The Room

[osprey_archer]

After reading Greg Sestero’s memoir The Disaster Artist, about the making of The Room and Sestero’s super weird relationship with Tommy Wiseau, the director, and also in preparation for the movie version of that memoir which is coming out soonish (SO EXCITED. You guys, there are so many amazing-looking movies coming out this fall, I am verklempt) - I decided that I ought to watch The Room.

Which Julie and I duly did on Halloween! (Julie has already suffered through it once, so that is true roommate devotion if ever I heard of it.)

I had been so very thoroughly prepared for The Room to be COMPLETELY AWFUL that I was in fact a little disappointed that it wasn’t even worse than it was. True, it’s rife with continuity errors, the timeline is completely borked, and even the actors who have a certain amount of skill can’t make some of the lines sound like things that an actual human being would say - but I expected total incoherence and there is in fact a coherent story under there. It is a Mary Sue self-insert story: “I am a wonderful person but everyone is mean to me, and you’ll all regret it when I’m dead” edition.

Unlike your average Mary Sue, Johnny (Tommy Wiseau’s self-insert) is not a purple eyed space elf, but a stand-up guy who makes a good living at a bank and owns a row house with a garage in San Francisco (actually, that might count as a superpower). He is also paying an orphan’s college tuition. He also saves said orphan from a gun-wielding drug dealer, in a scene that seems totally out of place with the rest of the movie until you realize that the whole movie is in fact about making Johnny look wonderful, in which case of course a heroic action sequence makes perfect sense.

But despite his wonderfulness, Johnny is CRUELLY BETRAYED by his fiancee Lisa, who sleeps with his best friend Mark (played by Greg Sestero). A large proportion of the movie is taken up in every single other character telling Lisa that Johnny is wonderful and she should marry him despite the fact that she doesn’t love him anymore. Because he’s just so wonderful!

Instead Lisa sleeps with Mark, and thereby drives Johnny to suicide. Then Lisa and Mark find his body, and are suitably distraught in a classic “If I DIED then everyone would be really sorry they’d treated me so badly!” fantasy. Mark kisses Johnny’s forehead and tells Lisa she’s a bitch and he never wants to see her again, so she is left alone FOREVER, take that, Lisa.

In an odd way, The Room reminded me of the Elsie Dinsmore books, which also follow a perfect, persecuted heroine, and also forsake normal plot development for a series of set pieces that feature either Elsie suffering virtuously or other people talking about Elsie - although Elsie, unlike Johnny, doesn’t always come in for unalloyed praise.

In the Elsie books it’s actually quite emotionally effective - although, as in The Room, not always the way the creator intended; I for one wanted to save Elsie from her author. In The Room it’s sort of fascinatingly iddy, but not at all emotionally involving.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

Gosh I never expected to see an Elsie reference in a post about The Room - should I read Elsie? You kinda make me want to!

Anyway I love The Room. I had a similar reaction the first time though - why isn't it MORE bad?! However a) it improves on entertainment value on rewatch (liberal application of alcohol suggested but not required) and b) I saw a couple of other "worst movie ever made" type things and the ones that lacked coherency or were even worse were truly unwatchable. The ~magic of The Room is that it is both terrible AND entertaining!

IDK if I can handle The Disaster Artist, please take this one for the team and report back lol.

[osprey_archer]

Oh man. I would not recommend Elsie Dinsmore unless you want to be appalled and horrified by mid-nineteenth century evangelical Christian inspirational kids lit about a sad but saintly young girl who is surrounded by people who do not understand her religious faith and think it makes her a complete milquetoast, which is generally accurate, except when someone asks her to go against her conscience, at which point she becomes immovable even though her father shuns her - literally shuns her - for months on end, and then threatens to send her to a nunnery.

It's actually weirdly addictive, but also appalling, and super not everyone's cup of tea. Apparently modern evangelicals still sometimes give this to their children as inspirational reading material.

I will definitely report back on The Disaster Artist! Is there anything in particular that concerns you about it that I should be sure to report back on?

[littlerhymes]

...right then, you've turned me RIGHT OFF Elsie now. I think I remember your blog post about it now, actually. A cornucopia of childhood trauma!

I think I'm mostly turned off by James Franco and his endless quest to be a living art installation, tbh. I hope you enjoy it! Any kind of reportage is good reportage!

[osprey_archer]

I did not know about James Franco's quest to be a living art installation! What has he done in pursuit of this goal? What is it going to look like if he ever achieves it? Is he going to put himself in a glass cube and just be Art all day?

[littlerhymes]

He hasn't made this quest public yet but I imagine it's only a matter of time. I suppose on his tombstone it will read, "ACTUALLY IT WAS PERFORMANCE ART ALL ALONG."

This is a very uncharitable reading of his career and its diversions into ~art~ especially since I love modern art (I love all that pretentious shit!) and I like many of his movies. AND YET. I saw the trailer for Disaster Artist and it looked like terrible parody Franco to me. I do not like that Franco.

[evelyn_b]

The Room is less incoherent than some "real" movies I've seen, because the plot is relatively simple, if a little dreamlike, the visuals are technically competent enough to be visible, and nothing has to explode. There's a lot of bad blocking and everyone speaks Wiseau*, but the viewer isn't required to parse any complicated action sequences or remember a lot of garbled information. Like littlerhymes said, it has a strong watchability-badness ratio.

The Elsie comparison is interesting. I've never been able to "get into" the Elsie books, despite many tries, but found The Room a little meta-emotionally involving, if not directly emotionally involving, even before I read The Disaster Artist twice in a row.

I really hope the Disaster Artist movie is good! I didn't love the second trailer I saw nearly as much as the teaser, but I have high hopes anyway. Poor movie!Greg's facial expressions are terrific.

*actually Reformed Simple Wiseau, if Greg's account of his and Sandy's herculean editing efforts are to be believed

[osprey_archer]

I know what you mean about meta-emotionally involving. I never really came to care about Johnny and the other characters, but in a weird way I started to feel for Wiseau, because the whole thing is just such a blatant id-dump. Like, this is your dream life, man?

I'm not sure if I would have reacted that way if I hadn't read The Disaster Artist first, though, because the book definitely primes that interpretation of hte movie.

[brigdh]

I just saw the trailer for The Disaster Artist last night! It looks SO GOOD.

I too have never actually watched The Room, despite knowing about it for years, because my patience for two hours-ish of bad movie is remarkably low. I prefer getting the highlights from people who enjoy putting themselves through that.

[osprey_archer]

It looks FABULOUS, I'm so excited to see it. It looks like they've ramped up the ~drama between Tommy & Greg and I'm so here for that.

I think it's probably only possible to watch The Room if you have someone to make fun of it with, and a whole group of people would probably be even better. I never would have gotten through it on my own. But it's actually weirdly engaging? Maybe just because the story mechanics are so blatantly on the page - it's like watching a movie get vivisected, but less creepy than that sounds.