One of my most anticipated movie for the rest of the year is The Disaster Artist. James Franco's adaptation of Greg Sestero's book of the same title. It is a behind the scenes chronicle of the making of the The Room. If you are not familiar with it The Room is the worst movie ever made. It was directed, written and starred Tommy Wiseau, attempted to make a name for himself in Hollywood while simultaneously baring his soul to the world. The caveat, Tommy has absolutely zero talent for making movies. He is a terrible actor, his direction is hilariously inept and his writing bears no resemblance to the concept of storytelling or human emotion as we know them. From a small opening on one screen in Los Angeles in 2003, The Room has become a cult favourite. For a taste of what The Room has to offer here is my favorite twenty seconds in film history, Johnny buying flowers.
Now that you have a taste of The Room, I recommend looking up the whole thing. It is an absolute treasure of a film. The Disaster Artist is directed by James Franco as starring himself and Dave Franco as Tommy and Greg respectively. The book is exceptional and The Room is magical so I have some high expectations for this movie.
1. James Franco is nailing Tommy Wiseau's accent
Tommy Wiseau's accent is best described as part-Eastern European, part-Cajun, part-Vampire, part-Stroke victim all learning English for the first time. It is distinctive. If his look wasn't equally insane it would be the most distinctive thing about him. James Franco somehow manages to nail this accent. Now he doesn't sound exactly like Tommy because he still has James Franco's voice underneath everything but I think it is as close as a human being could ever hope to get.
2. Tommy's adventures in theatre
Tommy Wiseau loves Marlon Brando and James Dean. Hell, one of the most famous things from The Room is Wiseau doing a James Dean line ("You are tearing me apart") He idolizes these guys, as many aspiring actors do. The difference between himself and most aspiring actors, he doesn't see the difference between them and him. In his mind, Tommy is just as talented as two of the greatest actors in film history. Here he is recreating the STELLA moment from Streetcar with all the grace of a drunken high school drama dropout. It's beautiful.
3. Tommy Wiseau doesn't understand football
One of the best (unintentional) running gags in The Room is the football. Johnny and his friends constantly gather in small circles and gently pass the ball to each other. Tommy Wiseau understands sports about as well as he understands complex human emotions like love and friendship. As you will see, this trailer does a great job sprinkling in a lot of the famous things from the original movie, stoking the flames for the Francos and their friends to get their hands on this material.
4. Tommy Wiseau hunts and pecks
After being rebuffed by the Hollywood Elites, Tommy decides to make his own movie. It'll star him as his alter-ego Johnny, a handsome, popular, maybe vampire and will focus on, well that's not important. Typing proves to be another skill Tommy never really picked up in life though that seems fair. Whatever place he's from clearly wasn't populated by humans so there probably weren't computers or typewriters or anything of that sort lying around.
5. It's a real Hollywood movie
Poor, Seth Rogen. He's playing a Hollywood veteran stuck with this weird idiot making his own movie and is trying to process everything about it. Why build a complete set when you could easily just go to location? Because Tommy is a real Hollywood star and things will be done his way. Needless to say, film production is not a skill of Tommy's
6. Oh Hai Mark
This one was already given away in the great teaser trailer. The brilliant rooftop greensceen, the nonsensical, angry ramblings of Tommy with the abrupt transition into the above greeting. Oh boy, The Room is such an experience. James Franco has a challenge with this film in that if he merely recreated The Room it would be disappointing but Franco has grander designs and Sestero's book is providing a great template.
7. Cheep! Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!
A bunch of grown men in tuxedos doing terrible chicken impressions. It's either Arrested Development or The Room. Like I've previously said about 5 times already, The Room is fucking amazing. Let's take a quick time out to look at this cast James Franco has put together. We've already seen James Franco, Dave Franco, Seth Rogen and Paul Scheer. Here we've got Nathan Fielder, Josh Hutcherson and I'm not sure who the other person is. That's a good cast right there. But what if we added Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver, Hannibal Buress, Alison Brie, Sharon Stone, Melanie Griffith, Jason Mantzoukas, Megan Mulally, Kate Upton, Ari Graynow, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jason Mitchell, Randall Park, Brett Gelman, Casey Wilson and a bunch of celebrity cameos. That's a lot of people.
9. Spoiler Alert! Johnny Dies in The Room
No, that spoiler doesn't matter at all. The Room has roughly a hundred different plots surrounding its main one. And everything in that movie is set up so obviously for Johnny to die by suicide. Well after he "dies", Tommy gets the brilliant idea to continue acting, much to the chagrin of Seth Rogen. Seth Rogen still can not believe Tommy's shit.
9. The legendary sex scenes
The Room features some of the most legendary sexy scenes in the history of cinema. The first one is the most memorable with a buck naked Tommy fucking the shit out of Juliette Danielle's naval. Fun Room fact. This was the very first thing they shot so poor Juliette's first interaction with anybody was having to lie there and let Tommy writhe around on top of her. What a trooper.
10. HI DOGGY!
I kinda hate to be that guy who just gets excited because he recognizes things but IT'S THE FLOWER SCENE! It's the greatest scene in the history of cinema.
The Disaster Artist is schedule for a limited release December 1, with a wide release on the 8th.
You can watch the trailer here.
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