Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - Spalding Gray's body found.

Quote:

(New York-WABC, March 8, 2004) — The New York City medical examiner's office has confirmed that the body pulled out of East River Sunday is that of missing actor-writer Spalding Gray. Gray disappeared on January 10th. He was 62-years-old.

Several reliable witnesses told authorities they believed they saw him on the Staten Island Ferry the night he vanished. He had a history of suicide attempts.

Authorities said early Monday that the body found in the East River was too badly decomposed to identify easily. Police reportedly could only say at first that the deceased was a white man.

The only piece of clothing that could be identified was a pair of black corduroy pants. When Gray disappeared January 10th, he was wearing black corduroy pants, a gray jacket, blue scarf, brown sweater and brown shoes. He was identified through dental records and x-rays.

Gray laid bare his life and mingled performance art with comedy in acclaimed monologues like "Swimming to Cambodia" and "It's a Slippery Slope."

His riveting live performances generally featured only a desk and a glass of water as props. Usually wearing his trademark plaid flannel shirt, the performer would never move from the desk as he read in a soft, New England accent. In more than a dozen monologues starting in 1979, Gray told audiences about his childhood, "Sex and Death to the Age 14"; his adventures as a young man, "Booze, Cars and College Girls"; and his struggles as an actor, "A Personal History of the American Theater." Many were published in book form and several were made into films.

"The man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied."

The cause of his death was still under investigation, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner. But Gray was known to have been deeply troubled and had attempted suicide before.

Throughout his disappearance, his wife, Kathleen Russo, had held out scant hope that he might still be alive. "Everyone that looks like him from behind, I go up and check to make sure it's not him," Russo said in a phone interview with The Associated Press about a week ago. "If someone calls and hangs up, I always do star-69. You're always thinking, 'maybe."'

It's sad, I enjoyed his commentary in Gray's Anatomy, He was a great story teller.