The Disaster Artist: An Okay Movie About The Worst Movie

The film adaptation of The Disaster Artist is both admirable that it exists, as much as it is a bit of a disappointment as a fan of the The Room and the titular book that it wades into fiction. It’s a perfectly fun and lighthearted watch that gives you a nice little half-documentary retelling of a great tale. But that’s where the movie falls short. It’s just a half-documentary/mockumentary and leans into the comedy side a bit much for me, with the focus more on having fun making a movie versus staying true to the source material.

Usually when a project like this gets made, it looks like a Kickstarter movie: flat angles like a soap opera, efficient shooting and cinematography, one or two “star” actors that are definitely actors but not really stars and overall acceptable acting but nothing special. But this movie is different. It has a real budget and has actual name talent in the roles and a litany of cameos.

James Franco is the man behind it all and he cast himself as the infamous Tommy Wiseau. He doesn’t generally excite me as an actor but he does a really good Tommy Wiseau impersonation. It would be so easy for him to play to the comedy side but he restrains from going too far that way. He nails it and really has you buy in. It doesn’t feel like a comedic impersonation, but that he really wanted to be in character in service of the best movie he could make so I give him props for that.

His brother Dave Franco plays our beloved Greg Sestero and the results there are much more mixed. I’ve met Greg Sestero, read his book, seen him in interviews and followed some of his other work. I don’t feel that Dave Franco captures Greg’s personality and overall demeanor the same way that his brother committed to going full Tommy. Plus his fake beard is terrible. It’s full on pubes-glued-to-face bad.

Seth Rogen is in the movie as an off-screen personality as Sandy Sinclair. I guess you can’t really have a Franco movie without Rogen and you get the feeling that they wanted to cast their friends in the movie too. There are a lot of small roles and cameos by actors you’ll recognize: Zac Efron, Jason Mantzoukas, and Sugar Lynn Beard were most notable to me. Sugar is my favourite as I grew up watching her on YTV. I really like Sugar.

The point of the movie and the entire aura of this project is to tell the tale of the worst movie ever made. To visually tell the story of a movie that got reviews such as “it feels like you’re being stabbed in the head”. That’s the goal, and this is where the film is just okay.

The movie does a decent job of telling the story you want to see. You do get a glimpse through the looking glass and get to learn some of the behind the scenes quackery. There is a charm to seeing the wild interaction and unfiltered Tommy moments from the book now being played out visually.

But it’s still glossy and sugary. The book will constantly drive home all the different ways that Tommy was a terror on set. Arriving late, treating people like trash, being an emotionally abusive asshole, etc. But then also the moments where he’s just a guy passionately trying to make his passion project while being woefully unequipped to do so from every perspective.

The movie glosses over a lot of those moments. There’s really only one moment where you get terrorist Tommy. The rest of his scenes are just loveable doofus. I wanted to see more of Tommy the Terrorist dickhead and not this sympathetic weirdo.

The relationship between Greg and Tommy is also much different on screen compared to the book. They’re more along the lines of good pals in the movie that are having some ups and downs, yet they stay close through the whole ordeal of The Room. Reality was much different where Greg and Tommy weren’t really friends for a very long time. Greg tolerated Tommy and Tommy was trying to use Greg. The dynamic there definitely involves some weird interpersonal stuff and manipulation. I don’t know about you, but that isn’t common to me in a healthy friendship.

They’ve reconciled obviously, since money will do that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it can be tough to treat this movie as a serious or accurate re-telling when you know you’re looking at fiction. Because when you know this part isn’t real, like the motivation of the beard shaving scene, then you’re going to question other parts you’re less familiar with.

Overall, the movie does a decent job of telling an entertaining story but it fails to accurately tell the true story behind it all. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as Tommy and Greg were both officially involved in this project and both would want to be seen in good ways and not have their dirty laundry exposed.

But that’s the juicy meaty goodness in the book to me. This is more comedy film than a historical film or bio-pic. The novelty of this kind of movie should be celebrated. I enjoyed it. But I just wanted more. If you know you know at this point.

And so wraps The Room quadrilogy: The Room, The Room flash game, The Disaster Artist book and the Disaster Artist film.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.

The Disaster Artist: A Great Book About The Worst Film

The Room is the world’s most famous bad movie. Itis a cult classic that has moved into being a classic in a lot of ways. It’s been dissected from the outside countless times online. Something was always missing though, and that was a top to bottom account of it from top to bottom coming someone on the inside. If you’re a fan of The Room, or just even movie production, then The Disaster Artist is a must read.

