The Room

Dir: Tommy Wiseau

2003

*

Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 debut The Room is now infamous as being one of the worst films ever made. I have a habit of defending bad films but not this time. I’ve been to film school, so I’ve seen quite a few terrible amateur films but I’ve never seen a feature film – that people have clearly put effort and spent money on – as bad as this. I wondered who on earth green-lit it, until I released it was paid for by the director/writer/producer/lead actor - Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau is a self-confessed movie fan who had written scripts before and had attended acting school. However, it doesn’t feel like he knew anything about the movies while watching. The more I learn of him, the more this seems true. It reminded me of the story behind the band The Shaggs. In 1965 Austin Wiggins made his three daughters form a band after a palm-reader predicted his daughters would be in a pop-group to his mother. However, the girls didn’t want to play and were never allowed to listen to music growing up. They were given instruments and ordered to play by their disciplinarian father without any reference as to how the instruments worked or indeed what music was. The Room feels like it was directed/written/produced/performed by someone who had no idea about the filming process and who had only seen very few films. Wiseau is certainly a strange character – a character with plenty of money to fund an entire production. The film itself is a complete mess, with an inconsistent narrative structure, loads of pointless subplots and one of the worst scripts you could ever imagine. I’m not even sure why it was called The Room. It concerns a love triangle of sorts but the story really never goes anywhere. The film begins with Wiseau’s character Tommy coming home with a sexy dress for his girlfriend Lisa to wear. Their young neighbour comes around just as they’re getting amorous with each other – doesn’t get the hint – and ends up jumping in bed with them as they are about to get it on. It’s so incredibly awkward it’s difficult to know what the hell is going and the film continues in much the same vein. Lisa becomes uninterested in him and soon begins a sexual relationship with his best friend Mark (played by Wiseau’s best friend Greg Sestero). Both pairs have at least two sex scenes each – all of which are identical – with Wiseau’s featuring his bizarre looking backside (According to Greg Sestero's book, Wiseau insisted on having his bare bottom filmed. Wiseau's reasoning was, "I have to show my ass or this movie won't sell."). Tommy suspects something and sets a secret recorder in their bedroom. Lisa starts telling everyone that Tommy is hitting her and literally nothing happens for most of the film until everything is repeated. The recordings have nothing to do with Tommy finding out, no one’s motivation is explained and people come and go and do things that make absolutely no sence whatsoever. If it had just been a bad film no one would have noticed it, however, it is so ridiculous and contains so many bizarre and ridiculous lines of dialogue, that its hard not to become somewhat transfixed by it. Greg Sestero would later write a book about the doomed production and answers many of the questions the film raises. Wiseau was relentless during the making of the film but showed a total lack of understanding as to how films are made. He filmed it using 35mm and in HD simultaneously as he wanted to be the first director to do so – although he didn’t know the difference. Only the 35 mm footage was used in the final edit – wasting a huge amount of money. He would green-screen certain scenes, even though similar locations were available. The funniest example of this is having an ally way scene built on a sound-stage right next to a real life ally way. Much of the dialogue was lifted from James Dean films and the chamber plays of Tennessee Williams but the over-acting was all Wiseau. Thanks to the overacting and the bizarre script the film has become a cult, regularly playing to sold out midnight showings. It is certainly hypnotic in its awfulness but I can’t say I have any desire to ever watch it again. Apparently Wiseau tasked the crew with devising a way for Johnny's Mercedes-Benz to fly across the San Francisco skyline, revealing Johnny to be a vampire at the end of the film but they talked him down, stating that it would be a little ridiculous. Personally I think it’s a lost ending and something that would have no doubt improved the final production.