In the new movie "Monster In a Box," Spalding Gray sits at a table on what is essentially a bare stage. On the table there is a microphone, a glass of water and "the monster" - a 1,900-page book manuscript that is long overdue to its publisher.
In the film, as he did for some 200 performances on stage, Gray simply sits and talks to the audience for nearly 90 minutes about "the monster," allowing for various sidetrack discussions now and again.And it's enthralling.
Here we are in an age when the Hollywood dictum is that movies must move - preferably at hyper-speed. That they must have action in every other scene, with alternating car chases and explosions where possible. And they must never, never allow the audience to think.
Yet, here is Spalding Gray, the ultimate talking head, up there on the big screen, simply telling stories.
"Monster In a Box" will have its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival at 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 25, and Gray will introduce the film. He will also act as master of ceremonies for the festival awards banquet that evening.
"Monster" is Gray's second monologue to be filmed - the first was "Swimming to Cambodia."
And he insists that everything he says is true: He really does have a 1,900-page manuscript, which, he says, he's taking to the publisher right after our telephone conversation; he really does have small acting roles in movies, and he can be seen in such films as "Clara's Heart," "Beaches" and "The Killing Fields"; and his mother really did commit suicide.
The latter subject is also the basis for his book, "the monster," which makes for a tremendous case of writer's block, leading to the digressions in his commentary. Though Gray's stories are very funny, this element of tragedy laces the monologue, giving it a serious edge.
"Sometimes there are exaggerations and embellishments," Gray says. "I'm working from memory. It's as close as one can get to so-called truth. I keep a journal and make an outline, evolving it in front of the audience rather than pre-writing it. I've performed that monologue probably 200 times and it goes through an enormous evolution."
"Monster in a Box" is Gray's 13th monologue, and he says he's about to develop a 14th - though, at the moment, he has no idea what it will be. "I have to develop a new one, a new work for Berkeley on March 15. It's already sold out. I will just come in with whatever's on my mind. But I really work serendipitously. I don't do a lot of research. It may have something to do with mortality. It may be called `Gray's Anatomy.' "
He says using real life as the basis for his stage work does have its drawbacks. "I'm always working, that's true - it's very hard to turn it off. One of the drawbacks is that I turn my life into a story before it's lived, sometimes before it's felt. I have to work in therapy to slow the stories down and learn to be a little private.
"I went out to dinner with Timothy Leary and Barbara Leary, and I said I had to get going, that I couldn't stay out late because I had to go see my therapist in the morning. And they began making fun of me, and Tim said to Barbara, `Oh, let him go, the therapist is his writing partner.' "
Asked if he'll do any live performing at the Sundance festival, Gray says, "Oh, no - I only perform now when I really really have to." Then, he says, sounding worried, "Oh, no, wait. I have to do the awards, I'm the emcee. That's not an easy thing for me. People think I'm Mr. Spontaneity, but I'm just a poetic journalist. I'm not in any way Robin Williams.
"People think I make up the monologue as I go along, they have no idea how long it takes. Once there was a fire alarm, a false alarm, in the middle of a show I was doing in Boston. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, and peoplewere standing up saying that they wanted to hear what I might say about it. But I don't work that way. I'm fairly quick, but I prefer not to work until I can digest the stuff."
Gray's acting career, minor roles in major movies, is continuing. "I'm doing a lot of doctors - I don't know, maybe it's my Christian Science karma coming back. I was a doctor in `Beaches,' and I'm a doctor in `Straight Talk' - my whole scene is with Dolly Parton, where I challenge her credibility as a talk-show host. And I take Danny Aiello's heart and blood pressure in Paul Mazursky's `Pickles.' I get to use my own name there, I'm Dr. Spalding."
His book, of course, will not be 1,900 pages long. Scheduled to be published the first week in June, it will be a 225-page quality paperback. "There was an enormous amount of editing. They cut it in half and boiled it down. I learned a lot from the process. The original idea, when I started six years ago, was to tell every story that was on my mind around my relationship to my mother and her demise. I wrote it in longhand - about 4,000 pages - typed down to 1,900 pages. There's another book there if I ever want to go back to it."