Swimming to Cambodia

Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia is a 1987 Jonathan Demme performance film. The film is a performance of Spalding Gray's monologue which centered around such themes as his trip to Southeast Asia to create the role of the U.S. Ambassadors aide in The Killing Fields directed by Roland Joffé, the Cold War, Cambodia Year Zero and his search for his "perfect moment". The film grossed slightly over a million dollars.

Performances

Swimming to Cambodia was originally a theatre piece on which Gray spent two years working. The original running time of the performance was two and a half hours. Swimming to Cambodia won Gray an Obie award.

In 2001, Gray took Swimming to Cambodia back to the stage in Los Angeles, Chicago and Albany.

Film

The opening shots of the film depict Gray walking toward The Performing Garage in New York. He goes in and after walking in past the audience, he takes his seat behind a table. On the table is a glass of water, a microphone and a notebook which Gray brought with him. Behind him are two pulldown maps. One is a map of Southeast Asia and the other is a diagram of the bombing of Cambodia, which Gray tells us was called Operation Breakfast. There is also back-lit projection screen which has projected on it a picture of a beach.

While Sam Watterson and Ira Wheeler are credited as additional cast in this film, they are only shown in clips from the film The Killing Fields.

The monolouges have also been published in book form.

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