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
- 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)
- 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)
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)
- 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)
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)
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)
- 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
