Monster in a Box

Spalding Gray talks alone on a stage. What he talks about is the effort to write his first novel. The book is built on the death of his mother and runs to nearly two thousand pages. Gray brings that unfinished pile onto the stage in its box. Along the way he tells of his troubles with Hollywood. He also tells of the trips round the world he took to avoid the writing. His doubts about acting as stage manager on a Broadway production are inside the story too. The film is built as the record of a one man show. The link between putting things off and grief is the real subject. Nick Broomfield’s eighty seven minute film, a joint American and British production, was completed in 1992.