And Everything is Going Fine

Long before there was reality TV or bloggers or people largely making a living out of being themselves, there was Spalding Gray.

This New York performance artist, was founder of the Wooster Group, actor and storyteller of epic proportion. He is perhaps the finest storyteller of his generation.

He managed to make a fairly lucrative career out of turning his life into a series of monologues.

If you haven't seen it already, you need to plant yourself in front your big screen TV and watch Swimming to Cambodia. Even if you haven't seen The Killing Fields, you'll find plenty about Spalding to be interested in. His timing is impeccable. I guarantee he'll have you hanging on every word.

I've followed him for years -- read or seen all 19 of his monologues. Read his novel, Impossible Vacation. And mourned his untimely loss when, after a slow and painful recovery from a car crash in Ireland, he ended his life in 2004.

That's why I was particularly moved by yesterday's screening of "And Everything is Going to Be Fine." Steven Soderberg undertook the task of splicing together a lifetime of archival monologues, interviews and home movies.

This is a film for Spalding junkies, like me. There's no outside voice to make sense of what we're seeing. There's no context for his considerable legacy.If this is your first introduction to him, I'm afraid you'd be lost.

But i loved it.

It allows us a rare glimpse into the private life of a very public man.

Seeing rare interview footage of Spalding with his father, pictures of his mother or home movies of Spalding exulting at his son's antics feels a bit like being invited into JD Salinger's house.

We've always imagined what it looked like...now we're seeing it for the first time.

Everyone in yesterday's showing at the Bell Lightbox stayed until the final credits were over. I wonder if they all miss his voice as much as I do.