Thanks.
Thank you.
I can remember riding around on the back of my mother's bicycle in her little seat...
the basket seat on the back...
because we were celebrating the end of World War II...
because we, the Americans...
had dropped the bombs on the Japs in Hiroshima...
and we were celebrating because my mother's brothers, Tinky and John...
were coming home from the war.
Maybe I should just tell you some of the facts as I remember them.
I grew up in Barrington, Rhode Island...
in a clapboard house.
At the time I was a child...
I guess I was told that it was 75 years old.
It had a well - a bucket well...
and an artesian well - two wells.
A well you could drop a bucket down into...
and hoist it up and drink fresh water in the summer.
It had a barn, which we kept garden tools in...
and cars as well - two cars.
And an attic upstairs and a cellar in the barn.
A lovely garden that my grandfather and father...
grew everything in...
including peanuts, Swiss chard.
My Grandmother Gray, my father's mother, lived with us.
I was the middle of three boys...
so my parents had three sons.
And so I got a little kitten, Mittens.
I called it Mittens 'cause it had those little white, you know, paws.
And so this Mittens...
I hadrt had it very long before it was killed by Mrs. Adams...
driving a large black Chrysler at dusk...
On Rumstick Road.
Mrs. Adams was a very big woman. She had two daughters...
that my brothers and I called "piggy big sisters. "
They were very big, and they looked like pigs.
That's the most I can remember of them.
And Mrs. Adams was mortified. She realized what she'd done.
She stopped the car and she chased me, and I ran.
I couldn't face her. I couldn't breathe. I was so -
I couldn't catch my breath, and I ran to my room, and she chased me.
I think she made it as far as the front door...
and my mother, I suppose, stopped her and talked with her, but she never got to me.
I went and locked myself in my room. I was catatonic. Couldrt catch my breath.
Something like my brother actually couldn't - He'd go through that too -
extreme anxieties - my older brother.
We were sleeping in the same bedroom, and I'd wake up in the middle of the night...
and he'd be holding his throat, blue in the face...
telling my mother and father he was dying because he couldn't breathe, you see?
And they'd be sitting at the edge of the bed, trying to calm him down.
He was standing on the bed. Finally, they would calm him down...
and my father would go to bed, and my mother would stay with him...
and she'd turn out the lights and sit on the edge of his bed...
and we would look up at the ceiling, which the only light...
was these fluorescent decals of the stars -
the Big Dipper, a new moon, Saturn.
And my brother would start in. He'd say...
"Mom, when I die, is it forever?"
She'd go, "Yes, dear. "
He'd go, "Mom, when I die...
is it forever and ever?"
She'd go, "Mm-hmm, dear. "
Then he'd go, "Mom...
when I die, is it forever and ever...
and ever and ever?"
She'd go, "Mm. "
And I'd just fall asleep to this.
It would put me right out, and he would always get upset with me...
for being the calm one, you see?
Well, there were two extreme nervous breakdowns...
and probably a lot of nervous "in between" that she had...
and the first one was when I was I think ten years old.
And it was in the summer...
and, uh, it was -
She was just very nervous and pulling at her hair...
and unable to concentrate and talking to herself.
Then I think at that time, she was sent away to a Christian Science nursing home.
I tell you, the most difficult thing about it for me was that...
the denial that was going on around the house.
My Grandmother Gray lived with us at the time - my father's mother -
and no one was ever coming...
to me or my brothers...
and saying... talking about it.
So that I'd be in the playroom with my friends in the summer...
and all of a sudden I'd hear Mom...
shrieking in the - in the kitchen...
crying out to Jesus and going...
"Oh, Rock! Oh, no! Oh!" You know...
just in distress, like she's being attacked.
I can remember pausing, and my friends would be afraid.
We'd all be afraid and be looking at each other, and no one would say...
"Was that your mother?" Or "What was that?"
It was like a ghost.
I think that some people are born people...
and they grow up as people and then they decide to become professionals...
'cause they have to make a living, right?
And they become a dentist, doctor or lawyer, whatever it is they study for...
and then they go through life as that, and then they die, and that's that.
You know, even some people study acting. They become actors through studying acting.
Other people are born actors.
It's an ontological condition. There's no way out.
They are simply acting out all the time, you know? And I think I was in that state.
For instance, I was 12 years old...
and some fireworks would go off, just a whole package of lady fingers outside.
And I'd take the cue and rush to the window...
and go, "Mom! Mom, come quick!
Russ Russell, our neighbor, is up on his roof shooting his children!"
And that was before that happened so often, you know?
In the old days. It wasrt a common occurrence.
And my mother would buy right into it. She'd rush over going, "What?
Oh! Oh! Oh - No, no.
Oh, Spuddy dear, no. "
She would be...
well, very, very forthcoming, and helping me with my spelling words...
and taking me on my paper route...
and telling me intimate stories...
about her relationship to my father that I probably shouldn't have heard.
And then all of a sudden one day when I was 14...
and had failed seventh grade and tried to knock myself out.
We used to take 20 deep breaths after a hot bath...
and blow on your thumb.
What was I doing? I don't know. Some crazy thing.
And I got knocked out, and when I came to, my arm...
this arm, was against the radiator...
and I had a third-degree burn - it looked like rare roast beef -
and it was a miracle I was still alive...
that I didn't break a blood vessel in my head or just, you know.
And my parents were downstairs watching television -
Gunsmoke, I remember - in the playroom.
And I walked down, shaking all over with this incredible burn...
and my mother looked at it and went...
"Oh, put some soap on it, dear, and know the truth" -
the truth being that there is no...
pain or suffering in God's world, there's no imperfection.
That is enormous distance, you see?
That's what I mean by "alternating current. "
Any mother, I don't care what religion she's in...
would, I would think - Intuition would be to fly to that child.
But for her, it would represent acknowledging the condition.
She really believed in the power of mind. Our pipes used to freeze in a bathroom...
from the wind off Narragansett Bay, which is very ice-cold in February...
and she was sure that the wind was caused by the disturbed thinking...
of the Red Chinese in Communist China.
You see?
And she told me that Mary Baker Eddy said there was a man who was so afraid...
when he was on the operating table, he was sweating, he thought it was blood...
and he died of fear, you see?
So we were always afraid of being afraid. It was never-ending.
My father, he said, "Why don't we go play golf together?"
Now, we had never played golf together.
We never even joined the country club.
My uncle said there were two kinds of people in Barrington, Rhode Island -
those who belong and those who don't - to the Rhode Island Country Club.
We didn't belong.
Later, my Grandmother Gray told me that my father's father...
told him the facts of life on a golf course...
so this is where my father got the idea from.
So we went out - We had to go to a public course...
in Seekonk, Massachusetts, called Wampanoag.
Now, mainly when it rained, it was underwater...
so we called it Swampanoag.
So we get out there. I think we were on the fourth hole...
and my father went...
"You know" - This just came out of nowhere.
He said, "There's a gal in our plant. "
He worked in a factory. He called it a
plant. It was a very conservative factory...
where they made screw machines, machines that made screws...
and they didn't even allow Coca-Cola in this plant until a few years ago.
And he said, "There's a gal in our plant...
who has a turkey in the oven...
and she won't admit to it. "
"It's, uh - It's as plain as the nose on her face.
She won't admit to it because she doesn't have a man. She's not married...
and she keeps coming to work because she has no one to support her.
People are saying, 'Why don't you go have the turkey...
and come back when you're through? ' But she -"
"Now, you wouldn't want to get a gal...
in a situation like that, would you?"
And I said, "Well, I guess not. No. No. "
And then there was a pause. We were kind of going with our clubs...
and walking and putting, and he said...
"Um, you know, there are diseases that can make you blind. "
Now, I didn't know what he was talking about then. I didn't know.
I was a little paranoid then, and I thought...
"Oh, Jeannie Lamb's mother has found out.
She's told Dad to take me out on the golf course and say...
'Tell your son that if he fucks my daughter, he'll go blind. "
- We played golf out on the - - We did. That's right.
Wampanoag Trail, the public course.
And in fact, that's where you first attempted to tell me the facts of life.
- Was it? - Yeah.
- We were out to the fourth hole. - On the fourth hole?
And you told me about a woman that got pregnant at Brown & Sharpe -
- On the fourth hole? - Yeah.
I don't think you said she had a turkey in the oven, but you might have. I don't know.
Would that be something you'd say? Or did I make that up?
Sometimes I don't know when I'm fictionalizing or not.
