And Everything Is Going Fine [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray] [2010]

While Spalding Gray was a gifted actor who gave fine performances in the films True Stories, The Killing Fields and King Of The Hill, he was at his best playing himself, without a supporting cast. Gray was a master of the seriocomic monologue, and he rose to fame with a series of one-man-shows in which, seated behind a desk, he would speak at length about various events in his life -- his experiences making The Killing Fields in Swimming To Cambodia, his struggle with writers block in Monster In A Box, and his health issues in Gray's Anatomy. While Gray's performances were often quite funny, he didn't shy away from difficult subject matter, and never hesitated from revealing the painful side of his past and his own personal demons as he spun his tales before an audience or a camera. Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh worked with Spalding Gray on two pictures, and he's allowed his former collaborator to speak for himself in And Everything Is Going Fine, a documentary drawn from footage from Gray's monologues and interviews with the actor in which he talks about his life, his art, and the obsession with mortality that often surfaced in his work before he took his own life in 2004. And Everything Is Going Fine was an official selection at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival.~Mark Deming