Enough The Room already

In checking the listings for new movies that came out yesterday at Cinema Nova, for a possible Sunday night viewing, I noticed that the new Tommy Wiseau-Greg Sestero movie is now out.

I could see that movie and review it. But I’m not gonna.

It’s a bridge too far on our whole recent love affair with The Room.

Thanks to The Disaster Artist, in the past year, Tommy Wiseau has become if not a household name, then at least a name known in a lot more households than he was a year before that. He’s milked every little bit he could out of that spotlight, and I’m generally happy for him to do that. He made a terrible movie that made him famous in cult circles, and James Franco made a good movie about the making of that terrible movie that has made him considerably more famous. Good for him.

Okay, now it’s time to ease off a bit.

In that year Wiseau has become an inescapable personality on Twitter and delighted in the limited run re-release of The Room, which allowed people who hadn’t seen it (and weren’t willing to stay up for the midnight screenings) to see it on the big screen. He has made a multitude of personal appearances in which he has done his best to peddle his distinct brand of weirdness, whether it’s legitimate at this point or just playing a role.

But it seemed like it should be 15 minutes of fame and that’s it. Time to go back into semi-obscurity, Tommy.

That’s why the release of Best F(r)iends annoys me. It assumes an appetite for a lot more Tommy Wiseau. An appetite, I would think, that’s just not there.

Cinema Nova is a theater that plays The Room once a month at midnight on a Friday or Saturday night, so it’s perhaps not surprising to see it open there. I’m noticing as I look it up in IMDB that Best F(r)iends has not, in fact, gotten this type of proper release in the U.S. So maybe that’s kind of the course correction I’m looking for here.

In fact, until I just looked it up now I thought this movie was a documentary about them, which would have made it a lot more self-serving. In actuality, it’s described as a black comedy. It was even separated into two volumes when given a limited showcase in a couple locations in the U.S., which would tend to worsen the issue of our overexposure to Wiseau by artificially distending the experience of watching the movie. At least they seem to have gathered them together into one for the Australian theatrical run.

I suppose another thing that annoys me about it is that the title is kind of stolen from the Werner Herzog documentary My Best Fiend, about his toxic relationship with Klaus Kinski. That’s also why I thought it was a documentary, positing the same type of tumultuous relationship Herzog and Kinski had for Wiseau and Sestero. Thereby likening those two to two genuine cinematic greats. And thereby annoying me more.

Learning now that it is a fiction film rather than a documentary, I am slightly more interested in seeing Best F(r)iends than I would have had I perceived it as a vainglorious attempt to celebrate their mediocre celebrity. But still, I don’t really want to contribute to Wiseau’s impression of the world as needing to be all Tommy, all the time.

I don’t wish him ill, but I don’t wish him to be ubiquitous either.

The surprise accessibility of The Room

I'd heard that Tommy Wiseau kept The Room under lock and key, tightly controlling its distribution, forcing you to either purchase it from his website (only in physical, not digital, form) or go to a Saturday midnight screening. He did this either out of eccentricity or a shrewd plan for his own maximum profitability.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found the complete movie available on YouTube.

This may be a "known secret," but you can watch The Room in its entirety for free, as long as you are willing to put up with Spanish subtitles on the screen. And really, why wouldn't you be -- it's not like it would distract from the movie's copious amounts of artistry or anything. (In fact, I found it a useful way to brush up on my Spanish a bit.)

Since YouTube is regularly scrubbed by entities who have the copyright to various material, I thought it was strange that The Room slipped through, as Wiseau would seem to be just as keen to protect what's his as those studios. And it's not like I caught it during some limited window of its availability before it gets removed -- it's been viewed nearly 400,000 times. (And searching just now, I actually found another version, so Wiseau is really lying down on the job.)

I've already seen The Disaster Artist so I had not particularly planned to watch The Room again, at least not right now. But the same was not true of my wife. She was toying with the idea of seeing The Disaster Artist on Thursday, but had lamented only a few days earlier "I guess I'll never see The Room." Being unwilling as she was to go to a midnight screening, which is what I did when I first saw it back in 2013.

That comment prompted me to start looking into securing a copy of The Room as a surprise for her, which is when I discovered that digital isn't one of the purchase options on Wiseau's website. (To think that I might have paid $15 or whatever he saw it fit to charge for this movie, only was stopped by concerns of shipping logistics.) Then I thought to check on YouTube, and lo and behold.

I meant for it to be a surprise for our Friday night viewing, but this is when she mentioned the possible plan to see it on Thursday, so I had to show my cards. She went to see The Last Jedi instead. Funny that The Disaster Artist would have been her preference among those two. You can really tell the difference between a casual Star Wars fan and a serious one.

