There are four words that some people live or die by: “best, worst movie ever.” That’s right: best, worst movie ever. There’s one movie that within the past ten years has taken this title to a new level, even being dubbed “The Citizen Kane of bad movies.” We are talking about Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, a movie so bad, so fraught with imperfections, it’s used to teach aspiring filmmakers what not to do.
The general public takes bad movies with a grain of salt. These are films with minimal budgets, undeveloped plots, novice actors, or directors trying to work outside Hollywood. Somehow, The Room transcends these traps and has become, well, kind of a phenomenon. Midnight showings. Crowd rituals. Autobiographical novels. Fans referring to themselves as “Roomies.” Now, we’re on the verge of a major motion picture about making The Room.
All of this for a movie that’s considered the best, worst movie ever made.
The Appeal of a Bad Movie
Before you can understand The Room, you have to understand the appeal of film. Take Ryan for example. His love for movies began with a family legend. For him, a horror classic began a lifelong love affair.
Ryan: I feel like my, liking to know how films were made was when I started watching horror movies. In my family there was this legend that my Aunt Joy went to The Exorcist in 1973. And she couldn’t turn her lights off for a month. So, there was this “Oh, this movie must be horrifying; it must be terrifying and scary.” So, I’m going to rent this movie and watch it. It was really good and it was scary. But I couldn’t understand why my aunt was that afraid of it.
From there, he was hooked. As a child of the ’90s, walking to the local video store was a rite of passage. Every Tuesday he would journey to Top Ten Video for it’s 2 for $2 special. For Ryan, he always gains something from watching movies.
Ryan: I find it interesting that there’s an episode of Night Court, where someone pleads their case. And Bull says to the old lady who was the other bailiff, “Oh, cool story.” And she says, “I laughed. I cried. It became a part of me.” And that’s how I feel about movies. I feel like [for] some people, it’s purely entertainment. They see a movie and their like “I’m done with that.” If I see a movie, I need to think about it. What can I get out of this? No matter how silly the movie might be. It’s like: What can I get out of this as a person?
Yet, what can you gain from bad movies? I mean, they’re bad movies, productions where quality isn’t a priority. So, how can you get anything out of them? These questions aren’t answered easily. In fact, sometimes, you need to turn to a higher power. In this case, my mom.
Dixie, a self-proclaimed Roomie, came into bad movies through made-for-TV-movies. Dubbed “Monday night movies,” these films became cornerstones of our childhood: A Friend to Die For, I Can Make You Love Me, or Twisted Desire, the list is endless. As she points out, these films hold one guiding principle.
Dixie: It’s a train wreck factor. I mean, human nature. People tend to see that. Where, in the bad movie genre, people are trying so hard. Overly dramatic acting that made it, instead of bad movie, a really enjoyable bad movie to watch. Still shitty. But, it had to have a certain B-list actor quality about it. Where they’re trying hard. But, giving it a little too much. The Gary Busey movies that we love. Busey is just way out there. His hair is disheveled. He’s trying [laughter]. But, that’s what makes it so awesome! It doesn’t make me a good person that I like these. But, my God, they are amazing [laughter].
When there’s a train wreck factor, The Room is a lowest common dominator for bad movies. Issues with screenwriting, cinematography, blocking, sound design, and characterizations, the movie has them all. Yet, for some viewers, a larger issue remains: how does a movie so bad, become so popular?
The Room Invades Our Lives
“When you have four 18-year-old-dudes, who just moved out of their parents’ houses, all together in a room watching [The Room], we shared this feeling of being uncomfortable together and kinda brought us together in a way. We made it through this fucked-up part of the movie, so we can make it through anything in life.” – Nate
Nate came into The Room when he left home for college in 2008. For many freshmen, the college experience is about making friends. Yet, Nate wasn’t meeting people at frat houses.
Nate: My freshmen year of college, I was at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. We’re just Freshmen, making friends and meeting people. And I met this kid. He liked to skateboard. He collected cassette tapes. He seemed pretty cool. And he had [The Room’s] soundtrack on CD. I had two other roommates. He showed all of us [The Room]. He had already seen it multiple times, so he got to watch our reactions, which is something I like to do now—pass it on to other people. But, our first reactions were like “This is insane. This is hilarious. Why are these people acting like this? What is this movie?” There were all these questions running through my mind. And I have never been so fascinated with a bad movie before.
When you have four 18-year-old-dudes, who just moved out of their parents’ houses, all together in a room watching [The Room], we shared this feeling of being uncomfortable together and kinda brought us together in a way. We made it through this fucked-up part of the movie, so we can make it through anything in life.
Nate’s foray into The Room came at the right time. As he notes, when the freshmen year ended, the movie went from a joke-among friends to a midnight sensation.
