Spalding Gray Tells More Tall But True Tales In `Monster In A Box'

XXX 1/2 "Monster in a Box," with Spalding Gray. Directed by Nick Broomfield, from a script by Gray. Varsity. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised, due to subject matter. --------------------------------------------------------------- Although it's less focused than "Swimming to Cambodia" - the 1987 movie of Spalding Gray's much-praised monologue about filming "The Killing Fields" in a troubled foreign country - "Monster in a Box" is every bit as enjoyable.

This time Gray is concerned with many more issues than his participation in another movie, although his role as the stage manager in a recent Broadway revival of "Our Town" is central to the monologue's conclusion.

He's also more acquainted with the technique of playing a professional storyteller in front of an audience, so much so that he wonders about whether he's beginning to "pander." Reacting to the negative opening-night newspaper reviews of "Our Town," he talks about his self-consciousness in performing the next night.

Not to worry. Gray may think he's shaping and smoothing his presentation to please an audience, but the same compulsive-raconteur personality comes through this time. He may ramble more, he may have more things on his mind, but the result is much the same: an hour and a half of anecdotes and confessions that add up to a persuasive and consistently engrossing stream-of-conscious narrative.

The title refers to a huge manuscript Gray has promised to deliver for publication. It's called "Impossible Vacation" and it deals with his mother's suicide. The monologue is loosely shaped around his inability to complete it. A mixture of guilt, career distractions and writer's block keep him from working on the book, which was ultimately whittled down from 1900 pages to 228 and published recently by Knopf.

While he's avoiding the subject, Gray takes us on a tour of the Moscow Film Festival, where translations wreak havoc with a presentation of "Swimming to Cambodia," and Los Angeles, where he tries to track down the only remaining citizens who don't have a screenplay to sell. An AIDS-panic attack, a tragicomic visit to Nicaragua and the graveyard scene in "Our Town" help him come to terms with mortality and his absence during his mother's final hours.

Still, Gray resists the temptation to wrap it all up with a neat, emotional finale. The ending comes in the form of a raspberry. Perhaps this what the New York detractors of "Our Town" meant when they called Gray's performance "snide." Yet this final touch comes off more as a celebration of spontaneity and synchronicity, an awareness that any mood can be broken and even ingeniously altered by the unpredictable.

Directed by documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, who is best-known for his 1986 documentary about another one-person stage show, "Lily Tomlin," the movie lacks the simple elegance of "Swimming to Cambodia," which was shot by this year's Oscar-winning director, Jonathan Demme. Searching for variety, Broomfield occasionally breaks the flow of the talk with clumsy editing, sound effects, lighting tricks and Laurie Anderson's music.

None of this matters much. While it may not be as well-crafted a film, "Monster in a Box" is likely to find a larger audience than "Swimming to Cambodia" because Gray is working with a larger canvas. His material is funnier this time, more accessible and universal in its concerns.