I enjoyed -- if that is the right word for it -- my second viewing of The Room more than my first, if only because I could actually hear all the awful dialogue rather than having an audience full of delirious fans laughing and chanting over it. Every moment with Wiseau on screen is sheer joy, though many of the other moments really drag. (Juliette Danielle as Lisa has some great random line deliveries as well.) There are some especially slow moments near the start and I was worried I might lose my wife, who was pretty tired after a holiday lunch earlier that day in which alcohol was consumed, and who has been known lately to give up on under-performing movies for lesser reasons. So I was glad when it picked up and she got in a bunch of good laughs.

Really glad I did not pay for it and now own it, though. It's bad, but it's a bad I would not subject myself to regularly. I probably will watch it a few more times in my life -- especially if it stays available on YouTube -- but actually owning it seems to over-represent my own level of affection for it.

And though I did quite like The Disaster Artist, I listened to a fairly convincing podcast takedown of it earlier that same day. When I watched The Room and found that what I had seen in The Disaster Artist did not significantly inform what I was watching now -- it did not deepen my appreciation, I mean -- that may have taken it down a notch as well. Still nestled safely within my top 20 of the year for now, though.

Famous Flops: The Room

 
This is the latest in my monthly series Famous Flops, in which I watch one absolutely terrible movie and tell you what I think of it.

By all rights, my first post after arriving to Australia (almost a full week ago) should be some kind of "welcome to Australia, Vance!" post. However, I have deadlines to keep, and only a precious few days remaining in August in order to serve up my monthly installment of Famous Flops.

It seems like forever ago that I saw The Room, since so much has happened in the interim. In fact, I still had a few days remaining at my job when I took to the theater on the night of Saturday, July 27th (technically cheating since the screening should have fallen within the month of August) to watch a movie so famously bad, they now show it at midnights on Saturdays in cities around the country, including North Hollywood, CA. I feel like I haven't worked in forever, so this tells you how long ago it was -- it was forever ago plus a few days.

This movie is terrible, of course.

But first a little history, personal history, about it.

I was living in Los Angeles when Tommy Wiseau's craptastically wonderful film was first released back in 2003. I remember thinking of it as some kind of Los Angeles institution akin to that ageless (i.e. very old now) pink Corvette-driving "beauty" Angelyne. One look at the billboard and you could tell that it was not a reputable production. Yet that billboard stayed up there on Highland, I think it was, for years, meaning that it did indeed have some kind of dollars or marketing muscle or something behind it. My fascination increased.

Sometime last year I learned that it was playing at the Laemmle in North Hollywood at midnight on the last Saturday of every month. I tried to get a crew to go on Thanksgiving weekend when a friend was in town, but you'd be surprised about how people ultimately react to a midnight movie when their backs are against the wall. They passed.

About three days before the last Saturday night in July of this year -- in other words, the last Saturday I'd be eligible to see The Room in Los Angeles before leaving for Australia -- the scarcity of my remaining opportunity struck me. I knew I needed to move now if I wanted to make The Room -- the full-on live experience of watching The Room, not just a DVD viewing -- happen. I emailed a couple friends and one bit. We set it up for that Saturday.

There's a great story that goes with this viewing, but I'll save it until after I give you my impressions.

First I should probably set the scene. There's an idea that The Room is a cultural heir apparent to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and seeing the live screening did nothing to disabuse me of that notion. For starters, it was packed. Not sold out, but populous enough for a midnight screening to earn the description "packed." The next thing I noticed was that people were bringing props, a la Rocky Horror. Plastic spoons were one particular prop. A football was another, though to the great consternation of many audience members, this football was lost/misplaced early on, never to be recovered. Lastly, the audience was buzzing with electricity. When the movie inexplicably started about five minutes early, disappointed audience members still filing in loudly exclaimed "It's not midnight yet!" To no avail, of course.

Okay, the movie.

Yeah, it's awful. Here are some overall comments/impressions:

1) There are about four sex scenes within the first half-hour. However, these are not lurid sex scenes designed to titillate. They are "romantic" sex scenes, involving cheesy music, rose petals, and both participants with expressions on their faces like you might see in an ad for an erection pill. What's most comical about these scenes is that they are ALL romantic, even though the same woman appears in all four, but has two different partners. The movie means for us to believe that she has an equally romantic relationship -- in other words, a relationship that the movie itself supports her having -- with both men.

2) Tommy Wiseau. He is probably the worst actor who has ever lived. He looks a bit like Gabriel Byrne, but there's no comparison between their abilities as thespians. Wiseau's unplaceable European accent probably contributes to his poor line readings, but only so much. You're not just picking on him because he has a funny accent. You're picking on him because he is a truly terrible performer.

