And Everything is Going Fine...OR IS IT!!!???

AUGH!! My picture is leaking into the names!!

Last night, I went at signs and wonders, we watched this particular film, about a guy named Spalding Gray. I beforehand had never heard of Spalding gray before, I might have watched some of his movies, but then again, I don't know. The movie wasn't really a movie, there was no plot curve or anything like that, it was just him talking about his life to the camera. It wasn't just that though, it would occasionally switch scenes between different monologues and various interviews, in a sense though, the pattern wasn't completely random. It did start with him talking about his younger years, and then at the end he was talking about his current life and an accident he got into. The whole format of the movie was interesting, but the most interesting thing of all is the man himself, Spalding Gray. Even though I have never heard of this man before, the whole time I was thinking " how could I have not?". There are just some people out there with a more interesting life than others, the experiences, the trials and challenges they've had to overcome, all of it, some people just had it harder and overall more interesting than others. If you were to put me in front of the camera and have me talk about my life, I would have some interesting things to say, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to top the part in his life where he tried out homosexual sex. That's another thing I enjoyed about this film, the sheer awkwardness of some of the scenes. He talks about some pretty weird stuff, and if you don't know what I'm talking about or haven't seen the film, go watch it and see what I'm saying here. Somewhat early in the movie he is talking about something, but whatever it was, I had no idea, because he was holding up the cover of a playboy magazine... Okay, now I wasn't entranced by this magazine, but the whole time I was thinking, "why is he holding this up, and what relevance does it have to the scene??". He might have been talking about it, I don't know, the point is, it was this raunchy, raw and completely unexpected moment.   Now what saddens me and sort of "gets me" about this film, is the ending. After Leeper said that he committed suicide ( it might've been someone else who said this ) in 2004, I had fully convinced myself that he was happy in the end. He had been through some tough stuff, what with his unexpected son, but the one scene that told me he was happy was when he started dancing. He was doing a monologue and held a boombox up to the mic and explained how his whole family, his children and wife, were all just letting loose and dancing the night away. I figured that was it, he's happy, all of the troubles of stage performance and his parents and his thoughts of suicide... All gone! He has reached the conclusion, that he is going to die happy, knowing that he had a family that loved him... Why was I wrong? Was it not enough? Was raising a family not enough to make him live it out and not kill himself? He was old and he did have some sort of mental illness, but for the most part he seemed physically healthy aside from the busted leg towards the end. The broken leg however, is just a broken leg, it heals, it recovers. Some of the things he had to go through in his life wouldn't heal, and were scars, but towards the end, he still got up on stage, put the mic to the speaker, and told the world how his family danced.