director
Jonathan Demme
writer
Spalding Gray
producer
Paula Mazur
cinematographer
John Bailey
music
Laurie Anderson
editor
Carol Littleton
cast
Spalding Gray
mpaa rating: None
running
time: 87m
u.s.
release: April 1987
video
availability: VHS
other jonathan
demme films
reviewed on this website:
- the
complex sessions
- the
manchurian candidate (2004)
- philadelphia
- the
silence of the lambs
- stop
making sense
- storefront
hitchcock
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This was the film that broke
Spalding Gray into the near-mainstream after years of being known
mainly to Off-Broadway audiences. (Subsequently, two other Gray
monologues were filmed -- Monster in a Box, directed by
Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney), and Gray's Anatomy,
directed by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic). Gray's swooping, neurotic delivery
carries us through his story of how he came to be cast in a small
role in 1984's The Killing Fields (we see clips of his
scenes in the film), his experiences on location (mostly downtime
filled with sex shows and "Thai stick"), and his education
about the Cambodian suffering under the Khmer Rouge.
Some critics, such as Pauline
Kael, questioned Gray's motives in dealing with real atrocities
in the midst of generally whimsical material. "It's a superlatively
skillful piece of filmmaking," wrote Kael (an admirer of
Demme's work), "but at its center is a man who doesn't know
that heating up his piddling stage act by an account of the Cambodian
misery is about the most squalid thing anyone could do."
I can understand the point -- what if a monologuist had been
an extra in Schindler's List and devoted the middle
section of his otherwise comedic performance to describing the
conditions at Auschwitz? -- but I don't necessarily agree with
it.
It's clear that Gray wants
us to perceive the arc of consciousness of a non-political man
who starts off worrying about trivial things, learns about true
atrocity in detail, then gradually goes back to worrying about
trivial things again, because he has to. But perhaps now he has
some slight perspective on things. I also don't think Gray chose
the subject just to "heat up" his act; would Kael have
preferred him not to discuss the Cambodian history at all? Gray
pulls together genocide, pleasure-seeking, military paranoia,
filmmaking, and even an anecdote about rude neighbors to paint
a coherent portrait of aggression.
Demme shot the film for $485,000
at the Performing Garage in New York, over the course of three
performances. Unlike Nick Broomfield in Monster in a Box,
Demme doesn't try to jazz things up with flashy editing; the
editing here (by Carol Littleton) feels completely organic, building
the kind of rhythm that amounts to a better-than-live experience
-- the filmmakers know exactly when to pull back and when to
move in. John Bailey's smooth cinematography and Laurie Anderson's
evocative score help to take us to the mindscapes Gray is describing.
(Anderson's score is never intrusive here, unlike in Monster
in a Box, where her music verged on overbearing -- sometimes
Gray seemed to be shouting above it.) By its talky nature the
film is necessarily not as electrifying as Demme's musical pieces,
but it's compelling enough.
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