#84 The Room
The Room is written by, directed by and stars Tommy Wiseau. He probably did the catering as well, but one thing is certain, it is most definitely his baby. He is totally responsible for this movie and so takes all the blame or credit. And that is the problem with this movie, I can not decide if the man was a total genius or a complete idiot!
The Room is a story about a banker, (cockney rhyming slang), called Johnny, (played by Wiseau) and his relationship with 'soon to be wife' Lisa, (Juliette Danielle). Lisa has fallen out of love with Johnny and starts an affair with his best friend, Mark, (Greg Sestero). The film focuses on Johnny and Mark's relationship, which is very close, almost brotherly, (they share everything, CDs, Video Games, Moo-moos) Mark's relationship with Lisa and his ultimate betrayal towards Johnny. At the end of the movie Johnny discovers the affair and is thrown into despair and a downward spiral which culminates in a 'dramatic' ending, (which I won't spoil for once as I would quite like you, dear reader, to watch it).
So, where do we begin? It really is difficult to dissect this film, but by Jiminy I'll give it a go. Let's start with Sex, (I mean talking about it in the movie, that was not a proposition).
During the first 30 mins, Lisa is not shagging someone for around 30 seconds. First she bangs Johnny in a prolonged and physically impossible act of passion. Impossible in that Lisa's vagina appears to be in the middle of her torso, either that or Wiseau is a very blessed fella indeed! This is quickly followed by part 2, which really is just the first 'love' scene but re-edited, (seriously it is, if you want it closely and for the benefit of this blog I've watched it very closely, you will notice that they have mixed in scenes from the first shagfest). Then, with barely time to read the script, (luckily for her there wasn't much anyway), she's off again with Mark. And on again. And off. I think you get the picture.
Now I'm all for a bit of ahem during a movie or TV show, (I suspect Game of Thrones would not be quite as popular otherwise), but these sex scenes are just so blooming unsexy. Forgiving Lisa's wandering axe wound for a second, each boinking scene has a soft rock track over the top of it. It's a bit like banging away whilst Magic FM is on in the background and there is nothing to spoil the mood more than Bon Jovi whilst on the job. The whole feel of all this slap and tickle is one of a very cheap soft porn film shown on Channel 5 late at night. Even the most horny young bloke, whose pant elastic would ping off when sitting on a warm bus seat, would find it hard to get a lob on. After watching this, making love to the missus would be a bit like playing snooker with a rope.
Whilst we are on Lisa, (and many men probably were), unfortunately her lack of clothes matches her lack of acting skills. She is so incredibly wooden and the fact that this stands out in a movie which basically contains 2x4s, is some feat. She delivers lines as if she is reading them straight of a fag packet, (for our American reader's fag means cigarettes in the UK. You may have an image I did not intend at this point). This is well illustrated with her conversations with her mother.
It's fair to say Lisa's relationship with her mother, Claudette, (Carolyn Minnott), is about as far apart as her legs. This is off course hard to tell with her full range of emotions on show, but is best supported by the line:
Lisa mum: 'I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer'
Lisa's response? Wooden and muttering something about modern medicine. She hardly flinches, certainly doesn't break down in tears and doesn't even looked shocked. Claudette might as well have mentioned that The Range has a 2 for 1 offer on cushions! However, I'm being a bit harsh, maybe she was right to brush this off, after all, with over an hour of the movie left, Claudette's breast cancer is never mentioned again. We end up in a sub 'plot' dead end, with no resolution.
This happens again with an argument between 2 characters Denny, (Philip Haldiman) and Chris-R, (Dan Janjigian). Denny is the youngest out of Johnny's group of friends and is still at college. On the rooftop of the apartment block where Johnny lives, a scene develops where he is being held at gunpoint by Chris-R demanding that Denny pays back the money for the drugs. This is quite an intense scene broken by the arrival of Johnny and Mark who of manage to wrestle with Chris-R and take him away. So why was Denny borrowing money from Chris-R? What happened to Chris-R? Did he exact revenge? Was Denny actually on drugs himself? Well, I would not know because this story is also never revisited or concluded!
My favourite sub plot which never gets explained or finished is the disappearance of Mark's beard, which he proudly displays for 3/4 of the movie, but which goes walkies. All I can think is that Mark's beard had a better agent than Mark and managed to negotiate a way out of the movie.
