“So there’s this guy, Johnny, a true American hero, to be played by me. He has it all, good looks, make friends and also maybe Johnny is vampire. We’ll see.”
The Room, written, directed by and starring the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau, is widely-regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. Yet, it has also amassed a huge cult following, with live reenactments, and even a video game. So what exactly makes The Room so oddly appealing despite its visible badness? It’s a question that has surrounded the movie since its release in 2003, particularly in regard to Tommy Wiseau, its central figure. No one knows where he came from, why he speaks with that accent, how old he is or where he got the money to fund his own movie. And yet, despite everything, despite everyone laughing at him and telling him he was never going to make it, he nonetheless got his bizarro vision on screen and it became one of the most talked-about films of the 21st century.
It’s a concept rife for exploration, and thus we have The Disaster Artist, a dramatic retelling of how Wiseau created what has been hailed as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.” James Franco inhabits the role of Wiseau, with brother Dave Franco co-starring as his best friend Greg Sestero, who gets swept into Wiseau’s wild and crazy world. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, James Franco also directs and produces The Disaster Artist, crafting his own gutsy vision, with colorful characters and an intricate plot of friendship and betrayal that grafts perfectly onto The Room itself. The film takes us back to 1998 where Sestero, an actor struggling to find his confidence, becomes fascinated by the fearless and strange Wiseau, who openly shouts monologues in front of huge groups of people with no fear, laying his soul bare. They form a quick friendship and decide to move to L.A. together to make it big. After months of failure, Wiseau concocts The Room, a “drama” about a love triangle between Johnny, who would be played by Wiseau, his wife Lisa and his best friend Mark (Sestero), with whom Lisa is having an affair.
The Disaster Artist is a film that could have very easily made Wiseau the butt of the joke, as he has been for years. And while The Disaster Artist certainly has a lot of fun with Wiseau’s odd speech patterns (especially that deadpan laugh), random behavior and delusions of grandeur, it never feels mean-spirited. This is in large part due to James Franco’s performance, who not only matches Wiseau’s one-of-a-kind persona but allows us to see his internal struggle. This is a man who has been laughed out of buildings for much of his life, but he loves movies so much and believes deeply in his abilities that you cannot help but root for him. There is a childlike innocence that makes his compulsive watchable as Sestero and we the audience hang on his every word. The film does not make him a misunderstood angel, though. We get to see his demanding side too, from openly criticizing his scene partner’s skin to lashing out when Sestero wants to move out to be with his girlfriend. While rarely taking the perspective off of Wiseau, we still understand exactly how difficult it was for everyone else to work with this kind of an egomaniac. This allows James Franco to explore every facet of Wiseau’s personality, and he is deeply committed from the grandstanding monologues to the subtlest of transitions in mood. Any one scene can feature Wiseau lashing out at a crew member, struggling with a line, and quietly realizing that people do not like him, and James Franco seamlessly transitions between each, while also maintaining that level of mystery that makes his character so compelling.
The film also strikes a good pace thanks to screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who previously wrote one of the best modern romantic comedies, 500 Days of Summer. Like with the latter film, the duo strike a good balance between broad comedy and genuine pathos, with many scenes featuring both. Still, the more dramatic elements, mostly in regard to Sestero, can be predictable and overdone, even if you’ve seen just a handful of movies about show business. It is here, when we see how Sestero is dealing with the pressures of Hollywood that the film drags, if only because the sharp comedy fades away and we see the kinds of beats we’ve seen a hundred times before. Thankfully we get to spend most of our time with Wiseau, and Neustadter and Weber make his journey from acting class attendant to seeing his name in lights so damn fun to watch. The film is populated with all kinds of entertaining supporting turns and cameos, who just lend to the fun, including Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, Paul Scheer, Megan Mullally, Sharon Stone, Melanie Griffith, Nathan Fielder, Josh Hutcherson and Jacki Weaver.
Seeing The Disaster Artist, the one recent film that came to mind was La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s earnest musical about Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone following their dreams in Hollywood. It is as if Wiseau time-traveled to the future (and who’s to say he isn’t a time traveler), saw La La Land and became inspired by the magical possibility of showbiz. He is like the embodiment of the song Stone sings at the end of the film, “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)”. That song, and really the whole of La La Land, is about taking that leap and risking it all, even if it means failure. That is at the heart of The Disaster Artist, for both Wiseau and Sestero. These aren’t guys who are going to be known as the best actors of their generation. They’re just a couple of guys who had a dream once, who blew past the people who ignored them or said they weren’t good enough and said, “I don’t care. I want this and I know I can do it.” Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Wiseau and Sestero made The Room around the same time as the start of American Idol, where plainly bad singers auditioned for a sneering Simon Cowell, fully believing they could sing. It is the idea of the American dream, of any person daring to dream and making that dream a reality. God bless America, and God bless the fools who dream.
★★★½
FOR YOUR AWARDS CONSIDERATION:
Best Actor — James Franco
Best Adapted Screenplay — Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber