And Everything Is Going Fine (2010)

3.0

DOCUMENTARY

U.S. Release Date: TBA

Running Length: 89 Minutes

MPAA Classification: NR

Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Cast: Spalding Gray

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Music: Forrest Gray

U.S. Distributor: TBA

Review by: Carter Moulton

06/17/10

Spalding Gray sits in a chair onstage. His frame is clearly visible, but spotlights add extra illumination to the front of his face and his shoulders amidst an otherwise black set. His forehead glistens. He wears a plaid, tropical-colored collared shirt—sleeves rolled up. In front of him is a desk, on which sits a glass of water and an open notebook. Gray tells stories about his life. People listen.

Gray, a self-dubbed “poetic journalist,” is a monologist who specializes in comical autobiographical stories. Gray must’ve been one of the inspirations for New York Times Best Seller David Sedaris—they’re telling the same type of stories. Gray explains in an interview that his stories indeed are true, filtered through the mind and imagination.

Gray is this movie. Over half of the film is recorded from live performances. There is no need for narration, no outside interviews, because Gray is telling us about his own life: his mother’s suicide, a golf outing with his father, his affairs, his struggles. Director Steven Soderbergh (Oceans 11, Traffic) more or less pieces the footage together like a puzzle, resulting in a final product where no scene is without the presence of Gray.

It’s fitting that Soderbergh constructs a film about a monologist with a single—mono—voice. Because Gray is the only voice, And Everything Is Going Fine blurs the line between reality and fiction. We don’t know how accurate the stories are, and we don’t know, even in the interviews—compliments of 60 Minutes, E! Entertainment, MTV, etc.—if we’re viewing a façade. That being said, he does often discuss astronomical ideas, such as religion, loneliness, and the meaning of life. Soderbergh is trying to prove that Gray’s performances are theatrical, yes, but authentic—an element of Gray’s inner-self.

In one scene, in which Gray repeats, “And everything is going fine, and everything is going fine,” the man shoots his mouth a mile-a-minute; contrasted against this energy, we see a scene at the very end where he—being much older now—sits in-between questions of an outside interview, staring toward the ground and reflecting about life.

The film represents the stories, but in Gray’s case, the stories become the man. Nothing is mentioned about the events that led up to Gray’s suspected suicide in 2004. Instead, Soderbergh includes Gray saying that his stories will be passed down, and thus, he will never truly die. I wish there was an illumination—some revealing, less public, footage that Soderbergh came across in all of his research—that would allow us to go even further into Gray’s mind, but, in the end, And Everything Is Going Fine is too well-edited, well-guided, and entertaining not too recommend.