I sometimes don't know whether you are either, but -
My Uncle Tinky introduced me to wine.
His name was Ted. We called him Tinky. I don't know why.
But he brought wine - two bottles of Great Western sparkling Burgundy...
every Thanksgiving and Christmas - to my grandmother's house.
Now, I sat next to my Grandmother Gray, and she didn't like sparkling Burgundy...
so I got two glasses, which means I was twice-over happy twice a year.
I was happy on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The rest of the year was mainly waiting for the sparkling Burgundy.
And I told my friend Duke Watts, I said, "This wine is good.
Wine is a good thing. We must find it. "
"To have it more days of the year. "
The way we would do it, we discovered a plan -
he had his drivers' license, I didn't have mine yet -
was to drive down toward Newport, the naval base...
but not go over the Mount Hope Bridge, because we didn't want to pay the dollar.
It was owned by Haffenreffer, and he was charging
a dollar to go over and a dollar to come back.
So we would go, and they would say, "All right, what do you want?"
And we always wanted to say to them, "We would like two bottles...
of Great Western sparkling Burgundy. "
But we were afraid to. I don't know why.
We were afraid that the sailors would think we were -
So they'd say, "What do you want?" You know?
And we'd say, "We want wine. " "Well, what kind?"
"Red wine," we'd say, 'cause we didn't know the kinds.
And they'd always come out with a quart bottle of Petri port.
Which we started to like. It was sweeter.
It was 20 percent alcohol, although it didn't have the little bubbles.
And so we were having -
We liked drinking in the afternoons, when our energy was at the highest.
We called these afternoon drinking sessions "luncheons. "
That was our code word so my parents wouldn't know what was going on.
And a typical luncheon would be a bottle of Petri port...
and we would listen to Sidney Bechet full blast on Duke Watts's record player...
and then jump out his second-story window after we got drunk, land...
come around, come back upstairs, drink some more, jump out the window, land...
while the music was playing, just letting off steam.
And I thought I would try out for the junior play.
And not only was I dyslexic, but I was so nervous I couldn't hold a book.
I was...
So I didn't get the role.
So my senior year, they did The Curious Savage as the class play...
and I said, "By God, I'm gonna try out the way I read...
and I'm gonna hold the book down so it won't move"...
and I just read it the only way I could read it.
"Cheese, eggs, milk, meat. Ha, ha.
I drink about four pints of milk a day -
Channel Island milk- ha, ha -
and eat about a pound of steak. "
And I got the role...
Because it took place in an insane asylum.
They thought I was perfect for the role...
of the man who thinks he's Hannibal.
He's deluded. He has delusions of grandeur, and he thinks not only is he Hannibal...
that he can play the violin - And at the end
of the play, everyone's fantasy comes true.
They put on violin music, and I'm - sawing away.
Now, opening night - and of course we only played two nights at Fryeburg Academy -
It wasrt at rehearsal. And I remember I had to do a downstage left cross...
and I improvised a hopscotch, in character, on the squares.
And the entire audience laughed.
Like that. Only everyone, complete.
And I was hooked. I was hooked.
It went through me like a "thoop!" Like a "whoo!" Like a you-know-what.
And I didn't want to do anything else.
There was nothing else I wanted to do before that, so this was a novelty.
I remember that a very important thing happened in that Curious Savage.
The stage manager kept trying to give me my lines...
because my timing - they didn't appreciate my timing.
And Ruth Hartz - I remember Mrs. Hartz, the director, said...
"Don't ever give Spud a cue.
Don't ever give him his line unless he asks for it...
because he has excellent timing. "
And that's the first time anyone had said...
the word "excellent" in relationship to anything I did.
And to say it around timing - well, that's everything, isn't it?
I was a virgin when I entered college.
And I was at a party...
and my friend Randy came up to me and said...
"You see that girl?
Her name's Pam, and she goes down. "
"And I'm going to go down with her before the night's over. "
And I thought I'd try to beat him out, and I went up and said...
"Hi, Pam. My name's Spud, and I hear you go down. "
And we spent the night together.
I began by licking her breasts.
She said, "What do you think I am, your mother?"
Um...
then we had intercourse.
And I came in about 30 seconds...
and I ended up lying there for the rest of the night, staring at the ceiling.
And I have to tell you I was a little anxious...
because my bed was right by the window.
I kept rearranging the bed, but the room was
so small that no matter where I put it...
it was basically by the window.
Why was it upsetting for me? Because I was reading Freud for the first time...
and I read that Freud had discovered an unconscious.
I don't remember how, but he had.
And this was a shock for me, because up until then, I thought I was here.
I didn't know there was a whole part of me missing. I didn't know...
there was this "un"...
which, if you don't know how big it is, could go on forever. It could be huge.
And I thought it was housing all the
self-destructive shadow aspects of myself...
and that if I went to sleep by that window...
the "un" would take over my body in the night...
and jump out the window with it.
And halfway down, the conscious self, waking up...
would be desperately grasping at the bricks.
Now, this upset me so much that I transferred
to Emerson College down the road.
But you know what I was curious about was that...
what you thought about when I first starting
going into acting at Emerson College.
- I thought you were absolutely nuts. - Yeah.
How anybody could make a living in the theater...
particularly one that was a shy, backwards sort of young fellow -
I just knew you couldn't do it.
Long Day's Journey Into Night. This was a role I really got into.
I was playing Edmund, the O'Neill role.
I was drinking whiskey, Irish whiskey.
I was suffering. I was reading the O'Neill biography.
I was living in a big Victorian house. It was
Theatre by the Sea, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Tugboats out there. Perfect sound effects.
Me drinking the whiskey and refusing to turn up the heat...
in this very cold Victorian house with a widow's walk...
and the owner of the house who's renting me this room is saying, "Please, please.
I'll lower the rent if you turn up the heat. "
And I wouldn't do it. And the pipes were bursting, and he was down there.
He had such a beautiful disposition. It was unbelievable what I put him through.
There was ice on the toilet in the morning. I had to pee on top of ice.
There was a sheet of ice there. And we were playing this thing four hours long...
to seven people in subzero weather at this warehouse on a Sunday night.
Seven people in the audience. And my brother had been in Chile.
Rocky had been in Chile for three years, and he came back to see me.
He hadrt seen me in three years, and in order
to deal with my new theatrical career...
he sat in the front row and took notes throughout the whole production.
He was very intellectual.
And the woman who was playing the mother was swearing in the dressing room -
"Who the fuck is that asshole in the front row taking notes?
We've already been reviewed!"
She was throwing ashtrays around the dressing room.
I said, "It's my brother, Rocky. "
And when Rocky and I got home...
the first thing he did was give me his notes.
After I left Rhode Island, you see, I wanted to go across country...
and I didn't have enough money to do it.
I had this fantasy idea that I thought every great actor...
should both play Hamlet in his lifetime and also fuck on stage.
You know, should run the gamut...
or else try to incorporate both in Hamlet.
But Hamlet wasrt playing this summer, or I didn't know about any auditions for it...
so I ended up - To try to make money, I ended up applying for a pornographic movie.
And I got the role. I was really surprised.
She would work on us. She would work on me, say, with her mouth...
and him with the hand, and then vice versa.
And then as soon as I was up...
I'd start down as he went up...
And we would never get it together.
So finally he said, "Clear the room. "
So the director would go out of the room, and we'd work together...
and we'd both get up, and he'd say...
"All right. Quick. Bring the cameras back. "
And by the time the camera's set up, we'd be down again.
So it was a lot of work.
We finally finished the shot. It took about all afternoon.
The director was very upset and running around me, saying...
"Make more noise, Gray. Make more faces. "
The Knack.
Not a very good play by Ann Jellicoe.
I happen to have a copy of it here.
I was in this play at Theatre by the Sea...
in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
I thought I should have played the role of Tolen...
but I got cast as Colin, who was the stud.
My father brought my mother to see this play...
while she was having an incurable nervous breakdown.
She thought she was coming to see Long Day's Journey Into Night.
Now, that wasrt because she was having a nervous breakdown.
That came after this play. It wasrt completely an illusion...
but my father brought her to this because he thought...
Long Day's Journey would upset her too much...
and I'm afraid that this one was worse.
I'm right up to this section...
where the character, Brewster, is trying to get away from his mother.
It's the summer of 1966. She's having a very severe nervous breakdown.
He's trying to help her through it. At the same time, he's very aware...
that he must flee the nest.
