Nice party, Lisa. You invited all my friends--good idea!

Rock Club Cinema Extravaganza:
The Room
Chez Jimbromski
Sept. 6, 2007
price of admission: your mortal soul

Tommy Wiseau's The Room is, in this reviewer's opinion, the Citizen Kane of self-produced, self-written, shot-in-35mm-and-HD, set-in-San-Francisco-but-shot-in-an-LA-studio, Romanian-influenced, no-plot-having, neck-twitching, Denny-starring movies. Ahem.

Oh, hi, darkness, my old friend!

Fuck, where to start? This must be the most inept movie I've ever seen in my life. That includes the movie that Sacklunch shot on his dad's giant-assed VHS camcorder in 1987 for his English class report, which reenacted, in exceedingly poor fashion, a scene from an Edgar Allan Poe story where some dude gets crushed between two stone walls. Instead of stone walls, Sack used couch cushions. It was really bad. The Room was worse, however.

Sestero, throwing the shrink off the roof

First, the plot. Allegedly, there is one, but I'm not sure what it is.

Second, the acting. One word--wonderful. Wiseau in particular gives a lifelike performance as Johnny, a man on a mission to say "hi" to everyone he meets, including dogs in the flower shop. Just the way he was raised, I guess. The woman playing Claudette is also excellent, as she battles breast cancer. Special mention to Greg Sestero's undetached earlobes. And manchild Denny--the fear on his face when he is nearly murdered by Chris-R...well, let's just say I didn't sleep well last night.

Denny just wants to watch

Look, I can't really describe this movie and for once I'm at a loss for words. People really just have to see it to believe it. I did try and make two points about it last night that I'll repeat here, before I go:

(1) This is like an episode of the "Twilight Zone," where the government knows that an alien life form has landed on earth and assumed human form. There's only one way to catch this alien, and that's to give every earthling $6 million and let them make a movie, and then watch the results. Once the government agents see The Room, the realize they have their alien. Only someone from Rygel 7 supernova would show such a complete and utter misunderstanding of narrative, dialogue, and, well, just how human beings (sorry, human "beans", as Wiseau pronounces it) interact. Like a replicant pod-spawned alien, The Room gives every appearance of being a real movie, but like the replicants in Blade Runner, it always falls short somehow.

(2) I feel like a born again Christian, in that I want every person in world to see this movie. Now.

I highly recommend going to IMDB and reading the user comments on The Room. It looks like Wiseau and his crew created a bunch of sock puppets to leave favorable comments on the movie. This comment in particular from "John N. Crawford" is fucking sidesplitting:

People who make fun of the"Lisa you are tearing me a part" line have obviously never had a love lost. I remember I cried the same way as "Johnny" when it happened to me. And to all you macho guys who think that its unmanly when a guy (like Johnny or me) cries because of heartbreak you are full of it. I was captain of my Highschool Football Team and have been with many girls.

Speaking of Highschool, I used to date this girl a few times in 10th grade. When I went to college i found out my best friend was seeing her so I know what the relationship between "Johnny" and "Mark" is like. The strange thing is her name was "Elizabeth" and sometimes people called her Lisa when they first met her.

I think Crawford must actually be Wiseau because everything Crawford wrote tracks with what Wiseau said in the Q&A after the film ("I make good American name, John N. Crawford, ha ha ha!"). Also I believe--but cannot prove--that Wiseau has some sort of mystical attachment to the sport of football, in that it provides a way for a freakish hunchbacked Romanian lurcher to fit into American society--"I play American sport of football, ha ha ha, I am prom king of Highschool!"

Here are some clips. Please, see this movie immediately. You can buy it at Amazon for $12.

Clip 1: Lisa has just accused Wiseau of hitting her after she got him drunk on vodka-bourbons. Here's his reaction. Despite his obvious anger, he still finds time to politely greet Sestero:



Clip 2: Compilation of every character greeting one another:



Clip 3: Tommy at the florist. Somehow the florist doesn't recognize him--he must be wearing his hair differently, or something. Note how Tommy greets the dog lying on the counter: