A Review of "The Room" (1/3)

You know. I've always wanted to blow open this turkey. The often-proclaimed "worst movie of all time" has stayed off my radar for quite some time, and with good reason; it's entertaining as hell. But what makes it "The worst movie of all time"? Well, if you've never seen it, you're about to receive one hell of an awakening. You see, there exists a man of indeterminable origin, or at the very least it was indeterminable for the longest time until very recently. A man hailing from Europe, then New Orleans, and then LA. A man who had a dream just to make a movie and to entertain, to be an actor and to be a superstar; that man's name is Tommy Wiseau, and thanks to his magnum opus The Room, Tommy Wiseau is now more well-known than ever. He's an internet celebrity, a minor Hollywood celebrity, a TV show creator, a film director, writer, entrepreneur and most of all, actor. Tommy Wiseau is the living proof that your dreams can come true, yes, but he's also living proof that it may not always be how you want it to be.

Juliette Danielle, "Lisa"

As far as The Room goes, the story is pretty generic but the 'badness' comes from how poorly executed and written it is. Wiseau plays "Johnny", a banker who has it all going for him. When Johnny's fiancee Lisa cheats on him with his best friend Mark, Johnny realizes that even if you can have everything, you can have it all taken away from under you... and that's about it. The rest of the movie is riddled with ridiculous, unnecessary scenes and filler dialogue that goes nowhere and does nothing. So many subplots don't go anywhere, are often mentioned once and then dropped, and much of the dialogue and lingo used by the characters is quite laughable in all honesty. Many of the actors, no, all of the actors are either DOA or try way too hard for such meaningless and small roles. It's just one of those movies that must be seen to be believed. Even only recently, a lot of the turmoil and inappropriate and often uncomfortable levels of hilarity behind-the-scenes were guarded secrets until the book The Disaster Artist was written by the film's co-star, Greg Sestero, who plays Johnny's friend "Mark" and also a real-life close friend of Wiseau's and fellow beneficiary of The Room's cult status as a really good awful movie. Sestero was also Tommy Wiseau's roommate in LA when both were looking to break into the film industry and when neither were having much luck, they both opted to work together on their own film, and that planted the seeds for what would become The Room.

Philip Haldiman, "Denny"

Much of the hilarity was unintentional. Tommy Wiseau argued for many years that the film was intended to be a farce of a love story but a lot of crew members and cast members debate this, especially Sestero. The Room was originally intended to be a true love story and a dramatic piece of cinema, but a lot of it did not come across this way and the film was received humorously by those who viewed it. As displayed in The Disaster Artist film adaptation by James Franco, Tommy Wiseau was visibly annoyed or upset in the film's premiere at the laughter and humorous response the movie's dramatic elements were getting. Many film critics and viewers attribute this to Wiseau's accent and his poor acting chops. Many of the crew members had to conceal their laughter about what they were witnessing as during shooting live scenes, the cameraman began to laugh so hard the camera would shake during takes. Some of the lines Wiseau's character Johnny gives are ridiculous, cheesy, over-the-top, they make no sense or are just completely unnecessary. In fact, Wiseau was so bad at reciting his dialogue on camera that, according to Greg Sestero, Wiseau required thirty-two takes for the infamous "I did not hit her" scene. Thirty-one takes were unusable as Tommy either couldn't remember his lines, flubbed them, tripped over objects, looked directly into the camera or anything in between. According to Juliette Danielle, the actress who plays Tommy's on-screen cheating fiance Lisa, when Tommy Wiseau said the line, "In a few minutes, bitch," everyone on the set began laughing at him. Wiseau then emerged from the bathroom and demanded to know what was so funny, leaving an awkward situation made worse by Tommy's demands to take everything's seriously.

Greg Sestero, "Mark"