He must run away and begin his own life, or he won't have one.
And he desperately wants to become an actor...
and he wants to get his actor's equity card at the Alley Theatre that season.
They have a very good reputation. Also, what is very important for him...
is that they're doing Chekhov's play The Sea Gull...
and he is sure that he is perfect for the role...
of Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev, the young writer...
positive he'll be cast in it because he's sensitive like Konstantin...
his relationship to his mother is not unlike Konstantirs to his mother...
and the other thing is that Konstantin gets to shoot himself in the head...
at the end of every play and come back the following night to play himself again.
Brewster likes this.
And I'm there with my mother in Rhode Island...
and she is going mad.
She's having a nervous breakdown. She's tearing
her hair out from the back of her head.
And I'm trying to calm her down by reading to her from Alan Watts's book...
Psychotherapy East & West.
Laboring under that romantic idea of R.D. Laing's...
how every person who has a nervous breakdown is so lucky...
'cause they get to come out the other side of it with such great wisdom...
provided they come out the other side.
And I was trying to help my mother through to the other side...
but she wasrt listening to Alan Watts.
She was reading from Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy...
and from The Christian Science Monitor.
And I remember that vividly, that warm July day -
she in her pajamas, curled up on the couch...
with The Christian Science Monitor between us like a Japanese paper wall.
And I am so annoyed finally that I can't get through to her...
that I reach down and just flick the paper.
And she pulls the paper down and looks me right in the eyes and says...
"How shall I do it, dear?
How shall I do it?
Shall I do it in the garage with the car?"
The day I found out was that -
My father didn't tell me over the phone.
I'd called him from - let's see, from Houston...
'cause I'd taken a train up to Houston...
and was gonna fly in from Houston to Providence.
And he picked me up. It was a very hot August day.
And I remember I had a bottle of tequila in a brown bag.
I'd been carrying it on the plane.
And I was sipping it outside the Providence airport.
And he picked me up in his Ford LTD with the air conditioner on.
I remember it was very hot. The windows were up.
And he said, "Tying one on, are you?"
I had the bag of tequila...
and we rode in silence for a bit, and I said...
"So how's Mom?" 'Cause I knew she'd been having...
this nervous breakdown for two years...
in and out of shock treatments.
And he just started to -
He broke down while he was driving. He started to cry.
Like, whimper. It wasrt really full-blown.
He said, "She's gone. "
And I remember, looking back on it...
turning to stone like a statue.
And I just heard "gone. " "Gone. " I was trying to make sense of "gone. "
And I remember "gone," like "died of a broken heart. "
I heard that Grimm's fairy tale line.
And then I had an image - and all of this may be fictionalized since then.
But this is what I remember. I had an image of a dandelion...
when it's turned to fluff at the end of the -
Gone. Just gone.
Not "dead," not "killed herself. "
Again, that was avoidance language that was going on in Rhode Island.
And when my mother's obituary appeared, it was "deceased"...
and the rumors were she died of cancer. There was no mention of suicide.
So when I began to talk about it, and the Providence Journal did...
a profile about me doing my first piece...
Rumstick Road, with the Wooster Group...
in which we did an exploration of my mother's suicide in 1967...
as a group piece - with tape recordings and slides - it was a mixed-media piece...
and that really led me into my monologues.
When they did a profile in the Providence Journal, it was scandalous.
I mean, my relatives were upset that it would come out...
that it was this suicide.
My mother committed suicide. Shortly after she committed suicide...
the woman down the road, her husband drank himself to death.
So my father and this woman got together to try to make a good marriage...
and forget about the pain and move into a perfect house.
They moved into this kind of a ranch house...
that was like a very modern, fully equipped motel...
where you pull in the asphalt driveway. On the right is a huge tennis court.
You pull in, push a button in the car...
one of the three cars, a three-car garage door goes up.
Three cars are in the garage. You go around to the front door...
ring the doorbell. It plays 40 different tunes.
My father's always adjusting them every day.
That particular day it was the William Tell Overture, or next day would be...
"The Whole World is Waiting for the Sunrise," with a polka beat...
or it might be "Jingle Bell Rock," according to the seasons.
And you go in and there's a whole weather station there on your left...
with the barometric pressure and the wind velocity and the temperature.
And it's wall-to-wall carpeting and Muzak playing in all the rooms.
And in their bedroom, between the twin beds,
there's a little box that makes white sound.
You can turn it to static, you can turn it to water, you can turn it to wind.
My father likes to sleep with the static. Said he couldn't get to sleep without it.
Down in the basement - And everything is going fine.
Down in the basement, there are two freezers filled to the top with meat.
Up in the attic, there are rows and rows of bourbon, rows and rows of Scotch...
rows and rows of gin, just like a liquor warehouse.
There's an automatic generator that goes on automatic pilot when the lights go out.
And everything is going fine, and everything is going
fine, and the cocktail hour begins about 5:00.
We usually start in front of the TV with Zoom.
And after Zoom, 6:00 news, the 6:30 news...
the 7:00 news, and we're eating somewhere around The Odd Couple.
Now, I never know whether I'm talking to my father, my stepmother, or The Odd Couple.
It all kind of blends in.
And everything is going fine, except this particular day, it's summer...
and we're eating outside, and the only problem is flies.
"There's a fly. Look out. Close the door. Get out the bomber. "
My father got out this big fogger and set it off by the picnic table out back...
and my stepmother, who collects antiques, got out the antique fly gun.
You pull it back like this and line it up a certain distance from the fly...
and if you're all right, the thing goes "thump. "
And everything is going fine, and everything is going fine...
except someone stole his flagpole twice with the flag on it...
so he's had to cement this one in, and everything is going fine...
except the swimming pool has cracks in it,
it's leaking, and the AstroTurf is shrinking.
And everything is going fine, and everything
is going fine, except for the squirrels...
the gypsy moths, and a pig farmer named Rocky.
Now, these pigs - It's a good ways away, but if the wind is wrong...
you smell the garbage when you're in the swimming pool.
And this is driving them nuts, because it's an imperfection, you see.
It's an imperfection. So what they found out was -
They investigated. There's a town ordinance...
that you can't have pigs next to private property.
But there's a good chunk of very expensive property
between their property and Rocky the pig farmer.
And there's another problem too, because my father's name is Rocky.
So there's a very big, expensive piece of property between there and there...
and so they go down and buy it, and the next day they take Rocky to court -
the pig farmer - and they say, "You can't have pigs next to our property. "
He says, "You don't own that property. " And he says...
"We bought it this morning, my friend. "
It was 1967...
and I just escaped the draft by the skin of my... whatever-
chance, luck- that I didn't go to Vietnam...
and I got very disillusioned with theater, regional theater...
and the lack of adventure...
and experimentation, and I started reading...
about Andre Gregory being thrown out of Theatre for the Living Arts...
for doing Rochelle Owens's play, Beclch.
And the board of directors had fired him. He'd
gone to New York City to start a company.
So I read that in The New York Times, and I thought...
"Well, someone's getting fired for doing something.
I wonder what that something is, and I'm gonna take a check-out in New York City. "
My first publicity shot in New York City.
I didn't know who to go to when I came here.
I just took a Backstage magazine, you know, and I took it out.
I took the first ad that said "photographer. "
I go. This guy must have had...
his great-grandfather's camera from the Civil War.
He had a canopy he threw over his head, and there was a wooden cup over the lens...
and he took it off and counted the exposure - one, two -
and then put it back like this.
A 1969 publicity shot.
I was doing a workshop with the Open Theater...
which was an experimental group run by Joe Chaikin...
and Joyce Aaron was running the workshop as a free, open workshop...
and we were asked - and this was in 1969, in New York City -
to come in and just bring in a story and jam on it...
in a kind of way that if you didn't remember
the whole story, you could repeat a word.
And I didn't repeat anything once.
I just did a story of my day as fast as I could speak it.
And at the end of the workshop, Joyce, who was running it...
asked me who wrote it.
She thought it had been prewritten and memorized.
And in 1969, I had a little hint...
that I had some sort of talent for storytelling...
but there was no place for it then, and it didn't come out till ten years later.
It wasrt my choice to go to India. I was going with
a performance group to do Brecht's Mother Courage.
I don't know why.
We had gotten a John D. Rockefeller llI travel grant...
to do this. That paid for our tickets over.
But when I was in India - I began searching for a guru when I was in India...
because, well, I started getting interested in tantric gurus.