The book, authored by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell, starts in two very different places. Half the chapters follow Greg as he recounts his life trying to become an actor: going to auditions, modelling shoots, being on set for other movies and shows. His own autobiography to an extent but it never feels self indulgent nor does he forget what the real allure of the book is. The other half of the chapters recount the movie from the first day on set to when it eventually wrapped and the cast got their tape to take home and attend the premiere.

I’m not much of a reader. It’s a habit I’m trying to work on. I see how many books are out there and think to myself about all the great stories I’m missing out on. Maybe an entire universe is waiting for me, but I just still never really get grabbed and dive in by a lot of what I’ve found. I have a whole shelf of books I haven’t read. Why is this relevant? I couldn’t put this book down.

Admittedly, I’m a big fan of The Room. I’ve seen the movie over a dozen times, played the game, watched videos about the movie and have seen The Disaster Artist film.

I love knowing the behind the scenes of movies. I think it comes down to wanting to know how people make decisions. What goes into it? This crosses over into sports as well. Learning and knowing how something comes together is always interesting to me because there is so much to learn.

I’ve watched the special features on the Lord of the Rings movies countless times. Those movies are classics because they did everything “right” from design to cinematography to casting to everything involved. And one of the most amazing parts of those featurettes is how seemingly close they were, multiple times along the way, to making the wrong decisions from design to cinematography to casting and so on.

When terrible movies get made and have all sorts of turmoil, I love finding out why and reading those dirt sheets.

If only every bad movie had this much fanfare.

Sure there are lots of big franchises that have pumped out poor movies, but their films come and go. The Room is basically played in every city every month at your local independent cinema. When it is played it becomes an event as if it’s whatever big hockey or football game is coming up next. People dress up in special clothes to look like the characters and act out scenes and sing songs and chant and yell and cheer and boo. Oh, and throw spoons in the air to celebrate certain scenes.

The book does a great job of letting you know why Tommy and Greg are the ways they are, why that led to what decisions they made, why they stuck to this film, and I think that this level of commitment does come through in the final film of The Room when you look back at it.

When you watch the movie you see it’s a terrible movie. But you see its being made honestly. They’re going for a serious drama. They missed and failed miserably, but that level of honest effort is endearing. The cast is acting their hearts out. The crew off-screen are trying their best to make the best movie they can. And when you’re reading about everything that went into turning out the film then it is even more endearing and interesting.

The biggest revelation, I think, is that the Johnny on-screen isn’t much different than the Tommy off-screen. He’s as much the “villain” as he is the “hero” or driving force behind the film.

He’s hilariously incompetent. He’s obsessive. He’s a little bit nuts. He’s selfish and unselfish at the flip of a coin. He’s a terror on set and comes across bipolar. One second he’s screaming about sex scenes, and then he’s whining about how no one understands his vision. He refuses to provide drinking water for the crew, but then likes to remind everyone how much they’re getting paid.

He isn’t evil, but he is antagonistic. He can be a “bad guy”. But that’s just Tommy. The way he is wired isn’t the same as everyone else. He’s weird, going from being manic and eccentric and rude to acting like a vulnerable, bullied child.

But at the same time, you get real moments of sympathy that do make Tommy a human. He’s a guy who love love loves movies. Being an actor is what makes him happiest and he hasn’t had the happiest life. That’s why he behaves the way he does. Whether you want to let that excuse it is up to you. But he isn’t just being a weird, stubborn asshole to be a weird, stubborn asshole. He’s making his passion project and wants it to be perfect and exactly as he’s imagined it.

Greg Sestero, and writer Tom Bissell, really make a compelling story.

Now, obviously, this is all from Greg’s perspective. Tommy has disputed the account, obviously, and the film version of the book glossed over some things as well. Every story has two sides, and this story has multiple sides from multiple people. But it doesn’t feel like Greg is embellishing and the fact that he and Tommy are still Best F(r)iends afterwards speaks to the fact that there has to be enough truth here that you can trust what you’re reading.

You understand why Greg was willing to put up with so much too. He sunk a lot into this movie, but also owed Tommy so much and felt that he had to repay his friendship by staying by his side during this movie.

Part of you wonders why in a Hollywood world where most actors are willing to go Tonya Harding on the competition to get ahead, why someone would hang around so long on this movie and pass up other work? But you really get the sense of loyalty and friendship between Greg and Tommy. And reading their relationship blossom and then wither is equal parts thought provoking and frustrating. It could even be more of a tragic feeling if you weren’t aware of how the two of them have come back around and are still close after it all, and still working together in Best F(r)iends and other projects.

The amount of staff turnover on the film is bananas. It’s how Greg got his role, how Lisa got her role, how Peter and the other Peter Steven got casted. The entire off screen crew basically got turned over two separate times during filming. It helps to explain how sometimes the movie seems slightly more cinematic, to the times it looks like an efficient daytime soap opera, to a quickly shot indie film.

There are 8 pages of photos in the middle of the book that are nearly worth the sale price of it alone. It’s great to see behind the scenes pictures, photos of Greg and Tommy hanging out at a restaurant, a couple random weirdo shots of Tommy, the cast and crew on set, pictures from the premiere, and even some of Greg’s modelling shots.

A neat aesthetic to the physical book is that the pages that recount tales from filming of The Room are on pages with rough edges that look as if they’ve been torn. While the story of Greg chasing his dream as an actor and his friendship with Tommy are on pages that have smooth, perfectly straight edges. It adds a feel to the organization and chaos. As the book continues on the rough edges smooth out and the smooth edges roughen just a bit to come together as the two stories in the book meet. There is a beauty to a physical book that tablets and e-readers will never match, and a book that takes the extra effort to make those pages more interesting gets bonus points from this guy.

In the end, none of this makes The Room any better of a film, but you learn the why of it all. And as long as you’re not he kind of person who has things ruined by the “why” of it all, then this is an absolute must read. It makes for a great re-watch where you can be like “oh this scene was when ______ was happening!”

Thankfully it doesn’t explain everything that is confusing about the film, but this kind of an insight does help to explain what your eyes cannot fathom. When ego meets incompetence and incompetence attempts art then you get a very special baby as the result.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.

The Room Tribute: A Great Tribute to Your Favourite Alien in Human Skin

When you’re watching The Room, have you ever thought about what the rest of this world is like? A place where people walk in and out of Really Great Guy’s condo without knocking? A place where Tommy Wiseau Johnny is seemingly an incredible banker? How Johnny and Mark can subdue a violent drug dealer and enact a successful citizens arrest of a man with no evidence? Well, The Room Tribute does it’s absolute best to answer almost every single question.

It really tries to make the story more coherent and fill in the plot holes, back story and missing elements that led to the comedy of errors in the film. The game takes some of the “lore” of The Room from post popularity interviews and fan theories to just kick things up a notch. There is a lot of effort to answer a lot of the “Wait… why is ___?” or “Hold on a minute, what about ____?” questions the film leaves you with. Yet, it doesn’t make The Room any less fun as it captures the silly spirit of it all.

It probably won’t even take you a couple hours to play. It’s largely a pretty basic point and click game. I managed a thorough play-through in about 2 hours, give or take, and that was exploring everything fully, getting all the collectibles and side secrets. If you want to power through you can finish it in around half the time.

You play only as Tommy Johnny and you only experience things from Johnny’s perspective. You take Johnny to work at the bank, you shake Johnny’s ass in the shower, you have Johnny make sandwiches for his friends and have awkward interactions with store owners.

Johnny is such a great guy.

The game opens with an earthquake that traps Johnny’s condo building and the surrounding three blocks in each direction off on their own island. Well, that explains why the world is so weird and small. They somehow managed to make sense of the layout in Johnny’s condo so that it seems like a real room and not just an Ikea demo set.

The sprite work is great. The digital sprites are all instantly recognizable. They capture the caricature of the characters well. Me UnderPants Mike is dopey looking. Denny has a pervy grin. Lisa somehow has resting bitch face in an 8-bit style game. Mark is all handsome. Tommy looks like the weird human alien we’ve all come to love. The environments all have an impressive amount of detail.

The gameplay and interaction is great. You’re given a bit of agency in the story which is really impressive when you consider you’re playing an incomprehensible film in a browser window. The game has a lot of interaction with the environment and characters. Different mini-games populate the story. From battle scenes to foot chases to sandwich making. There is a little achievement list put into the game to give you some extra incentive to explore all the areas, find all the spoons, read all the diaries, see all there is to see and talk to all the characters every chance you get.

The music and sound is great. There are a handful of themes that play throughout the game. The main piano riff is digitized. Denny has his own awkward song. The different gameplay elements all get their own songs whether it’s an original beat or a remix of the digitized piano riff.

Isn’t that the face of an All American Good Guy?

It’s great fun to read all the dialogue as it comes on screen and do your best impression of each character. Maybe that’s just me, but give it a try if you dare. When you see the exact dialogue from the game being put in front of you in script it makes it even more hilarious. Whether it’s from having to actively read the lines or just how many of them contain random collections of words.

