Monday, May 19, 2014

Nick's Pick: The Room

Film: Nick’s Pick: The Room
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

This is the fifth in a series of monthly reviews suggested by Nick Jobe at Your Face.

I make my composition students do presentations on the last day of class. They hate it, but I think it’s good to give them the experience of speaking in front of a room. Also, it makes for an easy class for me. One piece of advice I give them is that those people who are truly terrified of speaking in front of a room should volunteer to go early and get it over with. After doing one-third of Nick’s choices, I had to wonder why I wasn’t taking my own advice. Of the movies Nick has selected for me, there are some I’m interested in seeing, some I have no opinion of, and one that I was actively dreading. Knowing that anticipation would just get worse if I didn’t do something about it, I put The Room at the top of my queue. And here we are.

The Room was written, produced, and directed by its star, Tommy Wiseau. He evidently created a company (Wiseau Pictures) for this and had two logos made, because two different versions appear before the film. That right there is a small indication of the sort of competence and rational decision making that leads to films like The Room. I’d call this film Wiseau’s brainchild, but it’s much more his brain afterbirth. Anyway, I digress.

The Room is the story of Johnny (Wiseau) and his “ultra-sexy” girlfriend Lisa (Juliette Danielle). There’s something that doesn’t look right about her in this film, and I’ve discovered what it is. Our Lisa is not a natural blonde. Ms. Danielle looks better in her natural hair color. Anyway, Johnny and Lisa appear to be a happy couple. Johnny works in a bank where he evidently saves the bank a lot of money. Lisa doesn’t do much of anything but live off Johnny and eventually decide that she’s far more interested in his best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero).

That’s really the whole main plot of the film. Johnny and Lisa are supposed to get married, but Lisa decides she’d rather be with Mark. Mark is conflicted because he’s attracted to Lisa, but Johnny is his best friend. We know this because the fact that Johnny is Mark’s best friend is repeated to us every 12 minutes or so like a snooze alarm.

But this is not all that The Room encompasses. Oh, heavens no! There’s so much more going on here, almost none of which is actually explained. We learn that Lisa’s mother Claudette (Carolyn Minnott) “definitely” has breast cancer, which she knows because the tests came back. We never really learn what Claudette does for a living either, although she is very concerned the Lisa marry Johnny for her future financial stability. There is also Denny (Philip Haldiman), who lives near Johnny and Lisa. Johnny pays for Denny’s life because he thinks of Denny like a son. Denny owes money to a drug dealer for some unexplained reason. Denny also apparently wants to have sex with both Johnny and Lisa.

And there are other people who show up at Johnny’s and Lisa’s place for sex. And one of their friends is a psychologist. And everyone except Johnny is able to intuit that Lisa and Mark are doing the horizontal boogie almost at will. And the men play football while wearing tuxedos. And at one point, Mark shaves off his beard.

So the story is a mess and unintelligible. The dialogue, though, needs to be heard to be believed. I can’t do it justice and I’m not going to try. Suffice it to say that every conversation goes in every possible direction at the same time. There is rarely much connection from one line of dialogue to the next.

So I get it. I get why people go crazy over this terrible affront to all that is good and right in the world of film. I’ve watched it, and there’s a part of me that wants to pop the disk back in the spinner to watch particular scenes over again, to analyze the badness and to really revel in it. I get it completely.

And it makes me mad.

It makes me angry that this talentless douchecanoe named Tommy Wiseau has a name and something akin to a reputation. Admittedly, what reputation he has is as the worst actor/director/producer since Ed Wood. The fact that he has that reputation is what angers me, though. The world is filled with people who have a genuine talent and who can’t get a break. But rather than seek out small films that have something meaningful to say, instead we decide to celebrate this titanic lump of a human being specifically because he’s terrible at everything involved in making a film.

This is the culture we live in. We live in a world where someone like Kim Kardashian, whose talent is evidently a sex tape and a large ass, is a known “personality.” I’d go so far as to suggest that she’s known specifically because she’s empty and talentless. Spray-tanned disease goblin Snooki probably has an entourage, and she does precisely because she’s a vapid know-nothing. Tommy Wiseau is the movie equivalent. He’s known specifically because he’s completely incompetent at what he chooses to do. And there are almost certainly hundreds and thousands of talented filmmakers who will never be known because this lumpy bastard needs his 15 minutes of fame. Rather than seeking out what is good, what is valuable, what is worth our time, we celebrate the terrible, the worthless, and the pointless.

I know that giving this guy one additional minute of attention is taking away from a director or actor who deserves it more. And I am angry because there’s a part of me that wants to watch this again and experience just how fucking terrible it is and point and laugh at it. Other people deserve better. Our society deserves better. We should be above this, and we’re not. Hell, I’m not any different.

Nick, I can’t give you full credit on this one but I will give you a half point because I really do understand. You’re 4 for 5 now.

Why to watch The Room: It’s a hysterical train wreck of failure.
Why not to watch: It’s an indicator of why we suck as a society.

