"People say, 'When did you start writing it?' and I'll say, 'I never wrote it,'" she says. "Only in the end I transcribed what I was saying to have a copy of it. I never sat down and composed it. It was more like I was just ranting. Just to remember what story followed the other, I made an outline of just headers. How I came up with the words was improvised."

Spalding Gray says he doesn't remember the text, but the last time he performed it. "Wow. Yeah, there's a certain rhythm I can remember. I did a lot of benefit performances over the last year. Every two months I'd do the show and it was really scary, not knowing if I would remember it. But one thing would lead to the other, like getting a machine to go. If I found the first five words, I could do the whole show."

There are several strong visual moments that would be hard to plan. There's a close-up where Sweeney first speaks the dread word "cancer" about herself that's slightly out of focus, and the "mistake" adds immeasurably to the impact. "Yeah. That was a happy accident. We had a lot of problems with focus. Not anyone's fault, but me trying to shoot it as a real performance and get close-ups, which is a really impossible thing to do. There were three 35mm cameras, and I said, 'I want you to get as close to me as you can and keep moving.' And we didn't have a lot of rehearsal time. So one of the payments of doing that is that a lot of stuff will be out of focus. The cameramen are used to rehearsing and they had to follow me. A lot of stuff was good but it was too out of focus. It was heartbreaking."