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Film Discussion => The Vault => Topic started by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 25, 2009, 11:06:09 PM

Title: The Room
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 25, 2009, 11:06:09 PM
I was sure there would be a thread by now about this (for better or worse).  Now, I saw it for free and I was skeptical because I see bad movies all the time, why should this one be any more special?

Well, luckily, the one I went to was full of audience participation.  So much so, that I missed almost the whole movie which is the point if you've seen it, but even MST3K would be silent when some lines were said so the audience can laugh at the stupidity of the original movie.  There was literally a constant level of audience noise from murmurs to shouting, everyone screaming out lines beforehand, etc.

Now, I'm not being a spoil sport saying that they shouldn't have been doing that.  But really... it is bad enough to speak for itself.  All the camp is so infused by the audience that it just felt like hanging at a screening of Snakes on a Plane.

Don't get me wrong, this was hilariously bad considering the level of production value and the inverse of character development, if such a thing is possible.

The sad part of the story: I wish I would've been able to give it a total viewing experience, untainted by noisy jerks.  But alas, The Room was ruined by those who love it more than by the filmmaker's hand.
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: RegularKarate on July 27, 2009, 01:11:42 PM
I agree with you totally!

I feel like I've said this before here a few times, but I'll go ahead and repeat it since there's a thread dedicated to it.

My comedy friends and I do a bad movie night every Sunday night and have been doing it pretty consistently for almost two years.  The Room is one of the favorites... we've shown it a few times.

Months ago, we got in contact with the Alamo Drafthouse and agreed to get Tommy Wiseau out here to host a screening sponsored by our theater (I even got to make the preshow promo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mspwBfsPgqw)).  I was pretty excited to get to meet and hang out with Wiseau, but once the screening started, I became pretty disappointed. 

When we watched it for bad movie night, we talked through the movie... sure.  We were honestly and openly reacting to what was happening... we were having fun with it.  I was cool with not being able to make comments during the movie at the Drafthouse because like you said, the movie speaks for itself, but what happened was worse.  It's turned into another Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Everything is scripted... everyone knows when to say what and when to throw the dumb spoons... they've sucked all the fun out of it.  I couldn't stand it.

Maybe we could make this thread the "Awesome Things Ruined By Fans" thread.  A topic recently covered by a podcast I listen to... also ruined by their fans: Anything Joss Whedon related.

Title: Re: The Room
Post by: matt35mm on July 27, 2009, 05:55:12 PM
Haha, that promo was pretty fun.
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: diggler on July 28, 2009, 09:28:37 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on July 27, 2009, 05:55:12 PM
Haha, that promo was pretty fun.

agreed, great promo. "my work job that you work with me at" made me do this weird compressed laugh that sounded more like a sneeze. co-workers staring now.
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: pete on July 28, 2009, 09:53:55 AM
can somebody tell me more about the room.  I saw a trailer.  looked kinda bad, but I didn't know about the phenomenon and the cult behind it.  can someone fill me and possibly other people in?
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: tpfkabi on July 28, 2009, 11:18:50 AM
i saw a bit on the news about this recently and wondered if there was a thread about it.
that was the first i heard about it.
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: RegularKarate on July 28, 2009, 11:48:22 AM
Thanks guys... it was strange showing it to Tommy Wiseau, but he seemed pretty oblivious to it.

Quote from: pete on July 28, 2009, 09:53:55 AM
can somebody tell me more about the room.  I saw a trailer.  looked kinda bad, but I didn't know about the phenomenon and the cult behind it.  can someone fill me and possibly other people in?

It's really something you have to watch.  There are great clips online, but really, you have to watch the whole thing to really get it.  I suggest not going to an official screening though.

It's just a bad movie that works perfectly.  Most movies that are "so bad they're good" only have a couple awesome scenes and the rest is boring.  This one escalates and goes on wild tangents that keep you engaged through the whole thing.  If it were intentional (and Tommy Wiseau, the writer/producer/director/star claims it is), it would be absolute genius.