• “Rice, that was good.”
• “You’re the sparkle in my life.”
• “You don’t understand anything, man. Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!”
• “The bank saves money and they are using me and I am the fool.”
• “Anyway, how is your sex life?”

When I was talking about the detail and passion by the creators, this comes through in the effort put into the mini games and the behind the scenes to make sense of this version of San Francisco.

The battle sequences are straight out of Pokemon. The foot race is like a basic Mario level. RAGE mode Johnny feels like you punched in IDDQD to get your godmode on. You even get to play the crappy game of catch they portray in the film when you chuck a football around.

Spoon collecting is rewarding as not only are they a bit tricky to see, but they’re all named with a chuckle in mind. They camouflage them well into the environment but if you look for a spoon shaped texture, like really look, most of them become relatively obvious. There is a secret ending to the game for your favourite human alien if you collect all the spoons so keep your eyes peeled.

Focusing solely on Johnny in game creates a much stronger narrative than the film. In the film, Tommy Johnny is a bit of a doormat, but once you focus only on Johnny’s scenes then it makes the twists and turns less obvious and more sympathetic.

The game is a great piece of work. It follows the movie beat by beat, note by note, word by word. The details are meticulously recreated. The plot and story of the game MAKES SENSE of The Room. That is not small feat. An exceptional amount of work went into this game and it really shows how much care there is amongst the fanbase of this film. You’re not going to get a better The Room experience on your own than this.

The Room Tribute is a game made by programmer Tom Phulp, artist Jeff Bandelin and composer Chris O’Neil. It is hosted and published by Newgrounds.com here.

The Room: When an Alien in Human Skin Makes a Movie

The Room is the greatest mess in cinematic history. It is the Citizen Kane of bad movies. It is the answer to the question of what would happen if something went so far below a zero that it somehow became a 10.

Its awful. It makes no sense. Characters existing is the extent of their existence. It has character moments, arcs and plot that are dropped in the same scene they’re introduced. It is edited at random. In the language of cinema, nothing in The Room works.

This movie is unwatchably watchable. If you were to sit down and try to watch take this seriously, it would feel like you’re “being stabbed in the head.” But sitting down to watch this as a delusional vanity project gone awry and it becomes one of the best 90 minutes you’ll get out of a film.

Tommy Wiseau is the center of the film on screen, as really good guy Johnny, and off screen as well. This man directed, wrote, adapted, produced, starred in and funded the entire $6,000,000 film. Yes, this movie costs $6,000,000.

This entire film is a series of things just happening. Its almost more of a mockumentary around a guy and his life than it is a proper dramatic film.

This is the cinematic equivalent of giving any random person a budget and a script and a camera and a crew. It should make you appreciate how “good” even a regular bad movie is.

Tommy cannot enunciate. Tommy cannot dress himself. He’s an alien in human skin.

The Room is what the result would be if an alien species studied late 90’s soap opera TV, had a computer program amalgamate a script and then was performed by the aliens in human skin like the first Men In Black movie.

It’s not difficult to find secondhand embarrassment for the actress portraying Johnny’s “future wife” Lisa. She’s given an awkward wardrobe, absurd “motivation” and has 4 or 5 sex scenes. The sex scenes are uncomfortable. They last the entire length of the bad and cheesy love songs. Johnny pounds away at her belly button, has a zombie orgasm and then shows the entire world his butt. Why? Because its “Hollywood”, I guess.

Time passes in the film without any establishment of time passing. Characters talk about meeting up tomorrow and are in the next scene. No establishing shots, no passage of time shot, no CHANGE OF OUTFITS! They just happen.

Set design is bizarre. Like a showroom apartment from a 2003 Ikea. There are candles and photographs of spoons everywhere.

The logic of the film is bizarre. The game of football is just awkwardly hot potato-ing a ball around. Marijuana is considered an aggressive “fly off the handle” drug. Attempted murder is quickly forgiven. Stumbling into a garbage can sends you to the hospital.

The dialogue of the movie is completely bizarre, which probably is why the characters are so completely bizarre with actions that are completely bizarre.

• Claudette becomes the voice of the people at one point, literally saying “What are these characters doing here?”
• Tommy Johnny responds to the story of a woman being hospitalized by the beating of a jealous ex-lover with “Ha ha ha what a story, Mark!”
• Characters will bring up something in conversation and then say “I don’t want to talk about it” after them bringing it up.
• Adultery is committed and forgiven immediately, but then unforgiven about 12 seconds later in the same scene.