I was looking for tantric masters because I had become...
sexually obsessed in India.
I think it had to do with the fact that I knew...
there was a lot of sexuality going on in the country...
because there were so many people and so many children...
but I didn't know where it was operative...
Where it was happening.
I couldn't understand it through my cultural view of my eyes.
And so I was searching around for these tantric masters that could teach me...
and there were supposed to be a few tantric masters left...
that practiced this tantric sexuality.
You get in a tantric pose and you say...
"I am one who is doing this. " You know, "I am one -"
I waited two weeks, applied for an audience.
And then what you have to do is you must come to his gate...
around 6:00 out back, because you go around the back of his house.
And you're not to wear any scented soaps...
or perfume or shaving lotion, anything - or cut flowers -
because any kind of scent...
will cause the guru to leave his body.
And he had been leaving it by accident, you know, as a result of these scents...
and the sannyasis were afraid he wouldn't come back.
Some people came and knelt, and he shone a little penlight in their eye...
and then gave them a holy name and put the mala around.
Well, when I knelt down, it was obvious I wasrt about to take the mala.
I really wanted to just say, "Look, which workshop is the orgy?"
I met this American expatriate on the plane that was living in Paris...
and he had friends down in Greece.
He said, "No problem at all. Come with me. Take a room in the hotel I'm staying in...
and then we'll go out to eat, we'll have some drinks.
You go up and see the ruins first. Then we'll meet, have drinks and eat. "
By then, I knew that this guy was a homosexual. He was gay.
He told me, "It's much better to be gay if you're traveling a lot, you know?
It's just much more convenient. You have more sexual activity. "
"Oh, really?" I said. "Yeah," he said. "No, this is true. "
I got into bed, and I started feeling - mm -
that kind of springtime feeling in the base of my spine, a little slight itch.
And I thought, uh...
"I wonder why he didn't try to seduce me.
What's wrong with me?"
"What's wrong with him?"
And I thought, "Maybe I should go ask him.
Yeah. "
So I got up, I got dressed...
and I went out and I knocked on his door.
He said, "Who is it?" I said, "Spalding. "
He said, "Come in. " So I kind of went along the wall.
I came in, and I said...
"We've got to, uh, do something. "
He said, "Uh, go take a shower.
You can use my shower, and then we'll talk. "
So I came out of the shower dripping, and, um -
Look, I figured it was safe.
He was clean.
He was nice. He was -
It was better than one of those - It was a private room.
I figured I was going to be traveling in Greece.
I might as well get initiated.
And, uh...
I thought it was better than one of those steamy New York City gay baths...
and, uh -
And who would ever know?
So he said, "What do you like to do?"
And I said, "Oh, huh. "
"I don't know. I don't know. What do you like to do?"
He said, "Oh, I like having my cock sucked. "
I said...
"I would never do that. "
Next thing I knew, I was in bed with him, like on automatic pilot.
It was such a surprise. I was in there, I had my arms around him...
and it was a real surprise, because he was soft like a woman.
His skin was very soft, and it was good to be next to someone...
after traveling around all that time and just -
But I didn't relax with it, you know? It was too much for me just then...
and I just went right down on him.
I didn't waste any more time. And while I was doing it...
I was thinking in my head all the time like this:
"I am a homosexual, I am a homosexual, I am a homosexual, I am a homosexual...
I am a homosexual, I am a homosexual. "
And suddenly it broke like a bubble in my head, you know...
and I was suddenly finding myself sucking...
on this kind of disconnected rubber garden hose...
semi-choking.
And - I don't know. Some of you may know what I'm talking about.
This disconnected feeling.
He said, "Oh!" He caught on.
He said "Spalding, ease down, ease down.
You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.
I mean, there's no sense torturing yourself.
Is there?"
Every morning I was calling up and saying to the airplane...
"This is Mr. Gray. I have an open ticket. I'd like to fly at 6:00 tonight. "
"Anything you say, Mr. Gray. You have an open ticket. "
And I'd go have a couple beers, and I'd think about Greece...
and I'd come back and call and say, "No, cancel it. I'm going to fly another time. "
"Anything you say, Mr. Gray. You have an open ticket. "
I was beginning to like this, you know?
No. It was more power than I'd had in all my life.
Big Royal Dutch 747.
So Liz said, "You better go back with me. "
I said, "Sure. You make the reservation. You do it.
You call them, tell them we'll show up. " We showed up at the airport, right?
We got to the airport, and I started pacing around. She said, "What's wrong?"
I said, "I can't go. I have to go - I -"
And she said, "Wait a minute. You'd better get your bags off the plane. "
So I went over to the woman and said, "Can you -"
"No, skip it. Just leave my bags on. I'm not going. "
She said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Gray. You have to accompany your bags back to New York City.
They can't go without you. " I said, "Can you take them off?"
She said, "I think we can. " She got her walkie-talkie out.
- She said, "Do you want -" - I said, "Yes. No. Uh -
Yes. No. "
I started barking at her. It was unbelievable.
And her eyes were rolling in her head, and Liz just walked on ahead...
as though she didn't know me, you know?
I had a rather -
a kind of nervous collapse that lasted maybe four or five months.
A lot of not being able to stay awake and very depressed...
and it was triggered by a lot of regret, of saying...
"I should've done this in India, and I
could've done that, and I didn't do that"...
rather than looking at things I did do.
So coming out of that breakdown, I started keeping a journal, a diary.
And it was just a regular diary. That was a real daily diary.
And each morning I would write in that day...
saying, "This is what I did the day before. "
I let sleep be the filter system.
And it was healing in the sense of saying...
"This is what I did, not what I didn't do. "
This developed a very -
And this was seven years I did this without missing a day.
And this developed a terrific...
like almost "cinemagraphic" or photographic memory for detail.
And slowly I began to understand that what my art form was -
and bless them, it was the Wooster Group...
that pushed me and was the first audience.
Elizabeth LeCompte and I had some time on our own...
to develop our own pieces, and we just started playing around in the garage.
And we began to use my memories and life experiences
as a kind of source material to build our pieces on.
We did a trilogy called Three Places in Rhode Island...
and Liz LeCompte and the group would tape-record them...
transcribe them, and I'd look at them and go...
"Aha! That's writing!"
And what happened was that the writer's voice began to push the actor's voice out.
When I say "writer's voice," what do I mean?
I couldn't spell. I couldn't write. I could barely read.
I didn't know that had nothing to do with writing.
This self-reflector's writer's voice began to -
I couldn't memorize my texts properly.
I was always interpolating or adding my own words.
So the little voice began to whisper to me...
"What if, in fact, you were speaking your own words?
What would they be?" And I began to do that.
In 1979, at the Performing Garage in downtown Manattan...
I did my first monologue and called it...
Sex and Death to the Age 14.
I sat down at this table in front of whoever came. It was word of mouth.
Maybe there were 15 or 16 people there, or less - or 12 people -
and I put on the Donna Diana Overture and just played the opening...
and lifted the needle, and I had my little outline...
and it was everything I could remember about sex and death till the age 14...
which was the name of the monologue, and I tape-recorded it.
And the first night it was maybe, oh, 50 minutes long.
Then I went back and listened to the tape, and I had all these massive...
associations and memories and restructured the outline.
Went back the next night. It was 60 minutes.
Then it was an hour and five, hour and ten, hour and 30-
almost all 19 monologues have come in at an hour and 30-
and it just fell into that form, and it became my first autobiographic monologue.
And what it did was trigger enormous amounts of memory.
I went right on to the next one, Booze, Cars, and College Girls...
then A Personal History of the American Theater.
But, you see, this unlocked a whole new method of working.
I became like an inverted method actor.
You see?
I was using myself to play myself.
I was playing with myself.
It was a kind of creative narcissism. And this began to develop, you see?
More memories came, and I began to develop this little cottage industry.
And I began to tour.
Wherever people would ask me to go, I'd take these monologues.
And sometimes I'd go out alone. Sometimes I'd go with my girlfriend, Renée.
Now how did you meet?
Oh, God, we met in Studio 54.
Couldrt have been a more ludicrous meeting place.
I mean, it was a downtown celebration of the arts.
I got an arts award, and we were -
I saw her across a crowded room, and her face lit up, and I loved it -
a very open, soulful face.
And I asked her to dance...
and she said I tried to come on too much.
I was, like, too physical with her, and she fled.
She thought I was married. I wasrt.
I was living with someone at the time, but we were breaking up.
