FrameThrower · Actors · Spalding Gray
Spalding Gray
4 films · 236 frames · top-billed in 1 · 1984–1996
Born 5 June 1941 · Providence, Rhode Island, USA · died 11 January 2004
Spalding Gray was an American actor, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for the theater in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for his film adaptations of these works, beginning in 1987. He wrote and starred in several, working with different directors.
Theater critics John Willis and Ben Hodges called Gray's monologues "trenchant, personal narratives delivered on sparse, unadorned sets with a dry, WASP, quiet mania." Gray achieved renown for his monologue Swimming to Cambodia, which he adapted as a 1987 film in which he starred; it was directed by Jonathan Demme.…
Awards
On FrameThrower we have: 4 films · 236 frames · top-billed in 1 · 1984–1996
- Guggenheim Fellowship1985
- National Book Award1985
How their films are shot
Measured across 236 frames from the 4 films we hold. This is the look of the work Spalding takes, not a claim about any single frame — we index the cast of a film, never the people in a shot.
Across the 4 films we hold, 42% of their frames are night, 43% low key — the look of the work Spalding takes.
Time of day
Lighting
Shot size
Camera angle
Mood
Films in the library
Every poster opens that film — stills, cinematography notes and colour palette.
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 236 frames from Spalding Gray's 4 films, and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.