When, about two years ago, a friend and I found out that The Disaster Artist was being turned into a movie, we literally screamed with delight. The Disaster Artist is a 2013 book written about the making of The Room, a movie so bad it has become legendary. We had seen The Room three times in cinemas at that point. For us, this announcement felt like nothing short of a gift from the cinema gods, a reward for devoted fandom behaviour.
If you aren't already a member of The Room's fan club, you may be baffled by our reaction. I promise that I can get you as excited as I am about The Disaster Artist — all it will take is a bit of history surrounding one of the weirdest, most wonderful cinematic phenomenon of all time. It features a billboard advertisement hanging over an L.A highway for six years, a black-haired man of mysterious origins named Tommy Wiseau, and a desire for creative freedom that knew no bounds.
The Disaster Artist, out December 1, is already bathed in praise. James Franco and his weird accent may well get an Oscar nom. In order to enjoy the movie as much as I did, read this first. In Wiseau's own words: "See The Room, change your life.”
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First things first: what is The Room?
After failing to break into show business for years, Tommy Wiseau finally decided to shirk the system and embark on his own project. Wiseau converted his 540-page novel into a script and then spent £4.5 million of his own money bringing that project to life. Not only did Wiseau write, direct, and produce the movie, but he starred in it, too. The Room came out in 2003.
Unfortunately, pure enthusiasm does not always translate into art. Simply put, The Room is a bad movie. Characters’ actions are melodramatic to the point of nonsense. Their relationships to one another are left hazy and unclear. Information is introduced, then never brought up again. Essentially, earnest emotion was never as hilarious as it is in The Room.
Michael Rousselet, a Room mega-fan, said it best in an interview with The Ringer: “I’ve heard people say it’s as if an alien watched a bunch of soap operas and tried to figure out what the human race was about.”
What is The Room about?
It’s a tale of love. Of betrayal. And of randomly occurring football matches.
In The Room, a successful San Francisco banker, Johnny (Tommy Wiseau), lives with his fiancee, Lisa (Juliette Danielle). Though Johnny is madly in love with her, Lisa decides to seduce Johnny’s best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero, who wrote The Disaster Artist). So devastated by his friend and fiancee’s betrayal, Johnny has an emotional breakdown and takes his own life.
Johnny, Mark, and Lisa are accompanied by a bevy of baffling supporting characters, all played by actors who had never been in a feature film before. Lisa’s mother announces she has breast cancer, and then never says another word about it. Johnny is the caretaker of his neighbour, Denny — though it’s never clear who he is, how old he is, and what the heck he does all day. Johnny and Mark frequently play football before important events.
The vast majority of the movie takes place in a single space: Johnny and Lisa’s apartment, with its spiral staircase and framed photos of dinnerware (people throw spoons at the screen during midnight screenings whenever those framed photos appear).
How did The Room go from flop to cult phenom?
We can thank Michael Rousselet, one of the few people who saw The Room during its initial two-week run, for the movie’s current cult status. Rousselet was a screenwriter at the time, and knew he was seeing something so bad it was — well, good. ”I was calling friends during the end and saying, ‘You have to come to this movie.’ We saw it four times in three days, and on the last day I had over 100 people there,” Rousselet told EW. Many of the current rituals associated with The Room, like throwing spoons at the screen, were born during those screenings.
After The Room left cinemas, Wiseau received so many enthusiastic letters from new fans that he proposed showing The Room once a month, at midnight. Wiseau would attend those screenings, and hold off-kilter Q&As in which he’d avoid revealing any personal details (to this day, no one knows his age or where he’s from). Soon, comedians and actors in L.A. were also Room fans. Paul Rudd, Kristin Bell, and director David Wait are among Hollywood’s most fervent Room supporters.
The Room is still a staple in the midnight screening circuit. Wiseau shows up regularly.
Here’s where The Disaster Artist comes in.
In 2013, The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside the Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever was released. In the memoir, Wiseau’s co-star and good friend, Greg Sestero, details his experiences making the famous cult classic. Spoiler: The process of making The Room was just as bonkers as the movie itself is.
Though many of his friends were already fervent fans of The Room, James Franco remained uninitiated before reading Sestero's memoir. The memoir prompted him to finally see The Room, which he claimed was "best time" he'd ever had in a cinema. After that, Franco knew he stumbled into a film project.
"Having read most of [ The Disaster Artist] at this point, I knew not only it would be great to recreate these scenes, but that there’s this incredibly emotional story of a friendship and struggle that in a very weird way, I could understand," Franco said during a Q&A.
Was Tommy Wiseau initially on board with Franco's movie?
To make The Disaster Artist movie, Franco had to procure Wiseau's life rights. At first, Wiseau was adamant that Johnny Depp play him in the movie. Sestero convinced him to be open to the prospect of James Franco playing him.
“I think he was okay with me because I played James Dean early in my career,” Franco told Deadline. “Tommy thinks he’s James Dean. And Tommy, if you’ve seen him, looks nothing like James Dean. I mean, he looks like a vampire that dyes his hair with a magic marker.”
Pictured, from left: Greg Sestero, James Franco, Tommy Wiseau.
Do I have to watch The Room before seeing The Disaster Artist?
Ideally yes, but it's not absolutely necessary. The Room is a baffling, repetitive two hours. It's best seen with friends, or during a midnight screening, so you can partake in the ritual.
Instead of watching the entirety of The Room, you can watch some key scenes, which are recreated in The Disaster Artist. The rooftop scene is the most famous of the bunch. It occurs after Lisa accuses Tommy of hitting her. Tommy bursts onto a roof shouting: "It’s not true! I did not hit her! It’s bullshit! I did not.” He looks up, pauses, then says: "Oh hi, Mark." This short scene encapsulates the melodramatic, nonsensical mood of The Room.
Sestero wrote about the arduous making of this seven-second scene in his book. "If you can, I implore you to watch this scene. It’s seven seconds long. Three hours. Thirty-two takes. And it was only the second day of filming," Sestero wrote.
So, you want to watch another scene?
Here's another iconic scene. At this moment, Tommy is devastated by Lisa's actions. He shouts, "You are tearing me apart, Lisa!"
Fun fact: James Franco directed The Disaster Artist in character.
After undergoing two hours of facial prosthetics, Franco was ready to be Tommy Wiseau – both on and off screen.
“I’m directing a movie and acting in it, and playing a character who is directing a movie and acting in it. At no other time in my career am I going to do this again. Being Tommy off-camera made everything flow easier in hindsight. It helped create an atmosphere on set," he told Deadline.
So, he gave orders to co-stars Dave Franco, Alison Brie, and Seth Rogan while in Wiseau form.
The Disaster Artist is out on December 1.
And now, you're all ready.
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