And I pursued her and I found her, and we had a date...
and we went out, and those were the days -
I think on the first date we were back in bed...
and she was nervous and drank the wrong drinks and said...
"Excuse me. I'm gonna throw up. "
So in the middle of our first making love, she threw up...
and I held her head and put a pot under it...
and that was our bonding, I think.
We bonded around that vomiting.
And we had a horrible fight when we started out.
I think it was, Renée missed her New York support system.
That was the first item. Then she said that sex was a red herring...
and we started talking about what a red herring was.
And then she said, "But we're not equals, you see?"
And then she finally said, "Look...
I feel like I'm driving you 3,000 miles to work!"
See?
I started asserting myself, you know?
I said, "I don't give a shit if you go,
really. I can't take this arguing anymore. "
And my assertion made us both incredibly horny, and we, uh...
we pulled the car over, and we had the best sex of the whole trip, you know?
It had nothing to do with positions or where the car was parked.
It was just something -
I get tired of talking about myself.
And when I do, I do the conversations with the audience...
and it's a way of getting outside of myself and hopefully empathizing...
with another persors story.
So the conversations are always guided...
toward trying to bring up a story in someone...
about whatever topic we're dwelling on that day.
It's a beautiful piece...
because people don't have any public conversations in America.
They're always 12-step programs. They always have an agenda.
There is no agenda in this.
And the audience has to find what's interesting for them.
They have to do the editing, you know?
And they will or they won't. They're in and out of it.
Some people are more interesting than others.
But I've gotten more intuitive of choosing people that will be able...
- Did you try to kill yourself? - No. No, no, no.
It was - I would never kill - I mean -
You never tried to kill yourself?
Um, never.
- Mm. Did you think about it? - No. I, um -
I think it's a real bad joke.
- Huh? You think it's a bad joke? - Yeah.
- You don't like it. - I don't like it. It's a real bad joke.
Real, you know, bad joke.
I get - And makes me angry.
No, it's the least you can do. It's so short, you know?
It's the least you can do. Just hang in.
You never know, you know? You just never know.
Do you know anyone that's ever killed themselves?
You know, that guy I was married to the first time, he did.
- Just two or three years ago. - He killed himself?
And I haven't seen him for 20 years, or 30.
And it's been very upsetting to think, you know -
I hadrt seen him. I hadrt thought about him.
He did that. And it's true: It does have a kicker.
I mean -
If you can't make it any other way, you can do it that way.
It's gonna have a real impact, but it's a shock.
It just doesn't - doesn't do it.
Mm.
But it, like, removes things. It doesn't add.
- I just don't like it. It scares me. - Right.
- I don't want you to do it. Anybody. - Right.
That's all.
I was taking them on. I was taking on their stories.
- I was interviewing them onstage. - Who were you interviewing?
I was interviewing people from the streets of L.A.
I was interviewing a woman who had just been picked up in a mother ship...
a flying saucer on the Ventura Freeway...
and her car was going west, and then an hour later it was going east...
and she had to be deprogrammed to figure out she'd been on a spaceship.
So the next person I have in is a person...
who's the head of the Aetherius Church out there...
that believes flying saucers are 15,000 miles up...
above the Earth, sending down positive energy.
In this church, they have a big battery that looks kind of like...
a small radiator on stilts...
and they receive the energy from these flying saucers.
Then, when there's a natural disaster in the United States, they aim the battery.
They go up and aim it at that disaster and send out the positive energy.
I say to him, "Wait, have any of your people
ever been picked up by flying saucers?"
He said, "No, they're 15,000 miles up. "
I said, "We had a woman in here the other night that was on a ship," and he goes...
- "Crazy. " - She's nuts. She's nuts.
Do you have any fears?
No. Well, actually, yeah.
What?
Going home and getting beat up - beaten up.
- Have you ever been beat up? - Once.
What happened? People - Who beat you up?
Large people. Yeah.
A large gang of people.
Was there any way of getting back at them?
- Me? - Yeah.
No. By myself?
- Right. - No.
Did you talk to your father about it, or anyone bigger?
No.
I couldn't. Well, never mind.
You kept it a secret?
- Yeah. - Right.
Well, now I'm not. It's on television now.
Are there any secrets that I have?
Are there stories that I don't tell?
Yes.
If I'm going into a situation that I know is gonna be loaded...
like the making of The Killing Fields, for instance...
I kept a pretty tight diary for the facts, for the details.
Then, when I get home from The Killing Fields, three months after...
because I do refer to myself as a poetic journalist...
in the sense that any good journalist...
would try to get the story in as quickly as possible...
I am working on a story, but I like it to gel...
and sit in my unconscious or my dream state or my regular life for a while...
and then after three months' time, I'll make an outline.
Swimming was a radical - and I'd always been rooting for that - breakthrough.
So I was out in L.A., performing at the Mark Taper Forum...
Taper Two, Swimming to Cambodia...
and of course, I was in film land, and everyone was approaching me...
and they were doing, "Let's just get it down real quick on 16 mm.
Don't bother with the contract. We want to just document this. "
And Renée said, "You take control.
You got everyone wanting to do it. I'll produce it.
You choose the director. "
It really reached a larger audience, and I became more popular.
Did you read any of Swimming to Cambodia?
I read about half of it. I should have read it all...
but I got involved with other things, and I like it very much.
- You were able to read it, though. - Oh, it's very amusing in places.
I can just picture some of these things, doing them myself.
Really?
Well, those scenes in New York...
where you would go down the street snapping your fingers three times...
or six times or whatever for some reason -
- I've forgotten what it was now. - The compulsive behavior.
Yeah, but I've done the same thing myself...
- Yeah. - When I was younger.
Now you're over it, right?
I like telling the story of life better than I do living it.
I'm very reflective.
I mean, I just enjoy telling the story, and the event feeds that.
But how does that quell your fears of living?
Uh, control. See, I'm afraid of life.
I don't know how you deal with this, but everything is chance.
It's a miracle to me that I'm here, that the plane made it.
That the sun came up.
As soon as you don't have any form of God or meaning in your life...
then you make it up as you go along.
And certainly, doing the monologue is making it up, getting control over it...
giving it structure to what is normally chaos to me every day.
The monologue you're going to hear tonight is a monologue about a man...
who can't write a book about a man who can't take a vacation.
Now, as soon as I signed the contract for the book...
I decided that I would give up doing monologues.
I'd just completely give them up. I felt they were making me too extroverted.
Perhaps even pandering.
And what I wanted to do was pull in to my more introverted self...
that I hadrt been in touch with in 20 years...
and just begin to work on writing in a private way...
and go away to a writers' colony, if I could get in one...
'cause I thought that would prove I was a writer if they'd accept me...
and just write the book.
No living. Just writing.
And finally I did get down to the writing, and I got down to it, and it was awful.
I don't know why I'd romanticized it. It's disgusting.
Writing is like a disease. It is a disease.
It steals your body from you. There's no audience.
There's no feedback. There's - There's -
It's - My hand was swelling up -
my knuckle, from the pen pressing against it, 'cause I was writing longhand.
I was losing my sight in my left eye.
I was going blind in my left eye, which was horrible for me...
because here I was, working on all my Oedipal themes.
And I thought...
"There goes the first eye. "
Which is more frightening -
to go out on a stage as yourself...
or to go out on a stage as a character?
Well, it's flip-flopped. Now it's more frightening...
to go out on the stage as a character, because I was -
I got to the point, I think, that I was hiding behind myself.
The self became like a mask. Not hiding...
but there was a persona there that I was working behind.
Now I'm playing. Now I am rehearsing for the role of the caretaker...
in the Broadway revival of Our Town...
that's going on at the Lyceum, and I'm terrified.
- Why? - Because I am having to do...
a role that's not dissimilar from myself...
but I'm having to say someone else's words, and in a very tight girdle.
And I have this terrific rebellious feeling...
like I had back in school...
to do a parody of the play - My subconscious -
I want to tell a story about - I'm discursive.
I'm associative. That's how I work.
So every time I say a line from Our Town, I have an association...
and I start spinning off on that association,
and I'm having all these internal films.
I'm really supposed to be just speaking the lines.
So it is going to be - It's like putting on a girdle.
It's gonna be very, very difficult for me to do this. I'm very nervous about it.
The little boy playing Wally Webb over here, Emily's brother...
whose appendix burst in New Hampshire on a Scout trip - he's 11 years old.
He is not blinking an eye for 40 minutes while I talk about eternity and say...
"You know as well as I do...
that the dead don't stay interested in us living for very long.
Gradually, gradually, they lose hold of the earth...
and the pleasures they had, and the things they suffered...
and the people they loved, and the ambitions they had.
They get weaned away from the earth. "
That's the way I put it - "weaned away. "
Except often when you're doing a long run, you often have...
what I refer to as a "unifying accident"...
in which something so strange happens on the stage that it suddenly...
unifies the audience and the cast in a realization...
that we are only here together in this one moment, for this show.
It's not television. It's not a film.
Because of the nature of the accident, we all
know it will never be repeated, most likely.
And somewhere in the middle of the run, it happens.
I'm turning to the dead, saying, "They're waiting.
They're waiting for something they feel is coming.
Something important and great. "
And I turn to watch them wait, and just as I turn...
the little 11-year-old boy projectile-vomits.
Like a hydrant it comes, hitting one of the dead on the shoulder.
The other dead levitate around him out of sheer fear and drop back down.
Frannie Conroy in the front row, in deep meditative trance, is thinking...
"Why is it raining onstage?"
The little boy flees from his chair, vomit pouring from his mouth.
Splatter, splatter, splatter! My knees are shaking.
The chair is empty.
The audience is thunderstruck.
There is not a sound coming from the audience...
except for one little ten-year-old boy in the eighth row.
He knows what he saw.
He is laughing!
And I don't know what to do.
I don't know whether to go on with Thornton Wilder and be loyal to him...
and do the next line as written...
or attempt what might be one of the most creative improvs...
in the history of American theater.
And I decide to be loyal to Wilder and go on with the next line...
and turn to that empty chair and say...
"Arert they waiting for the eternal part of them to come out clear?"
When I think of Monster in a Box...
the film, which is being released...
any day now...
I have a story that I tell over and over again that I think I know...
because I've told the story...
and it has to do with how, at the end -
I talk about when I came home from Mexico on my vacation...
all I found left about my mother - 'cause she committed suicide...
and had been cremated - was ashes in an urn...
in a box by my father's bed.
And I'd tell that story over and over again, and then I suddenly realized...
how long he actually kept that box by the bed...
before casting the ashes over the sea...
and what a kind of loving gesture it was.
And I'd seen it just that - He wasrt procrastinating or waiting...
but he was actually living with...
and sleeping next to those ashes.
And it was just a very strong, powerful image -
the thought of him alone with that box at night.
And I never, never really felt it...
or looked into it until I had spoken it so many times.
And yet the box in which you put the fragments...
that will contribute to your next work - is that a monster too?
Yes, and I've only started doing that with the box since Monster in a Box.
I got a box and put it by my - It was a new idea...
and I think it grew out of that, yeah.
Is the monster of those fragments - is that chaos?
Yes, that's what it is. And of course it's all about organizing that...
and how frightening that is, and why any artist is an artist...
and what their main work is to -
Yeah, that chaos is - Yeah.
I just feel that all the time when I'm not performing or organizing.
I'm out there in it, but it's what makes the monologue, so I try to keep a journal.
What next? What to do?
Another monologue. What else is there to do?
There's always a new crisis, a new "impingency. "
I hoped I wasrt making them up, creating them just so I'd have material.
The new one was that I was losing my sight in my left eye.
I certainly hoped I wasrt bringing that one on myself for material.
And I did a monologue about it and called it Gray's Anatomy.
Gray's Anatomy was gonna be a cover story for The New York Times.
I said, "It's not ready. " My agent said, "It's
for The New York Times, a cover story. "
I said, "It doesn't exist yet. " She said, "Well, make it exist!"
I said, "I don't have a performance until
March. " She said, "That's too late. Make it. "
So I hired an editor, John Howell, a friend of mine.
He sat across from me, and I told him the story.
He was my first audience. Just like you, it was one-on-one...
but I was telling the story from an outline.
It's oral composition.
I was about to turn 52...
and clearly I had -
My mom killed herself when she was 52...
and I had, somewhere in the back of my mind, thought I was gonna -
in my "un," perhaps - going to do it too.
Now, I had witnessed two severe nervous breakdowns...
the second one ending in her suicide...
so I was very attuned to it...
and was so sure that I was going to join her either unconsciously...
where I would contract some disease...
or in an accident, or maybe just actually do a suicide.
And around this time, what began to happen was suicide fantasies.
Like films. I mean, I wasrt manufacturing them.
They were coming into my consciousness, and I was watching them...
and embracing them as fantasies and nothing more.
I mean, the first one I remember was, I was touring Ireland with Renée...
and we went down to the Cliffs of Moher, those 400-foot-high rock cliffs...
at sunset, you know - an Irish sunset -
gray sky over gray sea.
Gray observed by Gray.
And I was standing there - it was cocktail hour -
drinking a can of Guinness Stout, looking out over -
Most of the tourists had gone. And this fantasy came to me...
this desire to commit what I would call a "Roadrunner suicide"...
in which I got back in a field, and shot by Renée full speed -
beep-beep! Voom! - out over the cliff.
And just before I went down, I turned and saw her face...
and it was that expression on her face that I took with me...
as my last vision to my watery grave.
And as I thought about this, I couldn't stop crying...
and I could not stop telling Renée the fantasy...
over and over...
and over again.
Now, around the time I was being plagued by these silly fantasies...
a very powerful synchronistic event happened.
Steven Soderbergh, the film director of Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Kafka...
approached me to be in his new film, King of the Hill.
And he said he was choosing me for the particular role of Mr. Mungo...
because he'd read my book Impossible Vacation.
"What a strange way to cast," I thought. "From this book!"
And he said the character in Impossible Vacation -
the "character," right? - Brewster North -
was clearly ruled by regret...
and the character in his movie, Mr. Mungo, that he wanted me to play...
was ruled by regret to the extent that he kills himself.
"Oh, really?"
"And how does he do that, Steven?"
"Right now I have him slitting his wrists. "
"I'll do it!"
So here was a chance, I thought, to work out this fantasy in a creative way...
with a good director.
I think it's a watershed monologue. I think the other monologues...
were always about me being the victim and having the audience be the mother...
and me crying out, "Look, look, I'm drowning. "
And also in my relationship with Renée Shafransky...
which was similar to with the audience, of always being...
in need of being nurtured and mothered.
And in this monologue, I say...
"Hey, I did this," and I take more responsibility.
My shadow's showing in this. I mean, I'm not a good guy.
Renée knew I had affairs. She was not happy about it.
She had some - not to the degree that I had -
and so I suppose there was an unspoken relationship -
or we thought we had this modern relationship where...
if the affair existed outside there and didn't come back and haunt us...
then it was all right. We kept a distance on it.
Also, the other thing was that we were both so into riding...
on the magic carpet of my celebrity...
that we just didn't look at the underbelly of the relationship for a lot of time.
Things were rolling so fast.
So Kathie - that was breaking the boundaries...
because I was never supposed to have one in New York City.
But I had met Kathie on the road, and she moved to New York.
She moved to Thomas Street in downtown Manattan.
Now, the odd thing about that was I grew up...
near Thomas Street in Barrington, Rhode Island.
But I didn't have a girlfriend when I was 16...
because I dated my mom until I was 23.
So to some extent, I think I was going back to that.
And I'm not saying I was having an affair with the street.
I'm saying that people were becoming like signifiers to me.
It was like I was in a movie, and I didn't know whose film it was...
and I was going through the motions, and it was feeling good but confusing...
and I was approaching 52, and things were really getting complicated.
Renée wanted to get married again.
"Again" - we'd never been married, but she was pushing for it again.
And I thought, "I should be able to give her that gift.
We've been together so many years. " And if I got married...
that would automatically end the affair.
But I was so timid about it...
I had to propose to her in front of my therapist...
Who knew I was having an affair with Kathie...
and said nothing about it.
In fact, I brought Kathie in to meet him...
and we had a session, and afterward she went to use his bathroom, and he said...
"She's quite European in her attitudes.
She's like a French woman. "
I said, "Well, you dog! You want to fuck her, don't you?"
He said, "No, no!"
And then he had a very bad countertransference...
and died of a heart attack before I could kill him.
I didn't think I could do another monologue.
I pretty much almost cracked up just before this monologue was -
Are you serious? Come on.
Yeah, was told that I was manic-depressive...
was on Klonopin and lithium and seeing a top psychopharmacologist -
- Are you serious? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know if that monologue gives a flavor...
of the - of the crack-up.
