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osprey_archerAfter 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.
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.
