D.C. on a special visit for "Future Leaders." A certain presidential aide brings a romantic touch to her idealized vision. The other teen is Polly Franklin (Maddie Corman) whose infatuation with a baseball player takes her to New York -- where a photographer steps in as a pinch-hitter. A few other subplots move circumstances around in the two teens' lives, though their romantic exploits take center stage. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jennifer Connelly, Maddie Corman, (more)
- 1987
By rights, an 87-minute filmed monologue should be as stimulating as watching paint dry. Ah, but when the monologist is the brilliant Spalding Gray, then the audience is in for a cerebral feast. Based on his one-man Broadway presentation, Swimming to Cambodia is a mesmerizing account of Gray's experiences while playing a small role in the 1984 film The Killing Fields. Gray's ramblings encompass such subject as Southeast Asian politics, the availability of sex and drugs in the Third World, and even a few choice observations about New York City. The monologist sits at a desk throughout, while director Jonathan Demme makes no effort to "cinematize" the material. Still, the film is a fascinating hour and a half, and few viewers will feel the impulse to walk out of the theatre or fast-forward the VCR. Swimming to Cambodia was followed by another Spalding Gray "talking theatre" piece, Monster in a Box. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Spalding Gray, Sam Waterston, (more)
- 1988
Spalding Gray's Terrors of Pleasure is a monologue from the comedian/dramatist concerning his attempt to find a piece of land to own. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
Based on a novel by Iris Rainer Dart, Beaches traces the 30-year oil-and-water friendship between free-spirited Bronx Jew CC Bloom (Bette Midler) and uptight San Francisco WASP Hillary Essex (Barbara Hershey). The two meet as children in Atlantic City (played by Mayim Bialik and Marcie Leeds) and are reunited in the 1960s, when CC is a struggling singer and Hillary is trying to break free from her staid upbringing by becoming an activist. The two ladies room together, then fall out when both are attracted to off-Broadway producer John Pierce (John Heard). CC wins John, but she quickly outgrows him as she matriculates into a bawdy performer. The recently patched-up friendship between CC and Hillary is torn asunder again when Hillary and her new husband express distaste for CC's performing style. Comes the 1970s, and CC and Hillary are reunited after shedding their respective spouses. Broke again, they once more become Manhattan roommates. Their bond strengthens, but there is tragedy in store for the duo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey, (more)
- 1988
- PG13
In this sentimental coming-of-age drama, directed by Richard Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird) and written by Mark Medoff (Children of a Lesser God), Whoopi Goldberg plays Clara Mayfield, whom Leona Hart (Kathleen Quinlan) meets up with in Jamaica, where Leona retreats to mourn the death of her baby daughter. Leona comes from a rich Maryland family and she leaves her husband, Bill (Michael Ontkean), and her young son, David (Neil Patrick Harris), back in the States in order to achieve some personal healing. She tells Clara she is in mourning and Clara responds knowingly, "I knew the fact, but not the substance." Hearing this kind of cryptic Charlie Chan-like aphorism, Leona can't resist Clara and hires her as her maid, taking her back with her, like a pet, to Maryland. "Come meet the most wonderful person," she tells her husband, and, to be sure, Clara is out-of-this-world wonderful, and since David's self-absorbed parents are neglecting him for their own private flirtations and obsessions, Clara takes up the slack and becomes, in effect, David's family. Clara dispenses worldly advice and has him spend weekends with her in the inner-city Jamaican community, where David learns how the other half lives. But just as David is letting his guard down and permitting Clara to become his 30-year-old buddy, Clara reveals a chilling past life that includes rape, incest, and suicide. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Ontkean, (more)
- 1988
- R
Though a fine cast was assembled for this comedy, none can save this embarrassingly humorless satire. Henderson Dores (Daniel-Day Lewis) is a very proper British art expert sent to rural Georgia by his boss to purchase a painting by Renoir. The present owner, hillbilly Loomis Gage (Harry Dean Stanton), claims he bought the painting for $500 in France in 1946. Dores offers $10 million, but Gage's scheming son Freeborn (Maury Chaykin) has made a deal with a rival art dealer for $15 million. Steven Wright plays Dores' business rival Pruitt with his typical deadpan charm, and Joan Cusack and Laurie Metcalf provide romantic interest. Tea and crumpets collide with moonshine and cornbread in this feature, but the results are unpalatable. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Day-Lewis, Harry Dean Stanton, (more)
