Back in 2003, while I was working on The Bachelor, I would make frequent runs from the office in Sherman Oaks into Hollywood for auditions. While I was there, I kept seeing this billboard:
I would drive by every time and think "What the hell is "The Room" and who is that creepy guy staring at me?" Little did I know at the time that The Room would become the Aughts equivalent of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the guy on the billboard -- The Room's lead actor/writer/director/producer/executive producer Tommy Wiseau is the new John Ford of crap. It started running at midnight shows here in LA, and it became a cult hit. Its reputation as "The Citizen Kane of Bad Movies" got to such a fever pitch that even Entertainment Weekly did an article on it. So, I had to check it out.
The night after Thanksgiving, Tom and I with two of our friends who go by their initials (DY & TJ) got together to eat leftovers and watch The Room. I gave you a taste earlier, just in case you didn't watch the scene from the flower shop, let me tell you about this movie. It's bad. I mean, it's really bad. Imagine the worse movie you've ever seen... and double the incompetence, and you'd begin to scratch the surface of auteur Tommy Wiseau's masterpiece.
Set in San Francisco, The Room "tells" the "story" of a love triangle between banker Johnny (Wiseau), his fiance Lisa (Juliette Danielle) and his best friend Mark (played by the movie's line producer, Greg Sestero). This last bit of info is apparently very, very important to the movie. No joke, at least one character every 2 minutes states the fact that Johnny is Mark's best friend. Mark apparently lives in the same building as Johnny and Lisa, as do an 18-year-old college student Denny, who views Johnny as a surrogate father figure. Denny pops in during the opening scene where Johnny has given Lisa a new dress, and the two of them start making out. They tell Denny to relax as they go upstairs to obstensively make love and Denny wants to watch them. They flatly shoo him out, as everyone in this movie flatly tells everyone everything. Johnny and Lisa then proceed to have the first of three of the most unerotic sex scenes ever put to celluloid. And the movie lurches on from there.
The Room has absolutely everything wrong going on in it: flat direction, crappy music, very poor writing, and really, really... I mean, REALLY bad acting. Here's one short example:
This scene makes most porn actors look like Dame Judi Freaking Dench. See what I mean? The nonsensical lines of dialogue, the very flat line readings, the poor camera use. So bad... but so funny! So hilariously funny. Wiseau is particularly horrible. He doesn't make eye contact with his fellow actors and he talks like none of his lines contain punctuation. The only reason I think he paused before he said "Oh Hi Mark" is that it probably was on another page than the rest of his mini-monologue. Years ago, I was talking to Jen about good and bad acting, and I told her that the basic litmus test as to whether or not someone is a shitty actor is believability. Do you believe them as the character, do you believe the words coming out of their mouth? And Wiseau is so, so bad I didn't buy anything he was doing. There's one shot where he's strolling through a park and I just starting giggling 'cause I didn't believe it. I couldn't buy him walking, that's how bad he is.
The whole film is riddled with dropped subplots (a drug dealer, Lisa's mother's health), long panning shots of San Francisco that go on and on and on, and completely nonsensical scenes (football in tuxedos, that's all I'll say) that The Room truly has to be seen to be believed. It's an amazing achievement. There's a level of bizarro genius going on here, 'cause you have to be doing a lot of things wrong to come up with a movie this horribly bad. And deliciously entertaining. As you can imagine, I added this on my Amazon Wish List within minutes of watching it. Here's the trailer:
I could post more clips from YouTube, but I so don't want to spoil anything for you. If you do watch The Room on DVD, do yourself a favor and surround yourself with a bunch of friends, a lot of snark, and plenty of alcohol. If you do a drinking game, take a shot when anyone ever says the phrase "best friend." Trust me, you'll be schnokered.
The only reason I think he paused before he said "Oh Hi Mark" is that it probably was on another page than the rest of his mini-monologue. /quote
ROFLMAO! I owe you big time for that laugh. :) I wish I'd been there with you guys. :)
Posted by: katie | November 29, 2009 at 05:32 PM