And Everything Is Going Fine: Steven Soderbergh

It takes a special kind of person to keep a large audience captivated with nothing but the power of his words. For almost 30 years, monologist Spalding Gray would do just that. Armed with nothing more than a desk, chair, notepad, glass of water, and perhaps a record player, Gray would captivate audiences with stories about his life. Oh, his life wasn't anything particularly extraordinary, although he did travel to Southeast Asia to do research for a screenplay which would eventually become the film The Killing Fields (1984). Instead, he managed to draw audiences in with stories about everyday life. His mild yet utterly hypnotic voice and delivery transformed his one-man performances into dissections of the human condition and American society. Six years after Gray's death, director Steven Soderbergh released And Everything is Going Fine, a loving and heartfelt documentary that examined his life and career. Cobbled together from footage of interviews and performances, And Everything is Going Fine paints a picture of a true American original. Sometimes funny, occasionally sad, but never boring, Gray comes across as a man struggling to come to terms with society, family, and his own life. He expresses his horror at learning that his wife was pregnant, desperately demanding for her to "Get rid of it." He recounts an uncomfortable sexual encounter with a gay man in his younger years that required no small amount of bravery to discuss in front of a large audience. He reveals that once when he was a child, he accidentally gave himself a third-degree burn and was refused medical treatment by his mother, a devout Christian Scientist. At the end of it all, Gray appears to be a man who has seen much in his life and has obsessively thought about every single second of it. Gray's life is an affirmation of Harvey Pekar's mantra: "Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff." And every second of And Everything is Going Fine proves it.

7/10