Title: Re: The Room
Post by: Ghostboy on July 28, 2009, 02:15:51 PM
Ha, that promo was great! Can't believe I didn't see that before.

I'd agree about watching it at home first - I'm so glad I saw it on DVD before I went to the theater (if you see it in LA, it's absolutely insane - it sold out all five screens at the Laemmle last month). It made the communal experience better, and I already knew all the great lines I was missing during the uproarious laughter.
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: MacGuffin on July 28, 2009, 03:40:33 PM
The Crazy Cult of 'The Room'
A five-year-old box office flop has turned into the newest midnight movie sensation
Source: Entertainment Weekly

At a midnight screening in a Los Angeles multiplex, the atmosphere hovers somewhere between rambunctious and mildly terrifying. Whenever a framed photograph of a spoon appears on screen, which it frequently does, audience members throw fistfuls of plastic cutlery. They also perform skits, at one point gathering at the bottom right of the screen and shouting, ''Down here, Tommy!'' anticipating the moment when the face of the lead actor, Tommy Wiseau, looks in their direction. And they comment loudly on blurrily shot scenes (''Focus!'') or inadequately introduced characters (''Who the f--- are you?'').

Late-night showings of cult films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Showand The Big Lebowski are known for their rowdy and strange behavior too. But people who go to see Rocky Horror and Lebowski think those films are good. Tonight's movie, an obscure, five-year-old drama called The Room, holds a different place in the hearts of those present at West Hollywood's Laemmle Sunset 5. ''It's absolutely terrible,'' says Chris Bonk, a talent-agency assistant who has seen the film more than 15 times. ''The script is not the best. The acting is certainly not the best. The music is horrible.''

The Room is a San Francisco-set love triangle involving a banker named Johnny, his friend Mark, and Johnny's fiancée Lisa, who is sleeping with both men. The film does seem to be beset with problems. Various subplots are inadequately resolved or simply disappear altogether, including the throwaway revelation that Lisa's mother is suffering from cancer. The film's many rooftop shots feature an unrealistic San Francisco backdrop, thanks to some less-than-impressive greenscreen work. There are lengthy, unerotic sex scenes, the last of which prompts a section of the audience to depart the auditorium temporarily in mock protest. Finally, in one sequence, a sharp bone seems about to erupt from Lisa's neck for no reason at all.

The film's so-bad-it's-freakin'-awesome vibe has attracted a devout army of aficionados whose membership includes the cream of Hollywood's comedy community. Role Models star Paul Rudd and Arrested Development's David Cross are both fans, as is Jonah Hill, who uses a still from the movie as his MySpace photograph. Heroes star Kristen Bell hosts Room-viewing parties at her house and last year attended the film's monthly Laemmle screening with Rudd, Hill, and Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright. ''There is a magic about that film that is indescribable,'' she says.

The Room has even infiltrated the halls of cinematic academia. ''It is one of the most important films of the past decade,'' says Ross Morin, an assistant professor of film studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. ''It exposes the fabricated nature of Hollywood. The Room is the Citizen Kane of bad movies.''

If The Room is the Citizen Kane of bad movies, that makes Tommy Wiseau the Orson Welles of crap. Wiseau — who speaks with a thick, Schwarzeneggerian accent — directed, wrote, and produced the film. The muscled auteur also plays the cuckolded Johnny, and, when not exposing his ivory rump in the film's sex scenes, gives a performance that's both heartfelt and berserk. In one scene, a vein-poppingly distraught Wiseau howls the line, ''You are tearing me apart, Lisa!'' The moment — a favorite of Room fans — is reminiscent of both James Dean's ''You're tearing me apart!'' howl in Rebel Without A Cause and Marlon Brando screaming ''Stella!'' in A Streetcar Named Desire. At least it would be, if those actors had chosen to play their parts as deranged Austrians.

