The Disaster Artist

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

Saw a poster this morning. I expect we've done a thread already, but let's start afresh. Is there any point seeing it if you haven't seen The Room?

[up_the_hampipe]

There's no point in seeing it if you have seen The Room because that's much funnier.

[Stonefish]

Is there any point seeing it if you haven't seen The Room?

The book was great and I'd go out on a limb and say the story would hold up just fine for someone who hasn't seen The Room (assuming such a person exists).

[mothman]

I've never seen it.

[Stonefish]

Prove it.

[mothman]

How do I prove a negative? I didn't see it in the cinema (did anyone?). I don't own it on DVD or even have a DVD player anymore. I don't know if it's ever been on terrestrial TV. I haven't spotted it in the Netflix or Amazon Prime catalogues. And I haven't illegally downloaded it.

[Shit Good Nose]

I've never seen it.

Don't bother.

All these people saying it's an amazing bad film are lying.  It's fucking dull.  VERY fucking dull.  You're much better off watching something like Death Wish 3, Shark Attack 3, or any number of 80s low budget Italian genre rip-offs for a properly enjoyable bad film.

To be fair, watching The Room with a large group of people would probably improve it no end, but watching it on your own it's an absolutely mind numbing and joyless experience which makes a Tarkovsky film look like a Fast and Furious sequel.

[imitationleather]

The local cinema up here only seemed to be showing The Disaster Artist as part of a double bill with The Room, and literally one of the last things I want to do on earth is watch The Room in a cinema packed full of people throwing spoons and shit. And given that I dislike doing basically everything, this means I rate the idea of watching The Room in a cinema very low indeed.

I agree it's basically a dull film. Some very funny moments, but endless bloody sex scenes and parts where nothing happens over and over and over. I only needed to watch the full thing once. However, The Disaster Artist is a great book and so I'd be interested to see the film.

[Shit Good Nose]

You could always ask them what time The Disaster Artist starts and just go and see that.

[imitationleather]

It'd be full of people hyped up from quoting The Room, though. That is just not conducive to the grumpy silence I demand from a cinema.

[Indie-Schmindie]

Hi imitationleather...

If you're talking about the Tyneside Cinema then I think they're just have a one off double bill screening of The Room and The Disaster Artist, but I believe they will be showing The Disaster Artist as a stand alone film too. They just haven't announced the dates/times yet. So there you go.

[bgmnts]

Honestly don't see the point. Much better to just watch the room and read sestero's book. Not going to lie some lines from that book sent a bit of a shiver down my spine.

[Stonefish]

Admittedly I've only seen it once so maybe it doesn't hold up to multiple viewings, but I remember enjoying it. Never found it dull because it was so strange and funny.

[imitationleather]

Hi imitationleather...

If you're talking about the Tyneside Cinema then I think they're just have a one off double bill screening of The Room and The Disaster Artist, but I believe they will be showing The Disaster Artist as a stand alone film too. They just haven't announced the dates/times yet. So there you go.

Ooh, ta for the info. This is great, it's like Alexa!

[St_Eddie]

Don't bother.

All these people saying it's an amazing bad film are lying.  It's fucking dull.  VERY fucking dull.

I completely agree with this.  It's a yawn fest.  Having said that, Tommy Wiseau is a fascinating... human being (?!) and I'm looking forward to watching The Disaster Artist.  However, I should probably get around to listening to the audiobook first; it's been sat on my harddrive for some time now.

[checkoutgirl]

People who watch The Room at home and think it's boring are missing the point somewhat. Roger Ebert said that watching Rocky Horror at home is an empty experience and a waste of time. Films like The Room and Rocky Horror need an audience to come alive. It's a shared audience experience like a midnight movie or a band playing a gig. If you enjoy the audience participation then go and see The Room.

If you're a misery guts like imitationleather then avoid at all costs because nothing good can come from you seeing it.

As for The Disaster Artist, I haven't seen it but I will seek it out. I'm assuming you'd get more out of it if you've seen The Room and read the book but it's a goddamn film so you should be able to enjoy it without getting the background. That's if it's any good which I don't know because I haven't seen it.

