Irish Times: 
Edition 2WWED 10 MAR 2004, Page 38 

Spalding Gray;Obituary;The Register 


Spalding Gray, monologist and actor, was born on June 5, 1941. He
disappeared on January 10, 2004, aged 62. His body was found on March
7, 2004.
Actor whose break came in The Killing Fields but whose name was made
by the idiosyncratic one-man shows that followed.
On paper -and indeed on screen -the role of the US consul in the
epic 1984 film The Killing Fields had little to distinguish it from
hundreds of other parts that put a vaguely human face on officialdom
and authority each year. However it was to prove the turning point in
the career of Spalding Gray, the actor.
Gray, who was in his forties and had appeared in several films
without attracting much attention, used his experience on The Killing
Fields as the foundation of a one-man stage show Swimming to
Cambodia, in which he discussed his film-making experience, praising
the film's Thai hosts as "the nicest people money can buy".
From there he spiralled off into a highly personal and idiosyncratic
examination of Southeast Asian politics, assessing the influence of
the French philosopher Rousseau on the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.
The sprawling, two-part, three-hour stage show was trimmed to less
than half its original length for a film version in 1987, directed by
Jonathan Demme. Gray was filmed at a desk in the Performing Garage, a
small New York Theatre, his only props a couple of maps and a
pointer. It was the first and most successful of a series of filmed
monologues, which saw the former bit-part player working with some of
the biggest directors in the film business. Monster in a Box (1992),
which chronicled his attempts to write a novel, was directed by the
documentary maker Nick Broomfield, and Gray's Anatomy (1996), which
followed his attempts to find a cure for an eye disorder, by Steven
Soderbergh -testimony to the high standing with which Gray was held
in the industry.
He had attempted to kill himself and discussed suicide in his
wandering, intimate monologues. He once said: "I can't make anything
up. I think of myself as a collage artist. I'm cutting and pasting
memories of my life. And I say, I have to live a life in order to
tell a life."
He had a history of depression, which intensified after he suffered
serious head injuries in a car crash in Ireland in 2001. So his
family and friends feared the worst when he disappeared in January,
particularly after the last sightings placed him on the Staten Island
ferry. His body was recovered from New York's East River on Sunday.
The son of a factory worker, Gray was born on Rhode Island and the
plaid shirts he wore seemed to suggest a slightly conservative
background, the long hair being more a sign of forgetfulness than
rebellion.
But behind the facade was a troubled and complex man. His friend
John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead lyricist and internet
guru, recalled defending LSD on a daytime television show. "Spalding
planted himself in the audience, which was not exactly on my side,"
Barlow recalled. "At the right moment, he rose looking professorial
and Protestant -the sort of Wasp he usually played on screen -and
astonished the audience by giving a recondite, if slightly mad,
homily on the connection between the psychedelic experience and
enlightenment. We barely escaped untarred."
Gray's father was an alcoholic, his mother suffered from chronic
depression and Gray himself stopped speaking for a year after his dog
died. His mother committed suicide when Gray was in his mid-teens. He
worked as a refuse collector during the day and a dishwasher at
night, and he attributed the development of his storytelling talents
to evenings spent amusing the chefs with stories from his day job.
After moving to New York, he worked with the cutting-edge theatre
companies the Performance Group and the Wooster Group, and he also
appeared in several "adult" films in the Seventies, including Little
Orphan Dusty (1976), with John Holmes.
Sex and Death to the Age 14 was the first of more than a dozen
one-man shows and was staged in 1979. Over the next two decades his
shows helped to promote and popularise the concept of confessional,
one-man theatre, and several have been published in book form. "The
man may be the ultimate Wasp neurotic, analysing his actions with an
intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so
self-deprecatingly funny," wrote the Associated Press drama critic
Michael Kuchwara in 1996.
After The Killing Fields and Swimming to Cambodia, Gray was in
demand for supporting roles, appearing in True Stories (1986); Stars
and Bars (1988), as a clergyman; Clara's Heart (1988), as a doctor;
the weepie Beaches (1988), as another doctor. In Steven Soderbergh's
King of the Hill (1993) he played an eccentric who kills himself. On
Broadway he played the stage manager in a 1988 revival of Our Town.
Other films include The Paper (1994), Beyond Rangoon (1995) and Kate
and Leopold (2001), again playing a doctor in the time-travel romance
with Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman.
His first wife, Renee Shafransky, worked with him on his shows and
directed several of the original stage productions, including Monster
in a Box and Gray's Anatomy. The relationship ended with Gray
drinking heavily, taking drugs and predicting his own demise.
He subsequently married the costume designer Kathie Russo and
appeared to come to terms with many of his personal demons. Gray and
Russo each had a child from previous relationships and a new baby
expanded the family further. The monologue It's a Slippery Slope,
drew on his experiences of mid-life crisis, the demands of fatherhood
and learning to ski. But he suffered serious head injuries in a
horrific accident on holiday in Ireland in 2001, was plunged into
even deeper depression and subsequently attempted to commit suicide
by jumping off a bridge.
Performances of his latest monologue had to be cancelled after his
disappearance.
It reflected on the experience of the car crash and its aftermath
and was entitled Life Interrupted. 
Caption:  Gray's monologues ranged from the demands of fatherhood and 
difficulties of skiing to Rousseau's influence on Pol Pot. 
Photograph by JOE TABACCA / AP
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