Cover story in NY magazine on missing writer and performer Spalding Gray, tracing his history, family, and relationships. The piece is a mix of intimate and touching, and earnestly plodding—where he grew up, went to school, etc.–but it ends with an eerie kicker–the writer implies that his wife, Katherine Russo, believes that Gray killed himself after seeing Tim Burton’s ” Big Fish.”
The Gray piece ends:
“…Throughout most of Tim Burton’s film, the character of the son is trying to cut through the haze of his father’s tall tales, dissecting the brilliant myths his father has spun to find the real man within. In the end, however, the son is won over by his fatherÂ’s imagination. As the old man lies dying in the hospital, he challenges the son to summon his own fantasy of his father’s death, one in which the ailing man strolls down to a riverbank in his native Alabama and, before a gathering of a lifetime of friends, throws himself into the roiling water. Miraculously, the dying man then morphs into a giant fish and swims away and out of sight.
“Some friends said I shouldn’t see it, but I had to, I went last night,”says Russo. Holding back the tears again, she adds softly, “You know, Spalding cried after he saw that movie. I just think it gave him permission. I think it gave him permission to die.”
Cover story in NY magazine on missing writer and performer Spalding Gray, tracing his history, family, and relationships. The piece is a mix of intimate and touching, and earnestly plodding—where he grew up, went to school, etc.–but it ends with an eerie kicker–the writer implies that his wife, Katherine Russo, believes that Gray killed himself after seeing Tim Burton’s ” Big Fish.”
The Gray piece ends:
“…Throughout most of Tim Burton’s film, the character of the son is trying to cut through the haze of his father’s tall tales, dissecting the brilliant myths his father has spun to find the real man within. In the end, however, the son is won over by his fatherÂ’s imagination. As the old man lies dying in the hospital, he challenges the son to summon his own fantasy of his father’s death, one in which the ailing man strolls down to a riverbank in his native Alabama and, before a gathering of a lifetime of friends, throws himself into the roiling water. Miraculously, the dying man then morphs into a giant fish and swims away and out of sight.
“Some friends said I shouldn’t see it, but I had to, I went last night,”says Russo. Holding back the tears again, she adds softly, “You know, Spalding cried after he saw that movie. I just think it gave him permission. I think it gave him permission to die.”