You might wonder why you would want to see this film, I know I certainly do for I'm not one of those arty types who would leap all over the film for any number of reasons, I don't even know who Spalding Gray was.

However this does show the power of the trailer for it caught me and engaged me, and now after watching it and reading the blurb, I know who he is and want to see the film from Steven Soderbergh.

And Everything is Going Fine is a documentary from Steven Soderbergh about Spalding Gray, a man who was an actor, playwright, screenwriter and writer who turned to the stage and monologues to tell the story of his life, and it became a hit.

It's that performance that seems to be at the core of the film And Everything is Going Fine and recreates his telling of his own story on stage for the big screen through his interviews, recordings of his show and other material.

Here's a blurb for the film:

...an incisive and entertaining portrait of Spalding Gray by director Steven Soderbergh provides an intimate look at the master monologist as described by his most critical, irreverent and insightful biographer: Spalding Gray. Soderbergh distills 25 years of rare and revealing footage to construct a riveting final monologue. An official selection of the SXSW, True/False and Edinburgh film festivals, this inspired one-man show is a bittersweet display of the writer-performer's playful and embattled intelligence, and his gift for tracking universal truths by looking himself squarely in the eye.

It does seem to be an interesting and powerful film, and when I saw his face I instantly recognised him as an actor from films such as The Killing Fields, The Paper, all the way to Kate & Leopold.

However one of the most interesting things I now know about him is what I read in his Wikipedia article and the reveal that in the closing stages of his life, after a terrible car accident, he began seeing suicide as not only a way to end his life, but to end his career, his monologue.

It was January 10, 2004 that he was declared missing, and his widow, Kathie Russo, said that the night before he disappeared he had watched the Tim Burton film Big Fish, a film I loved, 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.”

It's a powerful and moving ending that left Spalding in tears, something it did to me too, huge, gasping sobs. She said of that line and the film:

”I just think it gave him permission. I think it gave him permission to die.”

You can see the trailer for And Everything is Going Fine over at Apple Trailers, and right here.