And I-
Skiing really gave me a sense of balance in the middle of that crack-up.
But what was the question?
What didn't you tell us we might want to know?
Oh, my God! That was in the therapist's office. That's what helped me through.
I had a very good...
woman therapist that -
I laid out the stuff. I laid out my shadow in her lap, as it were...
and we began to figure out what was public and what was private.
When Kathie told me she was pregnant, I fell down on the floor...
and went into a fetal position...
and when I got up, I said...
"Get rid of it. Get rid of it. "
And she said, "Not so fast.
This is my body. I have to think about it.
If I have this child, I will raise it. I will be committed to it. "
And I got out of there, and I went out on tour...
and I sent her money for an abortion, and I called her and sent her letters...
and on September 27, 1992...
Kathie gave birth to a son...
and named him Forrest Dylan Gray.
This was extremely traumatic.
Renée cried. I cried.
Kathie cried. Forrest cried.
And Renée requested me...
not to see this child until there was some reconciliation between us...
and I couldn't deal with any of it and went out on tour.
And out there, I got more and more agoraphobic...
and wasrt going out of my hotel...
and Renée called and said, "You've got to come back.
I've seen the baby in a snuggly in Kathie's arms, and I am in bed, devastated. "
And I said, "You've got to give me a day. "
And she said, "If you take a day, I won't be here for you. "
I took two days. I took two days...
because I couldn't even find myself...
to walk out of the hotel, I was so split...
with an image of myself sitting on the bed, comforting Renée...
and an image of myself standing next to Kathie...
meeting my son for the first time.
And the split was so great, it took three people...
to get me out to the San Francisco airport...
jerking and barking all the way.
This time, the captain of the American Airlines came out.
My friend talked to him, and the captain said, "I don't care who he is.
Do you know what it costs to land this plane in Kansas?"
And somehow - and I don't know how Bill did this -
he convinced the captain I was rehearsing for a psychotic role in a Scorsese movie.
And Renée said, "This is it. I can't -
I have to draw a boundary here. I'm moving out with a friend for a while. "
And when she left the loft...
she took the feeling with her.
There was no heart left in that room.
I turned to stone. I turned to a dead thing.
And I had not realized for 14 years...
Renée had been filling the room with the feeling.
And I took a bottle of vodka and knocked down a few shots...
and began to feel my breath and thought...
"What do I want to do?"
And I thought, "I would like to see my son.
He's eight months old. I've never seen him. "
And I called Kathie and I said, "I'm coming down. "
And I came down, and she took him out of the crib...
and he went right for her breast...
and I knew there was no need for a blood test.
I saw the shape of my father's head in the back of his head.
I saw my brother Rocky's eyes in his eyes.
I saw a distant mirror. I saw a little lust flower.
I saw a completely formed human being.
I saw a glorious accident.
And I had a perfect paradox at that moment, where I thought...
"Now you can die, and you must stay alive...
to help this little guy through. "
My dad died three days after I saw my son...
not knowing he had his first grandson.
I didn't even know my father was dying.
My stepmother didn't call to tell me he was in the hospital...
she was so angry with me at the way I portrayed her...
in my book Impossible Vacation.
Sorry you can't stick around and spend a little time here.
Yeah. As always...
I'm off on another toot.
- Back to Boston? - Yeah. You should come up.
Well, maybe we will. Except for the traffic.
Right. I hope we don't hit it.
But I don't know when - next time we'll see each other.
Well, you're going to Florida at Christmas.
Yeah, and then to Australia on January 11.
So we won't see you again till probably March, hmm?
- Uh, April, more like. - April.
Are you going up to the house in the mountains in April?
- I think I'm gonna try to sell that house. - Oh, are you?
What are you going to do about the foundation?
Try to sell it. They say there's a sucker born every minute...
and if there is, I'll let them take it over.
We want to get a house out in the Hamptons...
believe it or not, closer to the water.
What's it like being a dad? How has that changed your life?
Being a dad is fantastic. It's very grounding, very connecting.
And it's got me out of myself, because believe me - and you must know this...
and everyone that has children knows it - their needs are bigger than yours...
and they are so obviously bigger.
- That's right. - It really relativizes yours.
You talked about your dad in the excerpt a moment ago.
What did you learn from your dad about raising kids?
It's all been learned now, after his death, I'm sad to say...
'cause I'm a father late in life, and I'd love to thank him...
for what he went through with us, his three boys.
And I've learned to appreciate him in absence.
Yeah!
- That's greatl - Stick your foot out.
Oh, my Godl
So the new monologue is called Morning, Noon and Night...
and it's about my life living with the family here in this house.
And of course, my fear is that once I tell the story...
or organize the chaos about the family...
I'll be looking for the next story, which means I'll have to leave the family.
So that's the risk of the work.
And when she moved to New York City with her daughter, Marissa -
and Marissa was three - I continued to meet her there.
And I first met Marissa at a party in downtown New York City.
And Marissa had a sense that the name Spalding Gray existed...
because I'd call the loft a lot to talk with Kathie...
but she could never get her imagination around "Spalding Gray"...
so she referred to me as "Splendid Café"...
Which I thought was a great stage name if I ever needed one.
I think we're going to get away with this one story about the family.
I wouldn't want to turn it into Ozzie and Harriet...
and make an ongoing soap opera, because the children would then be...
minor heroes before they were greater people.
We move into the house, and new life comes.
Kathie gets pregnant.
How did this happen?
"I don't think I want this child.
I'm content now with our new home and the family configuration as it is"...
I told my therapist.
Kathie's sure it's gonna be a girl. She's convinced me it's gonna be a girl.
We're gonna name her Eliza Ann Gray.
Eleven hours into labor here, the storm is still raging.
It's the next day, and Kathie can only find one comfortable position.
She's on all fours, like a wild animal.
The nurses are not approving. I know it's not Northern California.
I'm trying to get the hermetically sealed window open to get a little air in there.
Marissa's dozing in the corner with her little camera...
and all of a sudden, it starts to come.
And I just have time to get on my scrubs and roll Kathie over.
I'm helping. I'm pushing one knee back. The other nurse has the other knee...
and I look down and - Oh, my God!
It looks like she's giving birth to a dead beaver!
"What is that hairy blue football...
and how is it gonna fit through that -"
Pow! And it's out! And I go...
"Whoa! Look at the balls on that girl!"
And I lean over and kiss Kathie and cry...
and bend down and cut the umbilical cord, and the crimson blood flies...
and I look down at this glorious accident, Theo.
We just grabbed that name out the air in case it was a boy.
"Theo," short for nothing.
Short for "the study of God. "
Theo Spalding Gray.
And back at me is coming this totally perplexed face with the big "Why?"
"Why this?
Why something and not nothing?"
And I totally identify with it. And I know that he's not mirroring me.
He hasn't been in the world long enough to pick up on my face.
He's brought this in with him.
And I think, "Oh, little one, you may have already spent...
the best days of your life...
In there. "
I think of poetic journalism as telling a relatively true story...
but after you've digested it, filtered it through your own imagination...
and then tell it with poetry, with flavor...
with innuendo, with hyperbole...
so that it starts as a true story...
but it's filtered through my imagination.
So at its best, it comes out as a form of poetry.
Forrest came to me very early on with questions about death.
He wasrt even four. And I just was very honest with him.
I said, "You know, everyone that comes in has to go out.
That's just the whole rule of it. That's how it goes.
And it's probably, in a way, comforting. It's the only thing we really know.
And the funny thing, Forrest, about death is - or not funny, really,
because I don't think there's anything funny about death -
but the odd thing is, is that, you know...
everyone knows they're going to die...
but no one really believes it. "
All of my life - Or so many of us were brought up with the idea...
of the ethereal-ness of death...
and you're going to go off into the vapors and to heaven.
And I think that we return to the elements...
and that age is a great pain but also a great comfort.
It's a great paradox, because the older I get...
the more weight I feel and the more aware of gravity.
You know, I only live once.
I'm sure the configuration of Spalding Gray...
there's only room for it one time around, so I know I won't be reincarnated.
One of the ways to reincarnate is to tell your story.
And I get enormous pleasure from that. It's like coming back.
They're probably gonna go in and play in front of the fire...
and put music on, maybe.
If Marissa wins, and she usually does, it'll be Spice Girls.
If Forrest gets his way, it'll be Hanson.
Kathie and I are gonna just hang out here a little more...
and have more chardonnay with Theo and relax.
"Keep it down in there. Please keep it down. "
Sounds like a compromise, huh?
I don't know what they chose.
What is it?
We'll be singir
- I get knocked down, but I get up again - Wow!
Hey! It's Chumbawamba!
I can't resist. Pumpir out.
- Whoo! - I get knocked down but I get up again
- You're never gonna keep me down - And I'm out there with 'em.
Wow! Hey! Whoo!
Marissa's doing ballet leaps across the living room floor.
Forrest enters, twirling like a dervish.
Theo comes in and starts doing pliés on the wingback chair.
Kathie enters, walkir like an Egyptian.
Oh, Danny boy, Danny boy
Hey, we're dancing. The whole family's dancing to Chumbawamba.
I get knocked down but I get up again You're never gonna keep me down
And we all go downtown for ice cream.
I always felt that I would always be publicly talking about something...
and I never know what the next thing is gonna be...
but I suspect that as long as I have a voice...
there will be a story, you know?
This is a great entrance.
Boy, we had so much -
It was hard to film at Robbie's with all the planes, and they're over here too.
But I now know how to get up the steps. I'm able to jump steps, so -
- That's an acquired skill. - It's a new breakthrough for me. Yeah.
So I've gotten to this real stationary place...
where I don't have to do anything...
and people wait on me, and I just observe.
I feel like a real outsider...
kind of like I'm half dead.
In a funny way, it's a treat...
just to be a witness.
I don't want to see the ocean.
'Cause the last thing I picture myself was, I was Boogie-boarding in June...
and I said, "I don't want to leave here. I don't want to go to Ireland.
I'm riding the waves with Forrest, and this is great.
You know, my life is good. "
And I said, "The past five years have been the best five years of my life. "
- And then boom. - And then it happened like that.
- When did it happen, anyway? - June 23rd.
- When did you guys arrive in Ireland? - The day before, the 21st.
Yeah, we celebrated the longest day there...
and Kathie and I had the master bedroom...
and we had one great, erotic night...
and the next day, end of story.
End of story line.
You were coming back from dinner from your birthday?
From a restaurant. We were one mile from home.
And, um...
And you guys were just in the car, and you came around a curve and you got hit?
No, he came around a curve. Kathie slowed to stop to turn...
and this van came hurtling right into her.
I don't think he even broke. I could see it coming.
It looked like a video game, like I was playing a video game.
You just can't accept it.
And then... huge crash.
And the car just - Our car spun around. He pushed it around.
The next thing, I was lying in the road in a puddle of blood...
and there was this woman nursing me.
She was the Good Samaritan. Somehow - She lived in the neighborhood...
and heard Tara screaming...
and she lost her nine-year-old son there a year ago.
- In a car accident? - He fell out of the car.
The car skidded, and he was almost decapitated.
And I was her son, in a way. She kept talking me down...
and nursing me and saying, "You're gonna be all right. "
And I couldn't see out of this eye, which is my good eye...
'cause there was so much blood.
So I couldn't see past the blood. And there was all this...
they told me, cow medicine everywhere, and the weird thing -
Cow medicine?
Because it was a veterinarian that hit us.
And the weird thing was just earlier in the day...
I saw a very sick calf that couldn't get up...
'cause its leg was - Something was wrong with its hip.
And I went to a farmer, I said, "That cow should be...
put out of its misery or taken care of. "
And the guy said, "Yeah, I know. We're gonna call a vet. "
So my fantasy is that I set it up.
It's hard to be relative and hard to - I mean, when I was complaining...
to a nurse one day, she said, "Shall I take you to the spinal ward, then?"
You know? In a way, that sobered me up and made me thankful...
and in another way, I was annoyed that she's not honoring the place that I'm in.
I never thought I'd want to rush back from Ireland to have head surgery...
but there's some reconstruction of my skull that will have to be done next week.
So now I've got another comparison...
of New York hospitals versus Irish ones, so who knows what it's about?
But I think there's enormous amounts of material there...
that, once processed, will be something.
- You have everything you need? - I think so.
Want to bring the cards over, Marissa?
Hi. Come on over.
- Are you ushering? - Yes.
Okay.
Does that mean you get to watch the show?
Would you be interested in being interviewed tonight?
Um, I'm not up to it tonight, no.
What's that? I can't hear you. Come on over.
No, actually, I'm not feeling too great tonight, so -
- You're what? - I'm not feeling too great tonight.
- Oh, I know the feeling. - How are you, by the way?
- What's wrong? - I don't know.
I woke up and - I actually woke up - I didn't sleep.
Oh, you didn't sleep. I didn't last night either.
No. I, uh - It was one of those.
- Yeah? It's hard. - How are you, by the way?
Oh, so-so. I'm coming along.
- I had a few of those. - Oh, you did?
Accidents? You had a few accidents?
I'm going onstage now. Going backstage.
Are we going to watch?
- Yeah. Where's Mom? - Can I watch you?
You can watch from the audience.
Many people asked me about the crutches...
and some people had heard about this, uh, accident -
which I hope that that's all it was, was an accident.
So I'd like to begin, if I could...
if you don't mind being an opener...
and you can come right up this center stage here.
And I'm not even going to say your name...
'cause I know you want to be anonymous.
There's one Irish nurse that stuck with me in that St. James Hospital...
that I'll never forget named Carmella.
Irish nurses stand for 12 hours. I kept telling her to sit down.
She said, "We're trained to stand for 12 hours at a time. "
She stands at attention by my wheelchair, you know?
And I'm just going crazy from just boredom...
and so I start to interview her, and I said, "Carmella...
how do you - Do you go to church?"
"Oh, no, no. I'm not real keen on the Catholic Church. "
- "Why?" - "With their stand on abortion and all. "
And I said, "Well, aren't you afraid of dying, then?
Because you won't have the priest there to do the Holy Communion...
and if you're not going to Mass -"
She said, "Ah, no. I'm not afraid of death...
because the only sin is hurtir someone...
and I haven't done that. "
And I looked at her and I knew...
- she hadrt. - Wow.
- And it was startling. Startling. - Wow.
- 'Cause I sure couldn't do it, couldn't say - - What are you worried about?
The next accident, because I -
Fuck it all! I know this one isn't clearing the air.
The next plane crash, getting home from here.
When I was in Ireland, the first thing I did when we were in that country home...
was to climb this hill to look out over...
the whole of the countryside of Westmeath.
And fields and fields and fields and fields and farmyards -
"No water" was the first thing that -
- My eye went for that. - For the water?
Yeah. Wherever I am, I'm setting up myself by direction of water.
So would you be able to help me with this rooting issue?
What did you call it?
This issue of not feeling you can stay in one place?
- Yeah. - I don't know. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure if it isn't a hopeless case.
We've been out here five years, my family and I.
- Kathie and the three children. - How do you like it?
I have problems with it in the winter.
Um, it's not New Age enough for me.
I'm very attracted to alternative therapies...
and-and diet...
and I think I drink too much out here.
It's a drinking culture. Either everyone drinks or no one drinks.
People say that it has to do with the sea - the mother, the sea.
The sea is your mother. You must know that one.
And that a way to get to the mother is through inebriation.
I mean -
When I drink, I feel like I'm coming closer to the mother.
That-That old thing of when you're stuck on the breast, that great -
That, you know - that bliss.
Do you have anything you want to ask me?
Um, what are your thoughts on the meaning of life?
Well, now that you ask -
I'm not - Well, I don't believe in fate.
I'm rather a chaos person.
There's a series of interviews out...
with different philosophers, and it's called The Glorious Accident.
Consciousness. The definition of consciousness.
The Glorious Accident. So that's kind of my take on life -
"the glorious accident" - although my accident was -
- Not too glorious. - Yeah.
Up until now, I'd said that I've always felt...
that I was an embracer of accidents...
'cause my life has been...
serendipity and accident and not a lot of planning.
Thank you for coming.
I was always worried that my epitaph, which I will never see, will read...
"Spalding Gray, who found a niche of talking -
making a living of talking about himself".
And the dog is already howling for the dead Spalding Gray.
And I would hope that it would say, "Talking about himself...
and his loved ones and people he's encountered...
in his travels. "
You know? I mean, I am not Samuel Beckett.
I'm not a navel-gazer.
Beckett's a great writer, but I'm not a minimalist in that way.
I'm talking about the world as I see it.
God, that's just wild. It's like Chekhov.
It's become a great sound effect.
I'll think of that at night.
It's a lamentation.