3) The football. About five different times in this movie, characters engage in carefree sessions of football tossing. This is regardless of what's going on in the plot (plot? what plot?) and seemingly without reason. None of these characters seem athletically inclined, generally (although there's also an extensive jogging scene), nor would they seem interested in football, in particular.

4) The plot. What plot? As far as I can tell it's about a guy (Wiseau) who is losing his wife (Juliette Danielle) to his best friend (Greg Sestero). However, it is frequently very indirectly about this. There's also a part where their teenage neighbor gets involved in some kind of drug deal gone bad, but it's handled so non-specifically (we never learn what kind of drugs, or how he got involved) that it becomes just another one of the film's laughable elements.

5) The technique. Just awful. Establishing shots of San Francisco -- and there are many, usually involving the Golden Gate Bridge -- linger on for 10-15 seconds longer than they should. The dialogue is Z grade. Characters appear mysteriously and become important without being introduced or contextualized. Characters also sometimes look at the camera or make inexplicable gestures/glances.

6) I could go on.

7) But what I really want to say is that the participation of the audience, while active and in many ways quite fun, sometimes served as a distraction for me. Knowing how terrible everything about this movie was, I sometimes regretted having real howlers in the dialogue drowned out by their rejoinders. I don't suppose there's anything I could have done about that except for see the movie first at home, and then come to the theater. However, I think seeing this stuff for the first time on a big screen is key to your enjoyment of it, so my complaint about losing some of the priceless craptasticity is only a minor one.

Okay, so, the story.

When The Room ended and we got up to leave, I patted myself down and realized I did not have my keys. As it was nearly 1:45 a.m. and I had to get home, panic set in almost immediately. Sorry, I should tweak that last statement a little bit. As it was nearly 1:45 a.m. and I had to get home, and my wife was already in Australia, panic set in almost immediately.

I first examined the area around where I was sitting, since the most likely explanation was that I'd lost my keys between the seats. It's happened before. But they were not there. I then thought that perhaps I had left them atop the urinal in the men's room, since I had indeed relieved myself before the movie started. They weren't there either.

Panic really started to set in when I couldn't find anyone who worked at the theater still there. I assumed there must be someone in "the back room," an area behind the concession stand where it seemed most likely they'd be. But leaning over the concession stand and repeatedly saying "Hello? Hello? Excuse me?" yielded no results. This was starting to get truly frightening.

Actually forging back behind the concession stand finally prompted a woman in the lobby to identify herself as a member of the staff. Pretty dick move on her part not to say anything before then with a very obviously agitated customer desperately trying to identify her, so I guess it was a good move on my part to breach the employee area. I asked if any keys had been turned in to the lost and found. She said no, but I was welcome to look. Meanwhile, my friend was doing a much more thorough search of the theater.

Suddenly I knew where they were, and where they almost certainly would no longer be:

On the roof of my car.

My car, which was parked on a side street off a main thoroughfare, on a Saturday night in North Hollywood.

I started running at full sprint, sure that they would be gone, sure that my car would be gone, sure that I would be out the amount of money I hoped to make on my car when I sold it in a few weeks, sure that I would have lost all the personal items in the car as well. I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead and ran faster.

It took only about 20 seconds to reach the car, where I immediately saw a shimmering object on its roof, right where I expected it to be.

I scooped up those keys, breathed a massive sigh of relief, and somehow ran back to the theater even faster than I'd run to get to my car. It took another 30 seconds for my friend to emerge from the screening room (and I was now locked out so I couldn't get to him), but when he did, there I was, dangling the thought-to-be-lost item in glorious victory.

When I told him where they, in fact, were, he laughed in disbelief and ecstatic joy.

Here's what happened: I arrived a few minutes earlier than he did, and while waiting for him, I stood outside my car and smartphoned for a few minutes. When I do this, I usually just toss my keys on top of my car, then grab them before I go. In this case, I expected him to call me when he arrived and I'd go meet him at the theater. Instead, he was walking toward me and talking to me on the phone, so I naturally started to walk toward him when I saw him turn the corner and come into my view. No thought was given as to whether the car was locked or I even had my keys.

So my keys sat on top of my car for nearly two hours, from 11:45 to 1:45, in what used to be a kind of seedy neighborhood but has now improved slightly, and my car was not stolen.

I'll just have to thank my lucky stars for that one.

Okay, on to September. As I'm still getting my bearings and I don't know what my new methods of acquiring movies will be (we can still watch Netflix streaming using a special plug-in, but I don't know yet know how I'll get DVDs and BluRays), I'm going to leave my next month's choice open-ended. Let's face it -- you weren't going to watch it beforehand anyway. No reason more than one of us has to subject ourselves to this crap.