'Gray's Anatomy': Body Language

In "Gray’s Anatomy," one subject obsesses Spalding Gray, loads his grist milland rocks his world. He could expound on this matter until his body rotted and fell from his skeleton, until only his teeth would be left chattering atop a heap of dry bones.

The subject is, of course, himself. But no one documents it better or funnier. Of course, no one would want to, but let’s give credit where it’s due: Spalding Gray is an angstmeister of self-referential, often hilarious irony.

"Gray’s Anatomy," a reprise of a stage monologue in 1993, written with partner Renee Shafransky, finds Gray turning a bout with a bizarre ocular condition into a dizzying, absorbing odyssey of the neurotic mind. Concerned about deteriorated vision in his left eye, he tells us, he went to a retina specialist who diagnosed him with a "macula pucker"—something like a warping of his eyeball surface. What he would need, the specialist informed him, was a "macula scraping."

"How could I allow someone to cut into my eye," says Gray in his quintessentially tortured tone, "to cut into the window of my soul?"

Faced with the daunting prospect of surgery, he sought alternative solutions, specifically, "magic and miracles." This quest brought him into contact with many weird and wonderful figures from the metaphysical, religious circuit. There was the Christian Scientist (whose religion Gray shared), who demanded to know if Gray was "faithful," i.e., that Gray wasn’t two-timing his religion by consulting with medical doctors. There were the three Hasidim who mistook him for a bum seeking pocket money, and drove him to New Jersey for some serious yard work.

There was Gray’s flight to the Philippines for an appointment with Pini Boca, a gold-chain-wearing doctor described as the "Elvis Presley of psychic surgeons." In one of the best anecdotes, Gray describes visiting a Native American sweat ceremony, which involved sitting naked among other desperate souls under a dome of hot, steaming stones. When asked to hail his ancestors, Gray suddenly realized his forebears—with such names as Gray, Spalding and Crane—were all pilgrims. "What did they do shortly after they came to America?" asks Gray. "Kill the Indians. Where was I going? Into an Indian sweat lodge. Good luck!"

With only a desk, a microphone and a glass of water before him, Gray lays his psychic clutter amusingly and flashily before you, like a street con artist playing three-card monte. It may follow the same formula of his other shows, including "Swimming to Cambodia" and "Monster in a Box," but it still draws you in.

You’re hooked, not only by Gray’s surrealistically convoluted testimony, but also director Steven Soderbergh’s flashy, dynamic lighting and set schemes.

Before Gray even makes his appearance, Soderbergh presents a series of interviews with people who suffered traumatic incidents involving their eyes. Listening to their dispassionately told, but gruesome, stories of injury and mishap, you’re set up for Gray’s show in a deep way you hadn’t bargained for. A universality of eye injuries? But there it is. Suddenly, you feel as though we’re linked by our common tendency to ocular injuries. When Gray brings things to a narrative conclusion, the movie feels perfectly structured. If it were any longer, it would tip the overindulgence scale, and lose its effectiveness. But at 80 minutes, the film feels compact and pithily observed. And you’re quite prepared to meet Gray on his next flight of self-absorbed fancy.

GRAY’S ANATOMY (Unrated) — Contains occasional profanity.