Those of us who had to suffer such "instructional" films as Dating Do's and Don'ts in high school will be especially entertained by Heavy Petting. In the visually sarcastic manner of the nuclear-age documentary The Atomic Cafe, the film assembles masses of information and misinformation about teenage dating rituals of the 1950s. Clips from contemporary movies, TV programs, commercials, and "sex hygiene" short subjects are used throughout; perhaps once upon a time these vignettes could have been taken seriously, but here they're only good for howls of laughter. Interspersed among the vintage footage are interviews with such children of the 1960s as David Byrne and William S. Burroughs. One look at the 1950s as depicted in Heavy Petting, and it's easy to see how the sensuous, psychedelic '60s came to be. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Byrne, Sandra Bernhard, (more)
Albert Finney stars as a TV-news anchorman who wrongly implicates a good friend in a savings-and-loan scandal; when the friend commits suicide, Finney must question his ethics and obsession with high Nielsen ratings. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Albert Finney, Marsha Mason, (more)
- 1991
A newlywed's infant meets a fate worse than death in this horror movie. She believes the child has died, but then she learns the awful truth--her husband and his coven of witches are using the infant in their terrifying rituals. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Gray's third performance film is a document of his experiences as a procrastinating novelist; the title refers to Gray's 1900-page manuscript, which is two years past deadline. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Spalding Gray
Dolly Parton and James Woods as the screen's hottest new romantic team? That's only one of several casting surprises in this romantic comedy. Shirlee Kenyon (Dolly Parton) has had enough of life in her small Arkansas town, not to mention her small-minded Arkansas boyfriend Steve (Michael Madsen). So she decides to head for the big city of Chicago, where she applies for a job as a receptionist at a talk radio station. However, she arrives at the studios just as the staff are frantically searching for the psychiatrist hired to host a call-in show for people seeking advice with their personal problems. Shirlee is put on the air by mistake, and, while she lacks a degree in psychology, she has common sense to spare, and her no-nonsense advice makes the show a hit. Soon "Doctor Shirlee" is the talk of the town, but reporter Jack Russell (James Woods) senses that she might not be all she's supposed to be. Jack does some investigating and finds out the truth about Shirlee, but by this time the two have met and he's fallen in love with her. Will Jack obey his responsibilities as a journalist, or follow his heart? Straight Talk's supporting cast includes filmmaker John Sayles, monologist Spalding Gray, actor and producer Griffin Dunne, and future Lois Lane Teri Hatcher. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dolly Parton, James Woods, (more)
- 1993
- PG13
Steven Soderbergh, after the success of sex, lies, and videotape and the commercial failure of Kafka, pulls a rabbit out of his hat with this quiet and evocative recollection of a childhood lived in the Depression, based on A. E. Hotchner's memoir. Twelve-year-old Aaron Kurlander (Jesse Bradford) is coming of age in a rotting working class section of St. Louis in 1933. As the film begins, Aaron's family is coming apart at the seams due to the increasingly bleak economy. His father (Jeroen Krabbe) ekes out a living with a series of failed sales jobs as the family lives in the dilapidated Empire Hotel in a seamy section of town. When his younger brother (Cameron Boyd) is sent to live with relatives to save expenses, his consumptive mother (Lisa Eichhorn) goes away to a sanitarium and his father abandons him to sell watches in Iowa. At first Aaron retreats into a concocted fantasy world but he gradually becomes drawn into the shattered lives of the tenants of the hotel. Aaron sees the rotting social fabric laid bare and discovers he must temper his childhood dreams with the hard-hitting realities of adult existence. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jesse Bradford, Jeroen Krabbé, (more)
