Lost in Criterion

Many documentaries are introductions to their topics, assuming the audience has limited or even no knowledge of the subject. Steven Soderbergh's 2010 documentary about his late friend monologuist Spalding Gray, And Everything is Going Fine, is not. Soderbergh himself says it's for people who are already familiar with Gray. Since this is our introduction to him, it's a bit of a rocky start. Next week we'll talk about Gray's Anatomy (1996), Soderbergh's film of one of Gray's monologues, but this week it's all context for a body of work we know nothing about. That doesn't mean we aren't engrossed in it though. Well, at least one of us.