The Los Angeles-based Wiseau is an admirer of Streetcar playwright Tennessee Williams and (indeed) Orson Welles. ''You can relate to it,'' he says of their work, over lunch in L.A. the day after the Laemmle screening. ''You see all this emotion. That's why we are on the same page.'' Wiseau is also a big fan of Dean and Brando, but he insists that any discussion of specific films that may have influenced him be off the record. While the actor-director is friendly and infectiously upbeat about his work, he is also incredibly secretive. Wiseau shies away from questions about his background and his age, though he appears to be in his early 50s. ''We tried for a long time to figure out where he's from,'' says actress Juliette Danielle, who plays Lisa in The Room. ''We never got an answer.''

After some prodding, Wiseau does let slip a few personal details. ''I used to live in France, a long time ago,'' he says. ''Then I moved to New Orleans — I have family there. Then I moved to Bay Area. I work for hospital, I work for the city. But I always wanted to be an actor.''

Wiseau got his directorial feet wet with a short film, Robbery Doesn't Pay, and then, in 2002, shot The Room in L.A. and San Francisco. The filmmaker has always refused to discuss where he got the movie's $6 million budget, but he now hints that at least some of the money came from a clothing import business. ''I tell you a little bit, but that's it,'' he says. ''We import from Korea the leather jackets that we design here in America. If you work, you have to save money, right? I didn't get money from the sky. I was preparing, let's put it this way.'' The shoot was marred by the constant departures of cast and crew members. ''It was just mayhem,'' recalls Dan Janjigian, who plays a drug dealer in one of the film's peculiar plot cul-de-sacs. ''You could come in and it would be a completely different cast and crew. It was crazy.'' Wiseau himself initially denies that he had problems with his behind-the-camera team — ''I was very happy with everyone'' — but then admits that he did come into conflict with individuals who tried to tamper with his work. ''Some of the crew members, it's correct, we changed three times basically,'' he recalls. ''Because they tried, for example, to change the script. They say, 'This is the way to do, etcetera, etcetera.' I say, 'No!''' However, according to one cast member who requested anonymity, the script was indeed altered during the shoot: ''It was actually a lot longer. There was stuff that was just unsayable. I know it's hard to imagine there was stuff that was worse. But there was.''

Wiseau insists he always intended The Room to be partly comedic, and that the movie's perceived faults — including the out-of-focus scenes — are deliberate. ''Let's assume we did everything perfect way,'' he hypothesizes. ''You will be asking this question? No, no.'' However, another anonymous cast member has no doubt that Wiseau is merely making the best of an extremely bad job: ''I don't have anything to say about Tommy as a person. He is a nice guy. But he is full of s---. He was trying to put together a drama. It was basically his stage to show off his acting ability.''

The Room opened at a handful of cinemas in L.A. on June 27, 2003. The director, who self-distributed the movie, offered a free soundtrack CD for ticket buyers, and promoted the film with a TV and print campaign that compared The Room to the work of Tennessee Williams. Wiseau rented a billboard on Highland Avenue, which featured a close-up of his glowering visage, and submitted the film to the Academy Awards, without success. Cast member Robyn Paris recalls the film's premiere screening as ''a big deal. Tommy rode in a limousine. There was a spotlight set up. It was pretty packed. Everyone in the theater was crying with laughter.'' Not everyone found the film so amusing, however. Variety critic Scott Foundas noted that it ''may be something of a first: a movie that prompts most of its viewers to ask for their money back — before even 30 minutes have passed.'' Foundas also called Wiseau ''a narcissist nonpareil whose movie makes Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny seem the apotheosis of cinematic self-restraint.''

Tommy Wiseau insists that he ''really doesn't know'' how the film fared at the box office on its initial release. However, one industry source states that the combined gross from the two-week run at two theaters — the Laemmle Fallbrook and Fairfax — was just $1,900. Michael Rousselet, a young screenwriter who seems to be Patient Zero of the film's cult, says he first caught the movie at an ''absolutely empty'' theater. ''It was like our own private Mystery Science Theater,'' he says. ''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.'' Soon, screenings of The Room were thick with both laughter and cutlery. ''The spoon thing probably started during the fourth screening with my friends,'' says Rousselet. ''I was like, Why is there a spoon in the picture frame? Every time it came up, I'd scream 'Spoon!' So we brought spoons.''

