Near the beginning of his directing career, Steven Soderbergh filmed a performance of writer/actor Spalding Gray’s “Gray’s Anatomy,” a piece that married his gift for compelling, motormouthed storytelling with unflinching self-examination. This formula has already made him an unwitting icon of the late 80s and early 90s self-obsession, with “Swimming to Cambodia” and “Monster in a Box”. Gray dealt with depression and anxiety his entire life, compounded by the suicide of his mother, other family issues, and a bad car accident. He died of apparent suicide in 2004.
This film is a memorial to Gray assembled by Soderbergh again, from family home videos, interviews, and performance footage. I’m not sure that it would be very interesting to those who do not know Gray’s monologues already, but for those who do, it is well worth checking out.
