The Disaster Artist

While on the surface a filmmaking behind-the-scenes tell-all in the vein of The Devils Candy (Bonfire of the Vanities) or Losing the Light (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) about the notoriously bad cult film The Room, The Disaster Artist is a personal memoir about the men behind the film, and an examination of co-author Greg Sesteros complicated relationship with the even more complicated and mysterious Tommy Wiseau. This book has everything that The Room fans undoubtedly crave, with plenty of backstage shenanigans and revelations on the how and why of some of the more famous aspects of the film, such as what is up with the spoons? But its the human element of the book that most will find the most revealing, as Sestero shines a light on the tragically human figure behind Wiseaus outwardly wacky and enigmatic presence. Its a must read for film fans, but be prepared to do more than just laugh at bad filmmaking.

SPECIAL NOTE: For those who have yet to read the book or see James Francos film adaptation, I highly recommend seeing the film first. Francos film is a faithful adaptation of the spirit of the book, but much was obviously excised and changed in order to adhere to feature film length, and I personally feel that the discoveries to be found by reading the true accounts after watching the abbreviated film translation will actually increase your appreciation of both.

I have no idea why I started reading this book, but I’ve got no regrets!

I’d never heard of the movie before, but I found a copy online and started watching it. As soon as I heard the first awkward line (“Hey babe, I have something for yyuuuu!”), I had to pause the movie because I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.

I then went and got all of my coworkers and we dicked off work for 3 hours watching, pausing, rewinding, and rewatching it.

So this book inspired me to watch the movie which inspired a thousand jokes, and now my wall at work is covered with Johnny memes. I’ve since recommended the book to 3 or 4 friends who have also downloaded and read it, and I would recommend it to you as well.

Vox did a video about The Room recently with the co-author of this book, Tom Bissell, called Why people keep watching the worst movie ever made. He said of it in the interview: “[The Room] is like a movie made by an alien who has never seen a movie but has had movies thoroughly explained to him.”

That sentence is scarily appropriate, and goes a long way towards explaining why people thought this book was important enough that it not only deserved a book, but then a second movie based on that book. The story behind the movie’s inception is almost as bizarre as the movie itself, if not more so.

In his memoir, Greg Sestero writes about how he met the creator of The Room, Tommy Wiseau in an acting class, intrigued by his odd behavior and pirate-like appearance. The book chronicles Sestero’s own rise from minimum wage worker and discouraged aspiring actor to a B-list actor with a couple of serious roles under his belt. Meanwhile, in the background like the proverbial elephant, lurks The Room, and interwoven with Sestero’s own narrative is the narrative of what it was like to be behind the set The Room..

And, of course, Wiseau’s own narrative arc, as well.

Wiseau is one of those characters who is larger-than-life (hence the movie). At times he’s hilarious and endearing, at other times, creepy and terrifying. His mood shifts made him difficult to work with and sometimes delayed production, because he had a vision and God help anyone who stood in the way of that. He basically funded this entire movie out of pocket, from a bottomless money hole that led some of the cast members to believe he had illicit ties to the mob. His history remains largely a mystery, although Sestero shares some of the details that he pieced together from the rare anecdote Wiseau thought fit to regale him with, and it seems like he was from an Eastern European country and became wealthy via the American Dream, by starting as a toy-seller in Fisherman’s Wharf. Apparently his name is a corruption of Oiseau, which is French for “bird” (because the toys he sold were shaped like bird), although Wiseau himself does not appear to be French.

I really enjoyed this book a lot. It’s darkly funny and utterly ridiculous. According to Vox, movies like The Room fall into a category of movies called “paracinema,” because they’re not typical movies and they are not really viewed by a typical audience. The Room, in particular, is a trash film – which I think is probably a nice way of saying “s***.” It’s funny, because while I was reading this, I was thinking about this documentary I watched a few years ago called Best Worst Movie (2009), which chronicles another trash film: Troll 2 (1990). I watched Troll 2 (although I haven’t yet seen the room), and it’s about as terrible as you might expect… but there is an art to that awfulness. The timing somehow works out to be so wrong, that rather than being scary, it ends up like a comedy.

My Wiki-hopping ended up taking me to a page of movies that are considered to be among the worst ever made. Troll 2 and The Room are both on it, but so are a number of movies that I actually like, such as The Avengers (not the superhero one), Batman & Robin, and Glitter. The Avengers is actually my favorite movie, B&R is my favorite Batman movie, and Glitter was my favorite movie when I was a middle schooler and didn’t know any better. Showgirls is on there, as well, but Showgirls is basically the NC-17 version of Glitter, so as you can imagine, I also liked that movie, too. Apparently I have s*** taste in films. (But, again, according to that Vox article, liking trash films is apparently correlated with higher intelligence because they are “subversive.” Which, now that I think about it, might go a long way towards explaining my attraction to bodice rippers and pulp.)

THE DISASTER ARTIST is the perfect length, in my opinion, and does a nice job balancing both Sestero’s and Wiseau’s stories. The humor is great, snappy, and witty, peppered with odd-ball humor that fits the subject. Sestero details his tempestuous relationship with Wiseau, and how he slowly but inevitably got dragged in on this crazy project along with the rest of the cast. You also get cool behind-the-scenes trivia, such as why certain lines were said, or why the outfits they’re wearing are so weird, or why that one table in the living room is covered with framed pictures of spoons.

If you’re at all interested in this movie, I highly suggest you read THE DISASTER ARTIST. Watching the movie isn’t even necessary to enjoy it (I didn’t), although I’m sure it helps. But if you want to feel like you’ve watched the movie without going through the effort, I urge you to watch CinemaSins’s video, Everything Wrong With The Room In 8 Minutes Or Less.

What a crazy, crazy story.

4 out of 5 stars

I was expecting insights on a bizarre man and his ridiculous movie from another man who has always been a good sport about the whole ordeal. I didn’t think that it would also be packed with wisdom, compassion and wit. Greg Sestero’s hopes of being a big star are scorched, but you never sense that he would have done things differently. Like Tommy Wisou, he really does seem to believe in following your dreams, not matter how unsuited you are to them. At the same time Sestero is realistic and down to Earth: he never acknowledges The Room as anything but a fascinating catastrophe and paints Wisou as both endearing and highly problematic. His descriptions of the events that led to the movie’s creation are just as stupefying as you’d expect.
Anyone would want Sestero as a friend, and it sounds like someone as frantic as Wisou was lucky to have met him when he did. Their occasionally strained bond was so touching that I’d almost shed a few tears by the end. Highly recommended, and I look forward to the forthcoming film adaptation.

Last year I watched The Room and like many viewers, asked myself ‘how could this film ever get made?’ and also: ‘how could this happen?’ The Disaster Artist explains it all. The creepy sex scenes, the pointless scene in the alley where they play football in suits, even the mid-film recasting of key actors. It very skilfully weaves in the authors’ dreams of stardom in with his relationship with the mercurial and frankly, quite disturbing Tommy Wiseau, interspersing these with stories from when the film were made. The stories from the making of the film are really quite unbelievable, yet they make perfect sense in the context of the film itself. Parts of this book will make you cringe & wince in horror, whilst other parts will have you laughing out loud. Yet despite giving an insight into the mind of Tommy Wiseau, it isn’t cruel towards him and doesn’t mock or belittle him, which a lesser book might have. I would definitely recommend this book to anybody who has watched The Room and said to themselves, “What the hell did I just watch?”

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