Does any of this sound like it was written by a human?

• “I did not hit her. I did not. Oh hi Mark.”
• “Anyway how’s your sex life?”
• “Anything for my princess ha ha ha!”
• “Its not over everybody betray me I fed up with this world!”
• “If a lot of people love each other the world would be a better place to live.”
• “Cheep Cheep Cheep Cheep Cheep.”

The Room Tribute game is amazing. Give it a play.

The best performance in this entire movie comes from the least trained actor on set. Drug dealer Chris R, played by former Olympic bobsledder Dan Janjigian, is excellent. He’s legitimately intimidating and terrifying. There is more conviction in his lines than the rest of the entire film. But even a performance that good is still undermined by The Room as people just appear in the scene like its Looney Tunes while shouting awkward lines. Somehow the violent, giant, gun weilding Chris R is subdued awkwardly by Johnny and his best friend Mark while Lisa yell cries about drugs at a whimpering Denny, Johnny’s pseudo son.

There’s a sad truth in film though. While its a mess, its clearly written from some place of truth or experience in Tommy Wiseau’s heart. There’s something of a biopic going on here, where nice guy Johnny gets manipulated, lied to and taken advantage of by the people close to him. A lot of the dialogue sounds like something from a bitter ex-lover.

Almost the entire male cast is portrayed as sexual vultures. Lisa is a petulant whore. Mark wants to, and does, bang Lisa. Denny wants to bang Lisa. Peter talks about how great Lisa is. Some no-name at the party has one line in the movie and it is “Lisa is so hot” while making a horny face.

Writing this may have been cathartic and even necessary for Tommy, but then turning this play into a film became an ego stroke. Some characters exist only to show that Tommy Johnny is a great guy.

Note: Due to Johnny clearly being a proxy for Tommy, I left in all the places I wrote Tommy.

One of these characters is Mike (pictured) aka Me Underpants Guy, who needs a private place to fool around with his girlfriend. So of course great guy Johnny allows them to use his couch whenever they want.

One of the nonsense characters is Denny, the orphan who was too old to adopt so Tommy Johnny just pays for his entire life as a pseudo father. All he does is be sexually creepy and weird, but Johnny loves him anyway because Johnny is so great.

One of these characters is Claudette, the future mother in law, who essentially repeats how Johnny is rich, nice, caring and an amazing man that all women would love to have.

One of these characters is the Flower Shop Owner, who exists to tell Tommy Johnny how he’s a great customer and great boyfriend.

Most of the characters essentially exist to say “Johnny, you are so great. You’re the best person” in a variety of ways.

Even Mark, the antagonist of the film and Johnny’s “best friend” who is banging Johnny’s “future wife” which frays and destroys the relationships in the plot of movie, will regularly talk about how great of a dude Johnny, his best friend, is. He will say this two seconds after putting his shirt on after having awkward staircase coitus with Lisa.

In years since, Tommy Wiseau has said he was making a dark comedy or a satire of a drama. Absolute crap. He went for a serious American drama and failed so miserably he made a comedy of errors so great he crafted one of the greatest comedy films of all time. The film grossed $1800 in its theatrical release. Marketing of the movie was a billboard in LA, that stayed up for 5 years, and Tommy Wiseau throwing pamphlets at people prior to the films premiere.

The film is a complete mess. It takes itself seriously. It wants to hit heavy but is undermined in wild swings of tone. Random thrown in scenes interrupt any pacing you may find. Its a movie that doesn’t know what a movie is. Writing, dialogue, acting, screenplay, editing is atrocious.

The movie climaxes in a suicide after Tommy humps Lisa’s clothing following a lackadaisical condo trashing after Tommy shove fights Mark and tells Lisa she’s a bitch. That literally all happens inside 10 minutes.

It was written as a stage play and could not get distribution as a book. Logically when you encounter those obstacles you turn it into a self financed film. The production crew was replaced twice during filming.

So how did this movie become a big deal? Well, The Room was played on loop for April Fools 2009 by Adult Swim. That was the movie’s big break. Beyond that it had a small cult following in LA among film industry people.

How did I find this movie? I wanted to watch Room, the Brie Larson film that won an Academy Award. I didn’t think twice when I saw a theatrical showing of The Room, so I mosied on down to the historic Garneau Theatre. Imagine my surprise when I got this film, complete with fans throwing plastic spoons and singing along to the love songs. My brain couldn’t compute. It was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. And it was great. Everyone should see this movie once. Twice if you’re feeling cute.

The Room plays locally on the first Friday of every month at the Metro Cinema. Its worth it.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.