Gray is the only one who can resolve the mysteries of his disappearance, but he is no longer talking in the present tense. Nevertheless, Gray’s past is telling. Part of what draws me to Soderbergh’s assemblage of archival footage are his subtle insights into how much Gray lost as a result of his 2001 car accident. For example, the director includes a scene from A Personal History of the American Theatre (1980), a monologue in which Gray explains why his life changed when a drama teacher praised his timing. “Excellent timing—that’s everything, isn’t it?” a youngish Gray asks. Long after this segment ends, the fulfillment that Gray derived from timing remains on my mind. Indeed, finding “the perfect moment” became Gray’s obsession in his most famous monologue, Swimming to Cambodia (originally performed in 1984, and adapted in a film in 1987).    
     Yet by December 2003, Gray had lost his ability to select the precise instant for doing something. A few weeks before his death—after he closed his first run of an unfinished monologue titled Life Interrupted at P.S. 122—Gray recorded a final journal entry addressed to his wife, Kathie Russo:

    _{Kathie, it’s an old story you’ve heard over and over. My life
     is coming to an end. Everything’s in my head now, my
     timing’s off, all this terrific hesitancy. In the last two years,
     I’ve had ten therapists, maybe more. Not to mention three
     psychopharmacologists and all those shock treatments.
     Suicide is a viable alternative for me, instead of going to an
     institution. I don’t want an audience. I don’t want anyone to
     see me slip into the water.¹}

In maddening yet poignant ways, Soderbergh respects Gray’s dying wishes. In other words, And Everything is Going Fine makes a conscious decision not to reference Gray’s death. Even though much of the film intentionally charts the monologist’s thoughts on mortality, Soderbergh ultimately omits any footage of Life Interrupted (2003), and makes no overt mention of Gray’s suicide.
     Instead, the film ends obliquely. Shortly after his devastating 2001 car accident in Ireland, Gray returns to America, where he is interviewed by a longtime friend, Barbara Kopple. “What are you worried about?” Kopple asks the artist, who now looks gaunt and pale, and walks with a visible limp. “The next accident,” Gray replies solemnly. Since their interview is set in the Hamptons, they talk about life on Long Island. Gray confides that he thinks he drinks too much in the Hamptons: “When I drink, I feel like I’m coming closer to my mother.” In the background of this sad conversation, a dog starts to howl. The dog sounds heartbroken, utterly forlorn. “The dog is already howling for the late Spalding Gray,” Gray says, chuckling softly. As the dog continues to howl, Gray laughs until his eyes fill. At the end of the clip, I realize he is on the verge of tears.
     A weaker director might take Gray’s tears and run with them. After all, it would be easy to end this story with an image of water, since Gray’s fixation with lakes, rivers, and oceans played such an inexorable role in both his life and death. But Soderbergh resists the predictable. Instead, he concludes with a clip of Gray on dry land.
     The documentary’s closing sequence is a home movie shot when Gray was an infant, barely able to stand. As a blond-haired baby boy plays with his dark-haired older brother in a suburban family yard, I realize we have come full circle. We are back at the beginning, but without really knowing the end.

_{¹ Lunden, Jeff. “N.Y. Plays Channel Monologists Bogosian and Gray.” All Things Considered. 6 Mar. 2007. National Public Radio. 28 April 2010.}