Venue: Tyneside Cinema
Date: Monday 22nd March
Time: 8pm
Director Tommy Wiseau / USA 2003 /99 min
Certificate 15 TBC / In English
Dubbed ‘The Citizen Kane of Bad movies’, debate rages over whether Tommy Wiseau’s film ‘The Room’ is actually supposed to be funny.
He says yes. Without any studio support, Wiseau spent over $7 million on production and marketing for the film. It’s a melodramatic love triangle between a man, his future wife and his best friend and after a run at an LA cinema it has grown into a cult of Rocky Horror Picture Show proportions in the US in which audience members dress up as their favourite characters, toss footballs to each other, wave spoons (you’ll see) and yell abuse about the film at the screen. So now is your chance to experience the phenomenon first hand and decide for yourself.
“A mix of Tennessee Williams, Ed Wood and R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet.” The Guardian
Tickets: £7 / £6, call 0845 217 9909
Anonymous 
Andy Warhol famously said that movies “show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it”.
What a film like The Room would tell you about life is something that I’ve spent a day thinking about. I like it when that happens with a movie – I can’t tell you whether it was good or bad – it was beyond that. But like Apocalypse Now, like Antichrist, like Synecdoche, New York, I couldn’t tell you whether it was in anyway a valuable movie, or even whether I enjoyed it. But I can tell you that I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
For those not in the know (and that seemed to include me) The Room is a film that you interact with – like Rocky Horror, and latterly Sound of Music and Showgirls. When certain characters come on screen, or certain objects appear, you’re supposed to respond in a particular way.
I found it more interesting to actually watch the film. Auteur-created by actor/director/producer Tommy Wiseau, a man with the ugliest bottom since Michael Douglas, is rivetting. Strange to look at, his acting awesome to contemplate, his talent minimal at best, what I most admired was his ability to get this clunker made. The budget was $7m, though the production values (and the better actors) are of afternoon soap opera standard.
The plot is basically a love triangle, with side issues involving drugs, the duplicity of women and cancer. Forget that. Wiseau obviously did – about twenty minutes into the film.
The pulchritudinous Juliette Danielle is quite stunning as the ‘evil’ two-timing girlfriend, and some (almost) proper acting by Greg Sestero.
Both spend the major part of the movie topless, though Sestero’s body gets the full lingering camera treatment from his real-life buddy Wiseau (!!)
So to come back to Warhol. What did this movie tell me about how to live my life? It told me to get out there and do it – lack of talent (and oh how I lack creative genius) should never get in the way of making your art.
After all, I’m watching The Room seven years and a continent away, in a packed cinema. The same couldn’t be said of Kevin Costner’s The Postman, or Waterworld. Could it.
THE ROOM
Review by LEON BELL
It’s very easy to be arch about someone’s cinematic creation when it isn’t slick enough. There are, lets not forget, only two kinds of movie: ones you enjoy and ones you don’t.
Anyone who is not familiar with writer/director/actor/producer Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiss, and the cult phenomena of the spoons, are in for a treat. Those who venture in are about to witness this generation’s Plan 9 from Outer Space or Manos: Hand of Fate.
Tommy’s character Johnny has a fiancée, Lisa. And she’s having an affair with Johnny’s best friend. Barely sketched characters like Denny, a boy who Johnny wanted to adopt, wander into scenes, utter terrible dialogue or attempt to participate in sex scenes, then leave. This becomes like Groundhog Day without the intentional laughs, and it makes you question your sanity when you stagger out of the cinema an hour and a half later.
A cult has grown up around this poorly made film, because audiences tell their friends about it. They want their friends to see it because they enjoyed the experience. I’m sure shameless self-promoter Wiseau would claim he made it specifically for the masochist in every movie fan.
The Room
Tyneside Cinema 22/03/10
If I were to review The Room as a film I would probably quote the catchphrase of the film’s bed-hopping Lisa, ‘I don’t want to talk about it’. However, The Room is not so much a film as an experience and in that sense it is pure genius. The film has gained a cult following that, judging by the excitement in the audience at last night’s screening, has spread to the UK.
It was originally marketed as a, ‘a film with passion’ but later and ever since Wiseau insists that it was always meant to be a comedy. Last night’s crowd was supplied with plastic spoons, a variety of balls and party whistles and their use of them created a brilliantly rowdy atmosphere. The spoons are thrown at the screen whenever the framed spoon photographs appear in the background (an amateur mistake or a symbolic representation depending on who you believe). The balls are thrown around the audience as the characters engage in regular and pointless ball games and throughout the screening viewers heckle and shout abuse at the screen. There was one line last night, ‘You’re tearing me apart Lisa’ which the crowd shouted in unison proving that many of those in attendance were long-standing fans. For those like myself who have never seen the film it was brilliant to see the response and easy to get caught up in the revelry. By the end I was as loud as the rest shouting, ‘Hi Danny’ and ‘Bye Danny’ as the character repeatedly entered and left scenes with no apparent purpose.
So, yes, the acting, writing and direction are horrendous. The characters are two dimensional, the plot linear (or more appropriately horizontal – the multiple sex scenes are excruciatingly bad) with sub-plots introduced and forgotten and a chaotic scene structure. And yet this is without a doubt the best night out at the cinema I’ve had in a very long time. It’s definitely not one to watch alone but I would urge anyone who gets the chance to attend a screening of The Room to go, for an unforgettable experience. And don’t forget to take a spoon.