Wiseau says that he received ''almost a hundred'' e-mails thanking him for the film. ''That's when I say, 'Let's just show The Room once a month, midnight screening,''' he explains.

Wiseau regularly attended these events and answered questions. Sometimes he recited Shakespearean sonnets. Wiseau released The Room on DVD in December 2005, and produced another, promotional, DVD that featured fans of the film at screenings praising the Room experience. And he continued to pay for the billboard, which, as the years passed, became a local landmark until Wiseau finally gave it up in the fall of 2008. ''People started coming up to me randomly in L.A. and saying, 'Were you in The Room?''' says Paris. She wasn't the only cast member to achieve a degree of fame thanks to the film. When Greg Sestero, who plays Mark, attended a screening a year after the movie's release, he says he was ''mobbed'' by fans. Juliette Danielle attended the second-anniversary screening and encountered fans dressed as her character. One even wore a prosthetic neck piece in homage to that scene in which it appears Lisa is about to endure a freakish compound fracture.

By the time the film's third anniversary rolled around, in 2006, word of The Room had spread through the comedy scene. ''I was at Paul Rudd's house a couple of years ago, and he said, 'You have to watch this,''' recalls Rudd's frequent collaborator and Role Models director David Wain. ''Within two minutes, I'm like, 'Okay, this is my favorite thing I've ever seen.' I've watched it over and over and over. We've had a lot of fun thinking which character we're going to play when we do our shot-for-shot remake.'' Rudd also showed the film to Veronica Marscreator Rob Thomas, who in turn recommended it to the show's star, Kristen Bell. ''I watched it in my trailer with my mouth agape the entire time,'' she recalls. ''I knew I would never be the same. We tried to reference it on Veronica Mars as much as possible.'' In one example, during a May 2007 episode of the show, a character mentions ''the new Rocky Horror,'' where ''people throw plastic spoons at the screen.''

David Cross became intrigued by The Room while filming the 2004-05 season of Arrested Development. ''Will Arnett and I would always see the billboard and be like, 'What the f--- is that thing?''' he says. ''Will Googled it, and then we would often watch the trailer.'' Soon, the pair were cracking each other up by repeating Wiseau's signature line: ''You are tearing me apart, Lisa!'' Then, at the 2005 Screen Actors Guild awards, Cross noticed a familiar figure. ''I was like, Holy s---, Tommy Wiseau's here!'' he says. ''I was kind of drunk, and kept following him. I was literally finding every excuse to be next to him wherever he was in the building. He was getting weirded out by me.'' Eventually Cross made the pilgrimage to see The Room itself. ''The idea of a participatory thing doesn't sound like fun to me,'' he says, ''but I really, really enjoyed it. It's not like there's one or two or three things that are bad about it. There are several hundred. I don't think Will ever saw it,'' Cross laughs. ''What a f---ing a--hole he is!''

Cross recommended the film to Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker, stars of the Cartoon Network's bizarre late-night sketch extravaganza Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, who became similarly obsessed. And Rudd, Bell, and Hill practically transformed the set of last April's comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall into a Room convention. (''Paul and Jonah and I were talking off set and Jonah kept snickering,'' says Bell. ''And I'm like, Am I being pranked? Finally, I look down, and Paul is wearing a silk-screen picture of Tommy Wiseau on his T-shirt.'') Meanwhile, Rudd and Wain conspired to slip Room references into Role Models. ''There were all sorts of ideas,'' says Wain. ''Like someone in the background going, 'You are tearing me apart, Lisa!' But Role Models was such a crazy process — we were kind of writing it as we were shooting — I don't know if any of them ended up in the movie.'' It seems like the comedy community is now divided into two camps: those who have fallen in love with The Room, and those who are about to. ''It's ridiculous that I haven't seen this,'' says Adam McKay, Will Ferrell's longtime writing partner, and the director of Anchorman. ''I've been told by a dozen people that I have to go. I've got to find the next showing.'' Wiseau's film has even become a verb. ''When we do a take, and it seems bad, a comment about The Room is often made,'' says Joe Lo Truglio, who played the jolly knight in Role Models, and is yet another fan of The Room. '''Dude, your heart was in the right place, but the acting wasn't. You Roomed it!'''

Wiseau followed up The Room with 2004's Homeless in America, a loose but rather moving documentary about the plight of Los Angeles street dwellers. ''I wanted to show people that this exists,'' he says, with such sincerity that you want to hug him. ''Because I myself did not know. My God!'' Wiseau is currently ''very, very busy'' working on a number of future projects, including a sitcom called The Neighbors, the pilot for which he has already shot. And his fame among comedians has started to pay dividends. Wiseau recently filmed a sketch for the next season of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! ''He kind of took over the set,'' recalls star Wareheim. ''He would yell, 'Rolling! Sound! Speed! Action!' You could tell he had this feeling that he was a master of cinema.''

Meanwhile, the cult of The Room grows. Increasingly, the Laemmle Sunset 5 shows the movie on two screens, due to demand. Fans have begun to re-create scenes and post them on YouTube. Wiseau is mulling the possibility of turning the film into a Broadway musical and would like to dub it in French and Spanish for a possible European theatrical release. He also, ambitiously, wants to screen The Room at the Staples Center, which has a seating capacity of 20,000. ''We live in America. So everything is possible!'' he says.

Wiseau is mum about whether he will see any profit from the film, though it seems doubtful. According to one billboard industry expert, the signage on Highland probably cost in the region of $5,000 a month, comfortably more than the gross box office of the midnight screenings. And one source close to the production admits that the movie ''hasn't cleared expenses.'' Wiseau himself attests that he is ''an artist. I really don't like to talk about money.''

His secrecy has been key to the film's success. (As Wain puts it, ''Part of the fun is guessing: Who is this guy? Where is he from? Why did he shoot on a greenscreen instead of going up on a roof?'') His Ed Wood-like innocence and enthusiasm for moviemaking has helped as well: Rudd declined to talk about The Room for this article because he didn't want to ''mock somebody else's stuff.'' And Lo Truglio later got back in touch, concerned that he had been too harsh about Wiseau. ''It is a guilty pleasure in every sense of the word,'' he says of the movie.

Ultimately, it really doesn't matter whether the comedy in the film is intentional or accidental. Wiseau always planned for The Room to provoke a reaction and entertain, and it has certainly done both those things. And how many other independent filmmakers can claim to have entranced — and even influenced — such a roll call of comedic luminaries? ''Anything that I've seen that many times seeps into my subconscious,'' says David Wain. ''In the same way that Steve Martin or Woody Allen movies became part of my vocabulary, that's what happened with The Room. I'm laughing just thinking about it!''

The fact is that Wiseau has succeeded where so many big-screen hopefuls have failed. He has made his mark. True, it may not be quite the one he intended. But he has proved, without a doubt, that there is a place — that there is room — in Hollywood for Tommy Wiseau.
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: Stefen on July 28, 2009, 03:45:47 PM
haha
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: tpfkabi on July 28, 2009, 04:23:23 PM
if Manos came out originally in the internet age = The Room?
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: RegularKarate on July 28, 2009, 05:15:25 PM
Quote from: bigideas on July 28, 2009, 04:23:23 PM
if Manos came out originally in the internet age = The Room?

Very possible... I actually considered that.

oh, and this was right before Tommy Wiseau compared The Room to Star Trek.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi3.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy74%2Fregularkarate%2FMeandTommy.jpg&hash=25e54c5c7aee5a516060da9581a65a043dca3713)
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: Neil on July 28, 2009, 06:40:21 PM
I'm not sure what I was thinking.  I was pretty certain this something to this degree didn't exist.  The guy is secretive about where the 6 million bucks came from?  This shit is bonkers.  Since all this information at our fingertips has become old news, it's good to see someone still holding a little mystery.  That whole shtick drew me in instantly.   This guy claiming it was intentional is just too much, i'm just in shock...Hope to see it soon, except i'm not sure if i want to buy it.

I'm not so shocked that the viewings become ruined, people ruin everything...but interesting nonetheless
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: Pas on July 28, 2009, 07:37:41 PM
My favorite scene is Denny's pusher coming to claim his money. It's so over the top. All the football scenes are crazy too, especially when they play in the small room and the characters tell stories that happened in the movie (we already saw the stories happen and now we hear them told, it's pretty surreal)
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: squints on July 29, 2009, 02:33:38 AM
I'd always imagined Rk looking like The Dude if he didn't smoke pot and now my theories are confirmed.
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: Gamblour. on December 30, 2009, 08:02:07 AM
Just saw this last night, our local independent theater screens this every month or so, and I actually rearranged my work schedule so I could finally see it.

In a lot of ways, I'm so glad I didn't see it on DVD first. I'm sitting there, holding four plastic spoons someone gave me, wondering what the fuck it's all about. The film gets start, people are shouting every time Tommy's name appears. Then, the first scene begins, and out of this strange silence, "SPOON!" and, not unlike the scene in 300 when the sun is blocked out by arrows, the screen is almost completely obscured by the shadows of spoons. It was like a force of nature and made me immediately feel the gravity and mania behind this movie. I'll never forget it.

The film itself was both incredible and unbearable. Even with everything going on, every time there was another establishing shot or repeated piece of dialogue, I was honestly glad there was an audience there to make it interesting. That being said, I'm going to screen this for my friends at home so I can catch what I missed. I don't regret seeing it in the theater first, but I'd like to enjoy it at my own pace.

I feel really bad for the lead actress in this. She's not the most attractive girl and a pretty bad actor, and the audience lets her know it every chance they get.

Wasn't there something about Wiseau shooting this film on film and in HD at the same time?
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: MacGuffin on February 08, 2014, 01:22:33 AM
James Franco's Production Company Acquires Book About So-Bad-It's-Good Cult Movie 'The Room'
BY THE DEADLINE TEAM
   
James Franco's Rabbit Bandini Productions has optioned book and life rights to The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the book published last fall by Simon & Schuster from actor Greg Sestero and journalist Tom Bissell. Franco will direct and co-produce the book adaptation with his Rabbit Bandini  partner Vince Jolivette, and Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Point Grey Productions. Ryan Moody is writing the script.

Sestero and Tommy Wiseau co-wrote and starred in the 2003 feature film The Room, which some have called the worst movie ever made. Wiseau directed, produced and financed the pic, which was self-released only in Southern California before word-of-mouth spread. It has since achieved cult status for its hole-filled plot and poor production values, earning it a place in the midnight show slots usually occupied by pics like Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Among the Room converts is the CAA-repped Franco, who reviewed the book on Vice in December, calling Wiseau "part vampire, part Hollywood dreamer, part gangster, part Ed Wood, and super lonely" and equating the novel to being a combination of Boogie Nights and The Master and praising it for going beyond being just a bunch of anecdotes from the set of a bad movie. Last month, Franco posted on Instagram that the book was his: "A new Franco joint, starring both Francos – produced by seth and evan Wazzup now?!"
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on February 08, 2014, 10:53:37 AM
Greg Sestero was a guest on HDTGM's episode on The Room:

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/the-room-directors-edition/
Title: Re: The Room
Post by: Frederico Fellini on February 08, 2014, 12:52:07 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on February 08, 2014, 01:22:33 AM

equating the novel to being a combination of Boogie Nights and The Master



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc_LIR5ExIU