Swimming to Cambodia ~ part 9

Not only one of the best "one man" performances ever, but actually, one of the best films ever. May, Spalding Gray, be forever remembered. As a film buff and artist, i can easily say Spalding Gray had changed my perspective on life with his monologues.

Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia is a 1987 Jonathan Demme-directed performance film (beore Silence of the Lambs, and Philidelphia, but after Stop Making Sense). The film is a performance of Spalding Gray's monologue ("Talking Cure") which centered around the themes as his trip to Southeast Asia to create the role of the U.S. Ambassador's aide in The Killing Fields, and his search for his "perfect moment".
Swimming to Cambodia was originally a theatre piece on which Gray spent two years working. Swimming to Cambodia won Gray an Obie award.
The opening shots of the film depict Gray walking toward The Performing Garage in New York. He goes in and after walking in past the audience, he takes his seat behind a table. On the table is a glass of water, a microphone and a notebook which Gray brought with him. Behind him are two pulldown maps. One is a map of Southeast Asia and the other is a diagram of the bombing of Cambodia, which Gray tells the viewers was called Operation Menu.

Spalding Rockwell Gray (June 5, 1941 January 10, 2004) was an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, performance artist, and monologist. He was primarily known for his "trenchant, personal narratives delivered on sparse, unadorned sets with a dry, WASP, quiet mania." Gray achieved notoriety for writing and acting in the play Swimming to Cambodia, adapted into a film in 1987.
He began his career in regional theatre, moved to New York in 1967 and three years later joined Richard Schechner's experimental troupe, the Performance Group. He co-founded the Wooster Group ensemble in 1975. He died in New York City of an apparent suicide. Proceding his suicide (Drowning in the East River) in June 2001, he suffered severe injuries in a car crash while on holiday in Ireland. "In the crash, Gray, who had always battled his hereditary depression and bipolar tendencies, suffered a badly broken hip, leaving his right leg almost immobilized, and a fracture in his skull that left a gruesome, jagged scar on his forehead. He now suffered not only from depression but from a brain injury: during surgery in which a titanium plate was placed over the break in his skull, surgeons removed dozens of bone fragments from his frontal cortex. Shattered both physically and emotionally, he had spent the ensuing months experimenting with every therapy imaginable." Coincidentally, Spaulding played a character who commits suicide in the movie "King of the Hill" (Another Great Film)
Among those from whom Gray sought treatment was Oliver Sacks, a well-known neurologist. Sacks proposed that Gray perceived the taking of his own life as part of what he had to say: "On several occasions he talked about what he called 'a creative suicide.' On one occasion, when he was being interviewed, he thought that the interview might be culminated with a 'dramatic and creative suicide.'" Sacks added: "I was at pains to say that he would be much more creative alive than dead."
On January 10, 2004, Gray, was declared missing. The night before his disappearance he had seen Tim Burton's film Big Fish, which ends with the line "A man tells a story over and over so many times he becomes the story. In that way, he is immortal"...
Gray's widow, Kathie Russo, has said You know, Spalding cried after he saw that movie. I just think it gave him permission. I think it gave him permission to die.
On March 7, 2004, the New York City medical examiner's office reported that Gray's body had been discovered by two men and pulled from the East River. It is believed that Gray jumped off the side of the Staten Island Ferry. Spaulding's mother had taken her own life in 1967, which Spaulding talks about in his monologue "Monster in a Box". In his monologue "Gray's Anatomy" he speaks of his macular degeneration and his going blind.

The soundtrack for this film was composed and performed by Laurie Anderson, who would also score Gray's follow-up film, Monster in a Box. Anderson later reused music from the film for a series of "Personal Service Announcements" she produced in 1989 to promote her album, Strange Angels (A FANTASTIC album, i might add).
While Sam Waterston and Ira Wheeler are credited as additional cast in this film, they are only shown in clips from the film The Killing Fields.
The monologue was first published in book form two years before the release of the film.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Performance
• Spalding Gray
• Swimming to Cambodia
• Art
• Politics
• Acting
• Vietnam War
• Killing Fields
• Pol Pot
• Lon Nol
• Film
• Life
• Communication
• New York
• Demme
• Laurie Anderson

[sancombru]

@CooperHaydenn I guess, but I never heard bout auzzies or californians being drown-proof so it kinda makes u wonder :P

[Lifesucksdie123]

@CooperHaydenn it's not on youtube yet but you can get a copy on ebay for $1.00 if you have a vhs player.

[CooperHaydenn]

@Lifesucksdie123 is that anywhere on the internet? i cant find it.

[CooperHaydenn]

@sancombru there is lots of a surfing. people just asume they are all champion swimmers. its like saying, a canadian cant freeze to death.

[sancombru]

So...y can't southafricans drown???

[Lifesucksdie123]

monster in a box is great too.

[jesseboy303]

thx for upping this brother...dig spalding ever since i saw gray's anatomy.