Imagine a hamster trapped in an abandoned mineshaft in Appalachia for all its formative years, never seeing the sun, and never knowing the caress of another hamster. An archeologist knocks down a cave wall, finds the now-grown cave-hamster, and releases him into modern civilization. The hamster, having just made its first interaction with another sentient being, decides to create a dramatic film that details romance, adultery, drug abuse and suicide. That film would probably come out something like ‘The Room.’
Yes, Tommy Wiseau’s cult phenomenon might as well have been made by a cave hamster: its dialog ranks among the worst in movie history, its production values rival a middle-school Nativity stage-play, and its simple plot falls apart in the first half hour. But Wiseau threw himself wholeheartedly into getting his bizarre romance onto the silver screen, writing, producing, directing and starring in the film. If he was Clint Eastwood, this passion would have translated into Oscar material. Instead, we have a glorious 90-minute-long masterpiece of butchered, otherworldly human interaction. It’s a masterpiece only in the ‘So bad, it’s hilarious’ freak-show vein, but Wiseau’s twisted presence in every aspect of the movie elevates it into a new category: the terrible auteur drama.
The plot of ‘The Room’ can be summarized in three sentences, but to avoid spoilers for the unfamiliar, I’m only going to use two: A man’s fiancee sleeps with his best friend; the man finds out about the affair and gets mad. There are numerous subplots, but each one lasts for one scene only-instead, the plot steamrolls over any distractions to flesh out the main love triangle. Multiple foggy soft-core sex scenes, with accompanying pillow-talks, demonstrate that, indeed!, Lisa did screw Johnny, but lo!, she also screwed Mark.’
On the way to the conclusion of this affair, Michelle performs oral sex on Mike on the couch; Peter, Mark and Johnny throw a football around in wedding tuxedos; Lisa and Johnny consume a fifth of vodka, allegedly mixed with whiskey, and then toss their glasses to the ground. If this all sounds bewildering, it’s because it is. To the unfamiliar, these character names mean nothing, but anyone who’s seen The Room will tell you that all the actors, male or female, play their roles identically: everyone says ‘Oh hi!’ upon randomly arriving, and ‘I don’t wanna talk about it’ or ‘I gotta go’ to abruptly leave the room; everyone rambles about the pitfalls of romance; everyone fawns over Lisa; everyone is Johnny’s best friend. This homogeneity is so severe that when one actor quit the production, Wiseau replaced him with another actor and presented him as an entirely different character in later scenes with no introduction or explanation.’ But by the time Peter morphs into Steven, it’s useless to keep criticizing the movie; every frame is so poorly shot and every line is so horribly botched that you can only laugh at the trainwreck.
At the center of the wreckage is Tommy Wiseau himself. As the visionary cave-hamster and only financier behind The Room, no one could tell him not to trudge across a bedroom butt-naked in the first ten minutes of the movie. ‘Maybe we should overdub your dialogue, Tommy, because I can’t understand a goddamn thing you’re saying.’ ‘Maybe you should cut your hair, Tommy, because you look like Quasimodo.’ ‘Is that really something that any human being would ever say or do, ever?’ Thankfully, no one said any of these things during shooting. Wiseau’s delusion continued uninterrupted, and it continues to fill weekend showings in New York six years after it came out.
If anyone wants to borrow it, let me know. We have two copies in my apartment.