I'll add that watching The Room at home on DVD is very boring and dull. The repetition, gratuitous sex scenes, baffling go nowhere plot, idiosyncratic dialogue and Tommy's oddness are all very boring and slightly annoying when viewed at home but morph into genius anti comedy when viewed with a willing audience.

[typeforty]

I think the problem with screenings of The Room is that you can hardly ever hear the actual film. It's certainly no way to show someone the film for the first time. I've had great fun showing the DVD to small groups of people at home, though - I certainly wouldn't bother watching it on my own.

[checkoutgirl]

I've had great fun showing the DVD to small groups of people at home, though - I certainly wouldn't bother watching it on my own.

Exactly. Also booze helps. It's a joke film really and watching by yourself is tedious beyond belief.

[Billy]

Literally about to see The Room for the first time at the Prince Charles tonight. Hoping it matches my expectations.

[Shit Good Nose]

Literally about to see The Room for the first time at the Prince Charles tonight. Hoping it matches my expectations.

And did it?

People who watch The Room at home and think it's boring are missing the point somewhat.

Well no, not really.  The Room has long been held up as being one of the most entertaining bad films ever made, even before it started doing the rounds Rocky Horror style.  But it's not the film itself that makes it entertaining, it's the audience that has since grown up around it (and even then, I can't think of anything worse, especially having sat through "those types" of events with The Sound of Music, Dirty Dancing and Rocky Horror itself).

It's Like Manos the Hands of Fate.  Have you ever seen that sans the MST treatment?  I have.  It's abysmal.  Even worse and even more dull than The Room, in fact.

I keep returning to Death Wish 3 and Shark Attack 3, but I really do think they are the posterboys of properly entertaining bad films - you can watch and enjoy them on your own or with a group.  They're brilliant shitness is all inclusive, and just as unintentional as The Room. 

If you need hundreds of people to make The Room enjoyable...

[Sin Agog]

I find The Room a bit icky to sit through, the same way I find The Shaggs hard to listen to.  Not because it's queasily bad.  I like a lot of outsider artists.  It's more the feeling that the artists themselves aren't in on the joke at all.  Often outsider artists, inept as they are in a traditional sense, hit upon strange moments of transcendence.  Look at all those dodgy giallo b-movies, or some of the more ramshackle bands Peel would play, or some loony toon drawing the saints in crayon from his cell; there's always something more there than just badness.  I didn't finish The Room, and I guess there are some weirdly dream-like spells in what I can remember of it, but uh...it's just not my cup of schadenfreude.

[bgmnts]

It's harder to get through when you research the behind the scenes shit. You'll want to spit in Tommy Wiseau's face,

[St_Eddie]

If you need hundreds of people to make The Room enjoyable...

This is my thinking too.  It's like incredibly bad and tedious video games; they're a lot more entertaining in two player mode but that doesn't qualify them as being genuinely enjoyable in they're own right.  With this sort of thing, you're simply enjoying the company of other people.  In actuality, the main event itself is of little real consequence and completely secondary.  It simply acts as a means to an end; a stimulus for social interaction.

A film which truly qualifies as being 'so bad that it's good' should not require the presence of other people to be enjoyed.  There's nothing wrong with enjoying shite through such circumstances of course but let's not kid ourselves into thinking of such occasions as being some kind of positive for said shite itself.  You could build a community around any given crap and people would likely have a ball with it.  That doesn't make something worthwhile viewing in of itself.

The true benchmark is 'can I enjoy this film, watching it by myself?'

[Replies From View]

Literally about to see The Room for the first time at the Prince Charles tonight. Hoping it matches my expectations.

I was there too!

[Billy]

So I bloody enjoyed that - I couldn't imagine appreciating it on my own, but in a packed out screening with spoons being thrown  and party poppers being let off that was a pretty awesome event. The more "WHO ARE YOU?!" (when Steven inexplicably appears as a main character halfway through the film) and "CLOSE THE DOOR!!" got shouted out the funnier it got. If I had any success with relationships it would be a pretty fun date night.

I'm actually surprised at how much I liked it as I normally have a general hatred of people and shouting, but that probably joins the midnight premiere of The Force Awakens as one of the most entertaining cinema experiences I've ever had.

[St_Eddie]

So I bloody enjoyed that - I couldn't imagine appreciating it on my own, but in a packed out screening with spoons being thrown  and party poppers being let off that was a pretty awesome event. The more "WHO ARE YOU?!" (when Steven inexplicably appears as a main character halfway through the film) and "CLOSE THE DOOR!!" got shouted out the funnier it got. If I had any success with relationships it would be a pretty fun date night.

I'm actually surprised at how much I liked it as I normally have a general hatred of people and shouting, but that probably joins the midnight premiere of The Force Awakens as one of the most entertaining cinema experiences I've ever had.

Happy to hear that you had a good time.  Fair play, my man.

[Mini]

I'm seeing The Room tonight at the Prince Charles having only watched it at home previously. Since then I've listened to the Disaster Artist audiobook, which is absolutely great and made want to go to one of these screenings with the benefit of all that incredible backstory. So yeah, I'm excited!

[Noodle Lizard]

I genuinely love The Room.  I don't agree with people saying it's only worth watching when you're at a screening or with a bunch of other people.  I've been to a couple screenings, and while they're certainly fun, they understandably only highlight the more obvious absurdities and if you aren't already familiar with it you'll miss out on a lot of the nuance (for lack of a better word) of just how bizarre it is.

Of course there are plenty of "so bad it's good" movies out there, and many of them are entertaining in their own way, but The Room (and his more recent work The Neighbors) is the closest I've come to finding something that genuinely seems as if it were made by an alien.  Unlike other movies which get mentioned in the same breath, it's not so much a case of someone aspiring to something big and failing due to lack of talent/resources (or, in the cases of things like Sharknado, aspiring to be exactly as tacky as it is), but more a case of someone who fundamentally doesn't understand humans and human interaction attempting to tell a story about exactly that.  Whereas a lot of these "bad movies" tend to be the result of ordinary people failing to successfully tell stories about extraordinary worlds (Plan 9, Troll 2, almost anything on MST3K), The Room is the result of someone extraordinary spectacularly failing to evoke the ordinary and mistakenly creating something completely surreal in the process.

Aside from Wiseau, the making of The Room is also a great story about a very real and very bleak world in Los Angeles, about delusion and failure and disappointment.  I'm not convinced Franco can relate to that in any meaningful way, having been almost instantly successful since his late teens.  The casting of his famous mates in almost every role is irritating in a way I can't be bothered to explain.  Admittedly I can't think of someone I'd want to make this film off the top of my head, but I don't think turning it into a fictional movie is worthwhile anyway.

[Obel]

There's big poster for this where I get on the train. The poster alone makes me not want to see it, which is weird because I love The Room and The Disaster Artist book but I think I've figured out why. It's Dave Franco's grinning fucking face. So, is this guy supposed to be playing Greg Sestero? If so why does it only take a photo to make me realize he's not at all like Greg Sestero? Not in terms of looks, but Greg seems to be a fairly low key, soft spoken type, I can't imagine him cracking such an over the top shit eating grin.

Why is James Franco putting his shit brother in the film? Why is James Franco making films at all? He's shit and so are his mates. I iwsh he'd burn to death in the opening moments of every film like he did in Alien Covenant.

[kngen]

There's big poster for this where I get on the train. The poster alone makes me not want to see it, which is weird because I love The Room and The Disaster Artist book but I think I've figured out why. It's Dave Franco's grinning fucking face. So, is this guy supposed to be playing Greg Sestero? If so why does it only take a photo to make me realize he's not at all like Greg Sestero? Not in terms of looks, but Greg seems to be a fairly low key, soft spoken type, I can't imagine him cracking such an over the top shit eating grin.

I just looked him up and saw that he's married to Alison Brie, the fucking lucky cunt. But agreed, Wiseau is the big honking scene-stealer in The Disaster Artist, but Sestero is the calm, naive and ultimately frustrated centre of the book - and needs a really good actor to pull off that half-devotion/half-horror he has towards Wiseau and his fucking mental attitude to his magnum opus (and life in general). If this film is just The James Franco Hams It Up As Wiseau Show, I'm oot. There's a much better film to be made, and the source material is right there in fucking front of them.