Nate: When I saw that film freshmen year of college, that same year Adult Swim played it for the first time on April Fool’s at midnight. And I kinda want to say that was at the height of The Room’s popularity up to that time. They played the movie at midnight. A couple weeks later, I want to say, The Tim and Eric Awesome Show episode with Tommy Wiseau came out. This was after months of us showing this movie to all of our friends. We were just obsessed with it. It just seem like everything was falling into place. I want to say that kinda kickstarted where it is now.
Nate is right. Within the first five years of the movie’s release, it went from a $2000 box-office run to an international sensation. It seemed anyone who was anyone jumped on the bandwagon. Hollywood comedy powerhouses like Paul Rudd, David Wain, and David Cross proclaimed its aloof greatness. Anniversary screenings became national events. Even today, Wiseau makes appearances at Room related social events.
Breaking Down the Power of Cult Classics
For all the hype about the movie, it’s difficult to say what The Room is even about. In short, it centers on Johnny and Lisa’s seven year relationship falling apart when Lisa and Johnny’s best friend Mark start having an affair. From that point on, it’s anyone’s game. For all the characters and subplots that seemingly go nowhere, Dixie points out the chaos of spontaneity.
Dixie: The characters come in randomly. Not always introduced. The dialogue randomly jumps from one subject to another. They can be practically mid-sentence and suddenly [ask] “Oh, how’s your sex life?” And you know, they’re talking about the bank [laughter]. There’s all these random, bazaar things: the football playing, when they taunt each other [saying] “Cheep, cheep, cheep.” There’s maybe a three minute segue where suddenly Denny owes this drug dealer money and he’s been doing drugs. And two civilizes grab the drug dealer, who is armed, drag him off, two minutes later they’re back, and you don’t hear another word about it. It’s that kind of stuff. There’s a randomness to this movie.
This randomness produces unexpected results. And milling The Room into a consumable good is relatively easy—from a certain point of view.
Noel came into movies in 1977, which may not be an important year for some folks. But for Noel, it was huge. It was the summer of Star Wars. It was year he met David Prowse in his Darth Vader costume. It was the beginning of a life-long journey into films. In fact, he even guide Ryan, Dixie, and Nate as costumers when he was the manager of Suncoast Motion Picture Company, a once cherished monument for movie collectors. Noel reminds that sometimes “bad-movies” are simply mislabeled:
Noel: Sometimes the movies that are considered bad or terrible are just not following Hollywood standards. So, it is something different. It is, you know, the bad horror films. A lot of the ones from the ‘80s that were rip-offs of Friday the 13th or whatever, none of them were Hollywood films but are considered good films. They don’t have the restraint or the rules of “I need to have this, this, and this in my movie in order for it to be a Hollywood film, so I can do any movie I want.” We’ve had great geniuses like Tobe Hooper. And like Texas Chain Saw Massacre doesn’t follow any rules like that at all. It’s like being taken somewhere and saying “Do you want to be taken somewhere and see something you shouldn’t see?” And you say “Yeah.”
Seth: So, with that, you have movies that didn’t want to follow Hollywood standards. That went out and did their thing and did it well. And you have [The Room] that is outside of Hollywood, but it doesn’t do that. It doesn’t do anything well. What is the appeal for this type of movie?
Noel: Quotable. It’s the same thing with Rocky Horror Picture Show. Everyone goes, if you ever seen it in the theatre, ever seen a midnight showing, it is a carnival. It is fun. It is a bad movie that everyone participates. And a bad movie is a different thing if it is quotable. Because, I have seen thousands of bad movies. And I’ve only seen three or four quotable ones—to where you have six things in your head afterward.
Knowing the rules and knowing how to break them is a difficult skill to master. From turning up the degree of graphic violence in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead to producing a 164 page script in 2010 with The Social Network, breaking the rules can produce great films. As Ryan points out, movies are subjective, but even The Room can fall flat against titians like the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Ryan: There are certain people with the Rocky Horror Picture Show who say “Oh, you should go see it. It’s so great because the movie’s so bad.” I don’t think the Rocky Horror Picture Show is a bad movie. I think it’s actually a really good movie. It’s just for a specific audience or a specific mood. But like The Room, I was thinking what would I say [about] “What’s so terrible about this movie?” But you can’t point your finger on one thing because everything is terrible about this movie. And I feel like, it’s…I wouldn’t say it’s infuriating, but you get to this point where you say “I need to write everything down that I am complaining about.” Then you’re like “I have eight pages of stuff to complain about.” But, it’s really not like complaints because it entertained me the whole time [laughter].
