I 
conclude my trio of “unconventional films from the 80s that I really like,” with Swimming to Cambodia, starring Spalding Gray and directed by Jonathan Demme. Unlike True Stories or Andre, I don’t remember when I first saw this film, but I have watched it countless times since then.
Spalding Gray was famous within a limited sphere as a monologist. His live performances consisted of him sitting at a card table with a notebook and a glass of water as he recounted stories from his life. Within these stories he drew broader connections to current events and the major challenges of modern living. His unmistakable look with his prematurely gray hair and plaid shirts, and his distinctive voice with its laconic New England calm, escalating to near hysterical shouting, made his performances unforgettable and unduplicatable. Gray had a number of minor acting roles in the 80s and 90s, but his time at the table was his truest art.
Swimming to Cambodia (1987) was Gray’s monologue about his participation in a minor role in the film The Killing Fields. It was created as a four-hour, two-day live performance and was converted by Demme into a film without losing the essential simplicity or power of the performance. Within the stories of filming in Southeast Asia (though never actually in Cambodia) he revisits and reminds the audience of forgotten truths about the Vietnam war and the United States’ actions both in Vietnam and Cambodia, drawing the connections between these actions and the ensuing blood bath of the Khmer Rouge. While relating the anecdotes of the filming and the history behind them, he tells stories of his childhood, his girlfriend back on Long Island, and his quest for a “perfect moment” while on location.
Like the other two films, the premise seems simplistic (and possibly tedious), but the color of language used and the essential wit and humanity make it a breathtaking performance and one in which the one hour and twenty-five minutes fly by. As with any of his performances, at the end I felt a little smarter, a little more human, and completely in awe of the tortured intellect that saw things so painfully clearly before his suicide in 2004.
Here is a scene from the film that gives a good sense of the entire film. One word of warning, unlike the other films, the language and subject matter of Swimming to Cambodia are most assuredly adult (parts of the film take place in Bangkok, so I will leave it there) and not for everyone. However this scene is comparatively clean.
Be safe, be strong