Paul Mazursky directed this comedy, which blends a broad satire of the film industry with a thoughtful tale of a middle-aged man looking back on his life's failures. Harry Stone (Danny Aiello) is a film director who desperately needs a hit -- so desperately that he gets talked into directing an inane sci-fi film about a group of farm kids (led by Ally Sheedy) who grow an enormous pickle that they turn into a spaceship, allowing them to visit the planet Cleveland (ruled by Little Richard and his right hand man, Griffin Dunne) where everyone eats nothing but meat. Convinced that the film will flop, Harry is in a state of panic as he returns to New York with his Parisian girlfriend Francoise (Clotilde Courau), a mere 20 years his junior, and visits his ex-wife Ellen (Dyan Cannon); his mother Yetta (Shelley Winters); and his son Gregory (Chris Penn). Meanwhile Harry flashes back on his childhood and the film he could have made of it, and pitches his dream film (a historical epic about the life of Montezuma) to studio executives, who instead want him to make a movie kids can relate to. The Pickle was filmed in 1991, but only received a token theatrical release two years later. Actually, the sci-fi story with Little Richard as the undisputed ruler of Cleveland looks like it might have been an ideal vehicle for Edward D. Wood Jr.. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Dyan Cannon, (more)
This fascinating chronicle of the life and times of a twenty dollar bill was originally written by Endre Boehm in 1935 and languished forgotten on the shelf until his son Leslie resurrected it after his father's death, and updated the script. (Both received screenwriter credit for the released version). The scrap of currency's journey begins after it is spit out of a downtown Minneapolis ATM machine into the hands of a busy young mother. It's a windy day, and the crisp bill is blown out of her hands into those of a bag lady who uses it on the lottery because she believes the serial numbers are lucky. Unfortunately, the bill is plucked from her hands by a light-fingered skate boarder who uses the money at a local bakery. From there the bill's odyssey takes it to a wide variety of places including a wedding, a stripper's g-string, a con artist's scam, and a robbery. It ends up used as a note pad, a birthday present, a coaster, and a fishing contest trophy. Interestingly, every one who encounters the bill changes in some way. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Linda Hunt, David Rasche, (more)
Director Ron Howard's drama follows a beleaguered reporter during a hectic 24 hours at a New York City tabloid. Michael Keaton stars as Henry Hackett, a metro editor for the struggling New York Sun. Hackett is being wooed by the Sentinel, a more upscale paper, but he's addicted to the adrenaline-stimulating, breakneck pace of the Sun's newsroom, much to the consternation of his pregnant wife Martha (Marisa Tomei. Hackett is currently pursuing a story of two minority youths who have been arrested for the murders of two men. He learns that the police think that the killings may be a mob hit. In the court of public opinion, however, the innocent suspects are being judged as guilty, and the police may bow to the pressure. As Hackett and his staff desperately work all the story's angles to find the truth, several other dramas unfold. Top editor Bernie (Robert Duvall) learns that he has prostate cancer, and tough publisher Alicia (Glenn Close) wonders if her lack of popularity is due to her cost-cutting, her personality, or the fact that she's a woman. In their only collaboration, screenwriter David Koepp co-wrote the script with his brother Stephen Koepp, a senior editor at Time magazine. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, (more)
In a role originally intended for Meg Ryan, Patricia Arquette plays Dr. Laura Bowman in director John Boorman's film of an American abroad in a strange country. It's 1988 and Laura is desperate to flee the United States and the memory of her husband and son's murders. Accompanied by her sister, Andy (Frances McDormand), she heads for Burma just as the peaceful protests against the country's military government take a more violent turn. Andy and the rest of their party flee in a hurry, but Laura is forced to stay behind when she loses her passport. A former professor (Aung Ko) offers her guidance to the border of Thailand, where they both hope to make their escape. Boorman's scenes of action and violence are well-staged, but Arquette is not big enough to carry the film and her plight seems inconsequential next to that of the Burmese as the military begins its ruthless crackdown. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patricia Arquette, Frances McDormand, (more)