So why didn't Wiseau edit these scenes out? They make no difference to the plot, play no relevance to the characters and make the movie look messy and rushed. This is when I start to wonder if Wiseau means any of this, whether everything in the movie has a purpose. Deliberate or accidental? It really is a toss up (probably by Lisa).
Wiseau filmed this on SD and HD film as he did not understand the difference between both formats. How then, we ended up with the VHS chewed up by the dog version, I have no idea. The editing is poor, the sets are only slightly more wooden than the acting and the audio constantly goes out of sync with the actors mouths. This is probably because of Wiseau's accent which may have led to many dubbings. His accent is hard to place, he's American, raised in France, but sounds like he's Dutch, with a Swedish accent?!?!
Putting himself in the lead role, may have been a mistake, or a masterpiece! He garbles his way through scenes, pronouncing words incorrectly, using pitch at the wrong parts in sentences and spending large parts of the movie sounding like a stoned Spaniard, (or German, it really is hard to tell). But without doubt it does not really matter what he says as the script is truly terrible. But this is what probably makes the difference between crap movie and movie so crap, it becomes good. Why? Because it is just so damn quotable!
Eagle eyed readers would have spotted that I begun this blog with, 'Oh hai!', in fact I have been driving my nearest and dearest up the wall by saying 'Oh hai!' to everyone. This comes from Johnny who, it seems, says 'Oh hi', (distorted to Oh hai! by the accent) in every scene including one particularly hilarious scene in which Johnny is having a rant after being accused of hitting Lisa and halfway through this rant Mark walks into shot.....
(Shouting) 'I did not hit her, it's not true, it's bullshit, I did not hit her, I did not. (Quietly) Oh hai Mark!'
The 180 degrees is fantastic, a joy to watch and makes me laugh just typing it again. The next best 'Oh hai' after this is to a dog in a flower shop, 'Oh hai doggie'. Priceless!
Then there is his insult to another friend, Peter and later Mark in which he calls them chicken! This is followed by Johnny flapping his arms and shouting, 'cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep!'. I can not do this justice by writing it down, no matter how hard I try to explain it. It really is one of those, 'you have to see it', moments.
In fact, I could quote large quantities of the movie and I'm sure I could hear Wes sniggering, but to others it may just sound weird. For example, 'do you want pizza? I already ordered pizza'. Now seriously I'm tittering at a) getting the word tit in my blog and b) the quote, but I bet 99% of you are thinking, 'what on earth is he chattering about?'. So I ask you, please watch this movie as you may find this funny when you see the context it's used in. In fact, the link below takes you to some quotes from the movie, read them before, watch the movie and then re-read them. Hopefully you will then see what I am trying to say.
http://ohhaitommywiseau.tumblr.com/post/7268411501/tomtrager-over-15-quotes-from-tommy-wiseaus
If you don't find the quotes funny, well, how would you like to see grown men, in tuxedos, throwing an American Football at each other from about 6 inches apart? No? Do you like spotting mistakes in movies then? You can't possible see them all, there just is not enough time, but you could for example wonder why Johnny's relationship with Lisa goes from 5 to 7 years in the space of half an hour, how a 45 minute tape cassette is going to record the entire next day's conversation and more importantly why does Johnny take the tape out of the portable tape deck player he used to tape the conversation downstairs to play it on another portable tape deck player upstairs?
In conclusion, I love this movie. Did Wiseau mean this to be so horrendously bad it becomes good? I do not know, I suspect not but in the end it does not matter. What he has produced is an hilarious masterpiece showing that bad writing, bad acting and a bad script can equal success. I think this movie appeals to the student in me. The one who likes quoting things to others whilst the vast majority of people have no clue what I am on about. I think this is also why this film is so popular with others. Popular? That's right, popular, because unknown to me before I started to watch this movie, The Room has a large cult following.
In the US fans go to midnight showings dressed as their favourite characters and quote large chunks of the movie at the silver screen. Wiseau himself often turns up to these screenings and if you are a fan of the film, this must be a fantastic experience. In the UK at the Prince Charles Cinema in London this is shown monthly! It is now firmly on my must do list and if after watching the movie you are also interested in going, let me know. We could order pizza......
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