It’s a simple fact: movies are a combination of vision, talent, and determination. Remove any three of these ingredients, and you’re bound to have problems. Noel points how knowing this recipe created cult classics like Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of Dolls.
Noel: If you are running a business, you’re not going to hire a dishwasher to be your head chef. You’re going to get a chef to be the chef. A writer to be the writer. A director to be the director. And so on and so forth. Russ Meyer was a director that was sent during WWII and they gain him cinema training in Hollywood. Because, they needed more directors out there shooting during WWII. So, after he was done, he thought he was going to get a job out in Hollywood. But no. You have to know somebody to get a job in Hollywood. So, he used his training to make his sleazy little films.
One thing that he learned—how to get the best out of a bad actor—you have them on scene for three seconds or less. And as soon as they are done with their dialogue, you cut away to something else. You cut away so you don’t see that awkward parts before and after the dialogue of a person who can act. You just get the dialogue therefore “This person is a pretty good actor.” No, the director knew how to make this person work in his film. And, Tommy being the director and him also being the actor in the movie definitely seems unhinged during the whole thing. Whether he’s a Dracula, or he’s an alien, or he’s from Poland like it says on IMDB or who knows, the fun part about a lot of these things is the speculation.
Who is Tommy Wiseau?
“Anyone out there, that is into film to where they want to start being a director or anything, they need to watch this movie. Because, it not only shows you what not to do, but it shows you that if you put it to the grindstone anything is possible.” – Noel
The Room travels down a rabbit hole of misadventures. None of these misadventures are more perplexing than the creator himself, Tommy Wiseau, a man so protective about this past, it’s difficult to say what separates fact from fiction. Who is he? What’s the correct way to say his last name? Where did he get his money? Why did he make this movie? When is going to answer these questions?
These questions only encourage The Room’s appeal, none more apparent than the line between Tommy and his fictional counterpart Johnny:
Dixie: Which you know, his physical appearance is part of the appeal. He has this long, dyed, black hair. He’s a banker, so he wears these suits, but they’re are way too big for him. And he has this accent that you can’t begin to place. I can’t even begin to explain this accent. You have to hear it.
As Ryan suggests, the allure surrounding Wiseau has been just as intoxicating as The Room itself.
Ryan: There are certain people that you know in life that really over estimate their own talent. It’s like people who usually sing. They go on about “This person told me that I sing so well. This person said I should be on the radio.” And when you hear them, you’re like “They’re no telling the truth.” I feel like Tommy Wiseau thinks he’s this amazing actor. He thinks he’s a great writer. It’s like “Ummm…no body. You’re not.” But, he’s such an interesting person that I feel like people, that he has this allure about him that people are like “Yeah, I’ll be in your movie.”
Backed by the allure of Wiseau and The Room, the idea of what defines good from bad is secondary. Among classic cult film buffs, The Room isn’t the “best, worst movie ever.” And considering how established names in Hollywood like Sam Rami, Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicolson, or Jamie Lee Curtis started among ranks of B-movies, bad movies can produce great players.
As Dixie reminds us, bad movies can take you for a good ride:
Dixie: This movie is so bad, but it’s enjoyably bad. It’s not like they set out to make a bad movie. You can tell they sincerely thought they were making a good movie. It’s funny because of the randomness of which things occur—both the dialogue, the action, the plotline. There are probably, I’m sure, people who within five minutes turn this movie off. I think you have to have that affinity to really enjoy these bad movies. You know, there is a distinction: There are movie that are just bad and you can’t suffer through. This one is by far, I think, the best, worst movie I have ever seen. Because, you are so amazed at that train wreck aspect that’s taking place. The acting. The story line. Everything. It all adds up to this really enjoyable, really campy quality. I think unintentionally campy quality that this movie has. And it’s epic.
And as The Room secures itself within popular culture, it’s not going to challenge any category in established American cinema. Wiseau isn’t going to win an Academy Award for The Room posthumous. In some respects, The Room doesn’t need to be honored by established Hollywood. It’s already beaten the system. And it has become something bigger than anyone thought it could be. And encourages people that, sometimes, even the craziest ideas work.
Noel: Anyone out there, that is into film to where they want to start being a director or anything, they need to watch this movie. Because, it not only shows you what not to do, but it shows you that if you put it to the grindstone anything is possible. This was Tommy’s dream. He wanted to put this out. And he wanted this movie. And he loves this movie. You can tell. Go on Youtube and look up anything that involves him in an interview. He loves all the press he is getting from this. And how his film is getting the attention he believed it deserved from the beginning. And it is a most see for anyone who wants to get into movies, so they know what not to do and that anything is possible.
Note: Music from Jaggernauts, Kevin MacLoed, and Seth Langreck. Design by Seth Langreck. Inspiration from Tommy Wiseau.
