The Room 2003

I don't find The Disaster Artist at all interesting because the appeal of The Room is not just its inept technical components, but the magically absurdist logic of the universe it creates as a "bad movie". Its cool to explain to casual fans what goes or doesn't go into its poor editing, non existent production value, amateur acting and a repetitive but earnest script. But they already know. Tommy Wiseau is a bizarre aging foreign hipster who spent his life savings on a film without having any proper craft to pull it off. Yet he succeeds because its not craft that determines how great a director is. Wiseau had a vision, he assembled people good enough to pull it off, he stuck to his version of the truth and fans totally loved it. It is a heartwarming meta-story, but its also cruel and morbid to reduce he and his film to a punchline. Maybe The Disaster Artist acknowledges his unique talents as its title suggests, but it still categorizes him as an accidental success. Wrong.

Properly contextualize the pieces of truth that The Room gives you. I think the film is so rewatchable and popular because there is a dark and sincere emotional core. Between the 4 awkward sex scenes put to cheesy RnB (3 of which occur in the first 30 minutes) and the many times Greg Sestero explains Tommy is his "best friend", there's a depressing tale of heartbreak, drug abuse, criminal mistakes, a failed marriage, suicide, depression, abuse and more. This film is Wiseau's confessional - part of his shadowy origin that has become part of the experience of The Room. It has a mythology and language that has inspired as much decoding and wonder as the films of David Lynch.

Nothing wrong with laughing at the quirkiness or horrible ADR or bizarre use of green screen, but don't underestimate what this film says. One point of contention I have with so-called fans is the supposed pointlessness of the subplots like Claudette's cancer diagnosis, the Chris-R scene, the characters playing football in tuxedo's.

Early in the film, Tommy has the line, "Denny, don't plan too much. It may not come out right!"

This is the sad, obsessive code of this narrative. If you use this as the overarching theme of The Room, it plays with a bittersweet logic, like a Crayola colored version of a Russian tragic novel. The most logical theory we are left to make is that this is an Americanized version of Wiseau's past and Denny's story is his: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/1kp8df/the_character_denny_in_the_room_is_a/?st=jb5vfws9&sh=a4674eda

 Even with (or because of) its bad acting, high school drama atmosphere and so on... The Room evokes that dark period in many people's young lives when love fails them and they lose it all. It shows the ignorance, youth and spoils of the film's white hipster audience when they only ridicule this attempt at art. And on a plot level, the film never loses momentum and each scene plays beautifully despite its shortcomings because the story is personal to the filmmaker.

And much of the film's shittiness lies not with Wiseau's performance as actor or director. Notice that the Line Producer, the person who sees each stage of production to completion for the producer, is Greg Sestero who is the film's worst critic and sold the rights to this exploitative new film. Sestero's only other claim to fame is playing Andre Toulon in "Retro Puppet Master" and he brings that same air of detached, cynical hucksterism to the acting and the production of The Room. And again, much of The Room's awkwardness comes from its editing and ADR, possibly to set up the film as a comedy. Also, Wiseau's A.D. claims to have directed the camera and actors, so isn't he bragging that he's responsible for the film's terrible staging and line reading? Wiseau's role is the classic producer who assigns probably too much freedom to his crew. His stroke of genius was casting himself and using his own life as basis for the script. His overwhelming emotion and visible scarring mixes with the amateurism and absurdity to create low budget cinematic poetry.

And it is art. Made by a true outsider, a true original and a true maverick who spread a message that has become kind of generational. It fits with the bleak and absurd post-9/11 age in ways that are obscure but obvious. The creative choices by Wiseau weren't intentionally funny or weird, but that only serves the authenticity. If it all were the same but an ironic performance by a pretentious cynical star, would it be as intriguing? I don't think so. And this is one of the most authentic, independent and personal films of the young 21st century. I respect it wholeheartedly and I hope it receives a better appreciation someday.