14 comments:

  1. This is better than I imagined it would be (your feelings on the film, that is).

    I also have a counter-point to the second half, though. Two, actually. First, if films are made for entertainment, and this is definite entertainment, does it not succeed? Not for the reason it was made, but just as pure entertainment? It's also different, to me, than something like Snooki or Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo. With those, you know why those people are vapid morons. But with this, it's more about the mystery of it. HOW does this exist? How did a script and film this terrible come to be? Where the hell did Tommy Wiseau come from, and what's his deal? Of course, most of these questions are answered in the book THE DISASTER ARTIST, but the film becomes fascinating on a whole other level than Snooki ever could.

    Second, to follow a yin/yang theory, everything needs balance to have harmony. For every great film celebrated, don't we also need to celebrate the bad?

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    1. I see your first point absolutely.

      I disagree with the second. No, I don't think we need to celebrate the bad. I think we need to acknowledge that it exists and perhaps even try to figure out what makes it so bad. But celebrate it? Not at all. To put this another way, I've watched the first 10 episodes of the new Cosmos, and I will happily celebrate how good it is. Does that mean I should equally celebrate the creationist knuckleheads who are protesting it? I acknowledge that they exist and then ignore them because their arguments are worthless.

      I don't think we should be lauding people for being terrible at what they do. I wouldn't high five a shitty doctor who killed a patient. I wouldn't applaud a teacher who scars and damages a classroom full of kids. Why should I celebrate a terrible filmmaker trying to make a film?

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    2. Touche. The second one wasn't a serious argument anyway (hence its shortness). I was just being silly. But the first, definitely.

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  2. This was a pretty great review of this movie. I laughed a few times because you're right. And basically, what you're talking about in your last half "why we celebrate the bad" is basically the question "Why do you only watch and review bad movies, Jason?" For this reason. It's so god damn fascinating that you can't help but watch. Just HOW does shit like this get made? And I'm with Nick, you need to check out "The Disaster Artist" to hear all the crap that went on during the making of this movie. It's crazy. CRAZY I TELL YOU HAHAHA!
    -Jason

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    1. This one is different, though. This is a special kind of terrible. Like Birdemic is awful, but it's awful in an entirely different way. This almost has the veneer of professionalism. It's like a pile of shit served on china.

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  3. I haven't seen the whole movie just some clips on YouTube but I laughed and laughed. And now I've downloaded the audio book of The Disaster Artist based on the mentions here. Sounds like a lot of fun!

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    1. Definitely check out The Disaster Artist. And also watch the whole film. It's best you know what scenes and characters the book is talking about when it has the behind-the-scenes chapters.

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  4. As much as I hate myself for saying it, you almost have to see the movie.

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  5. So The People vs. Larry Flynt gets no comments (until mine) over a couple days, but The Room gets three comments in just a few hours? That's a pretty sad demonstration right there. (Nothing negative intended towards the specific people who commented, just the overall result).

    I watched The Room to see if it was as bad as I had heard. It was. And it wasn't a "so bad it's good" kind of movie. It was just bad. (You left out mentioning the times he reused the same footage during the sex scenes.) I have no desire to ever see any part of this again.

    I actually watched the "making of" featurette on the DVD when I got it from Netflix. He apparently financed it himself, which is how it got made. Here's the stupidest thing of all: he didn't have a clue about the difference between film and digital cameras so he bought one of each, strapped them together, and shot his film simultaneously on both, with a separate crew for each. I'm serious. The featurette shows these two cameras strapped together on a dolly. Also, he reportedly didn't do much actual directing because he was so busy "getting into character" most times that the "director" was whoever felt like stepping forward and yelling "action!" and "cut!"

    Proof: http://www.trbimg.com/img-524495dd/turbine/la-la-ca-0920-greg-sestero-tom-bissell-020-jpg-20130925/600/600x478

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    1. Nick's comments were actually expected right away since he suggested the film to me. As a matter of fact, I was talking to Nick via Facebook when I posted this review, so he's probably the first person to read it.

      But yeah, Larry Flynt has not only gotten fewer comments, it's also gotten considerably less traffic.

      The whole thing with the cameras is exactly my point. This is the sort of thing that makes this guy a legend with certain people because it's merely more evidence of his ineptitude. The stupider and more clueless he proves to be, the more he's celebrated for it.

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  6. I struggled to rate The Room. (ended up with 4/10, considered 8/10). I enjoyed the film in a so-bad-its-good way, yet I understand your anger, it doesn't deserve praise for the filmmaking, because it was intended as a serious drama. So probably it should be judged in the context it was originally made. It's great that it gives joy to so many as a comedy though.

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    1. On Letterboxd, I ultimately couldn't score it at a point where I claimed to "like" it. For my Letterboxd reviews, it has to hit three stars for me to click the "LIKE" button. The Room doesn't quite get there, although I was tempted, too.

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  7. I noticed today that we have a new book at the library called, "The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside the Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made." So there's a Simon and Schuster book out on this movie about The Room!

    For the record, the book has gotten much better reviews than the source material it sprang from.

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    1. Nick has been on me to read this since the moment he read it.

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