Not all bad movies are created equally. Sometimes, a film can be so bad that it actually seems to warp back on itself to become entertaining.
It doesn’t always happen. If a movie’s merely sloppy, uneven, or (worst of all) boring, then it’s probably not bad enough to accidentally entertain. The badness has to be, well, fun – creating moments of inadvertent humor.
And there is one movie whose badness has skyrocketed it to the status of cult classic. It’s a movie so terrible that none of its fans would make the argument that there’s actually hidden genius inside it -- and they don’t need to. It’s beloved and celebrated because it’s so awful, rightfully earning the moniker of “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.”
I’m talking, of course, about The Room.
Trying to describe The Room is a little bit like trying to describe a dream you had:
there’s no way to explain it that could do the weirdness justice.
The “plot” of the film centers on Johnny, a man who seems to have it all: great job, good friends, and a loving fiancée named Lisa. But as the story (such as it is) unfolds, Johnny’s world begins to unravel as Lisa begins an affair with Johnny’s best friend, Mark.
And it’s the most hilarious movie you’ll ever see.
That’s because The Room never manages to actually tell the story it set out to tell. It tries to be a story about love, trust, and betrayal. What it actually does is present the audience with the most bizarre film ever committed to screen.
The structure is insane. Plotlines are introduced, then forgotten by the next scene. Non sequiturs dominate the dialogue. Continuity is an impossibility; a character disappears halfway through and is replaced by an entirely new character, which happens without comment or explanation. The acting is pretty uniformly dreadful, in large part because none of the lines sound like anything an actual human would ever say. (There's also some terrible -- and terribly unnecessary -- scenes that earn the movie its R rating, so be advised that this is one bad movie definitely not for younger viewers.)
It’s been ten years since The Room was released. Its cult following is not to be denied: sold-out showings play monthly across the country, attended by fans who dress up as the characters, quote lines along with the movie, and throw spoons at the screen during key scenes. (That last one’s an inside joke.) There’s an unofficial video game and traveling stage show.
And now, there’s a book.
The Disaster Artist was written by Greg Sestero, who played Mark in the movie – and who, therefore, has an insider’s scoop on the making of The Room.
Wiseau, Sestero, and a football --
three of The Room's biggest stars.
The “warped, accidental genius” of The Room’s inadvertent hilarity all come from the same place. The movie was written, produced, directed, and starred in by a single individual: Tommy Wiseau.
It is Wiseau’s quirky, uncanny, unsettling, and downright bizarre personality that infuses The Room, and so, too, does he infuse The Disaster Artist. The book alternates between the filming process of The Room (which, much like the film itself, must be experienced for oneself to do the weirdness proper justice), and how Sestero came to develop a friendship with the indefinable Wiseau.
The result is a book which I simply couldn’t put down. It’s as much an insider’s look of the film industry and the moviemaking process, as it is an exploration of the struggle for success and the true definition of artistic merit. In that respect, it becomes a far deeper story than the movie it’s dissecting.
-- Request The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside 'The Room,' The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell from the Catalog
-- Request The Room on DVD from the Catalog
-- Post by Ms. B
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