Many of Wiseau's behind-the-scenes decisions were also heavily questioned by pretty much all those involved in production of the film. The just-as-infamous scene in which Johnny rises from his slumber and exposes his buttocks on camera was heavily, heavily argued against keeping in the final cut by everyone but Wiseau, who reportedly fought to keep it in because "either his ass is in this movie or it won't sell." Wiseau also reportedly held information about the characters away from the actors who played them. Wiseau once reported that the character of Denny, played by Philip Haldiman, had a mental disorder to explain his poor acting and weird line delivery and behaviors in the film. The only hangup was that Philip himself was not informed about this during casting, filming, or even for some time after the movie's release. Juliette Danielle also was incredibly uncomfortable with the amount of love scenes that were in the movie. After filming the first one, Wiseau demanded a second, but Danielle refused, so unused shots from the first were cobbled back together and put into the movie for a second one. To make matters worse, unlike most movies, where the sets are generally closed while filming nude sequences, Tommy Wiseau insisted that the set be open while filming the long love scene between Lisa and Johnny, upsetting both Danielle and Greg Sestero. Tommy Wiseau also reportedly actually made Juliette Danielle cry when he pointed out that she had pimples, and everyone heard it. According to Greg Sestero, Tommy Wiseau originally intended on providing a subplot in the movie to explain that Johnny was, in fact, a vampire. Yeah, you read that right. Sestero recounts how, at the outset of production, Wiseau tasked members of the crew with figuring out a way to execute a sequence in which Johnny's Mercedes-Benz would lift off from the roof of the townhouse and fly across the San Francisco skyline, revealing Johnny's vampiric nature. In fact, in the original script, the rooftop scene with Chris-R features Tommy as a vampire in a car hovering over the building. The one and only reason that the subplot wasn't included in shooting and release was that Wiseau decided to drop it after learning that there was no practical way to film the flying car scene on the production's budget.

Fan art referring to the vampire subplot

Speaking of the script, you'd think that since it was just a generic "love betrayed" story, it'd be a pretty simple script to read and act from. Far from it. Aside from the 'vampire story arc', there were also a ton of elements in the script that were cut and re-written because the crew found the script completely unusable in its current state. The original script was significantly longer than the one used during filming and featured a series of lengthy monologues. It was edited on-set by the cast and script supervisor, who found much of the dialogue incomprehensible. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, one anonymous cast member claimed that the script contained "stuff that was just unsayable. I know it's hard to imagine there was stuff that was worse. But there was." To give you a better idea of how bad the script writing process was, while writing one scene with Lisa and her mother, Tommy Wiseau had Lisa talking on the phone with Claudette, and then the scene ended with Lisa walking her mother to the door because Wiseau had genuinely forgot they were on the phone. The story is also pretty loosely defined in and of itself. Despite Mark and Johnny's friendship being an integral part of the story they do not talk with each other until just about thirty-eight minutes into the movie. Which seems humorously ironic since in the final film, there are seven mentions of Johnny and Mark being best friends. Often at screenings of the film, attendees loudly count these mentions.

Tommy Wiseau, "Johnny" as well
as writer, producer & director

By the end of production, morale among the crew was so low and laughable that nobody tried anymore. This resulted in many of the "Damn you Todd Barron" chants you hear at the screenings as cinematographer Todd Barron removed his name from the clapperboard so as not to have anything to do with production any longer. Several shots of San Francisco are out of focus, simply because the crew didn't bother checking the lenses on the cameras prior to shooting. In fact, many shots that made it into the final movie had giggling crew members sneaking into the background simply because they didn't care if the camera was rolling or not. The actors were fed up with Wiseau and his sadistic behavior behind-the-scenes, ultimately resulting in a very poor, laughable movie that nobody wanted to be a part of. Sestero even wrote in The Disaster Artist that his venomous delivery of "Keep your stupid comments in your pocket," is due to him channeling all the frustrations of the shoot and imagining he was actually yelling "Why are you doing this to me?" to Tommy himself. 

As production wrapped, most of the cast & crew were utterly convinced that the movie wasn't going to be seen by anyone. Some even took bets on it. According to Sestero, Wiseau submitted the film to Paramount Pictures, hoping to get them as the distributor. Usually, it takes about two weeks to get a reply. This movie however was rejected within 24 hours. Nevertheless, The Room in all its glory was released on June 27th, 2003 in LA. The premiere, as depicted in The Disaster Artist, was understandably embarrassing for all those involved. The film was promoted almost exclusively through a single billboard in Hollywood, located on Highland Avenue just north of Fountain, featuring an image Tommy Wiseau refers to as "Evil Man": an extreme close-up of his own face with one eye in mid-blink. Although more conventional artwork was created for the film, featuring the main characters' faces emblazoned over the Golden Gate Bridge, Wiseau chose the "Evil Man" for what he regarded as its provocative quality; around the time of the film's release, the image led many passers-by to believe that The Room was a horror film. Despite the film's failure to enjoy immediate success, Wiseau paid to keep the billboard up for over five years, at the cost of $5,000 a month. Its bizarre imagery and longevity led to it becoming a minor tourist attraction.

So what makes The Room itself such a turd and a bomb that it was ridiculed as being "The single worst movie ever made?" Check in Part Two and we'll give the movie a watch.