The Room

Oh hi trakt

Brilliant. Just mind-blowingly brilliant. I'm currently speechless and thusly could never heed the words this masterpiece truly deserves. Watch it and never look back.

I'm not sure whether to give this a 1 or a 10.

Watched this one on the big screen with a *Rocky Horror*-esque talkback thing going on. It was a lot of fun! My favorite bits from the crowd were people greeting every establishing shot by saying "Meanwhile, in San Francisco" in unison, throwing spoons everytime the framed picture of a spoon is shown, and making "nom" noises every time people kissed. It was very ridiculous, but a fun atmosphere and enjoyable way to breathe some new life into this evergreen film.

One of the best bad movies you could find. The way that almost every scene is just pointless and subplots appear and disappear with no reason, how the characters alternate their personality and motivations seemingly at random, the fact that noone acts, speaks or even moves like a regular human being. It's a delight in inept movie making from start to finish and deserves it's well earned place in film history.

People will tell you that this is the worst movie ever made. They will tell you that 90% of the scenes are pointless. They will tell you that Wiseau's acting is worse than they ever thought possible of a human (or possibly an alien). They will say that the dialogue is nonsensical and absurd. They will flat out say that it is meaningless. Little do they know that they have had a better time watching this with their buddies than any other movie. These "pointless" scenes made them laugh to the point of tears. They are privileged enough to witness acting that is filled with limitless passion because this movie is, quite literally, Tommy Wiseau's dream coming true. The dialogue contains a quirkiness that shames that which they love in a Wes Anderson or Farrelly Brothers movie. They will then never realize that they have spent so much time contemplating the decisions, execution, and intent of this masterpiece on human nature that it has begun to take on it's own meaning despite every force in the universe. The Room is just that kind of movie.

Every time I watch *The Room* there's something different. This time it was going to a screening with Tommy Wiseau there in person! I even got to (kind of) introduce him, which was a thrill! He did a Q&A before the movie that was pretty anodyne. To be frank, he seemed a little disinterested, which hey, I understand if you've done this a million times. He gave one-line answers to most questions from the audience (noting that his favorite James Dean movie is *Giant*) but did toss footballs with a few folks in the crowd, which was fun.

I did get some animation out of him with a question though. I asked him how his perspective on women has changed since he made *The Room*, and got a solid, somewhat charged, semi-nonsensical response about how people give the movie a bad rap for its treatment of women, but that it's actually "very respectful" toward them. To be honest, I couldn't quite understand his argument for why this was the case, but I think he was trying to make the point that anybody can be deceitful, regardless of gender and that the movie reflects that somehow. He seemed to take some offense to the question and brought it up unbidden in response to a later one. But hey, it was the most engaged he seemed during the chat with the audience, which is worth something!

As for the movie itself, there's an odd richness to it, to where even having seen this dumb flick a dozen times, there's something new that stands out on each watch. This time it was, ironically enough, the incoherence of Lisa's character. Say what you will about this movie and its lack of cohesiveness, but you can at least trace the basic motivations and personalities of Johnny, Mark, Claudette, and even Denny over the course of the movie.

But Lisa seems to, at different points in the movie, genuinely love Johnny, genuinely love Mark, genuinely hate both of them, genuinely not care about either of them one way or another, or have some other agenda that somehow drives her from scene-to-scene. In a weird way, it's hard to tell what Wiseau is going for with Lisa beyond an odd jumble of "manipulative woman" tropes that don't really track from one scene to the next. It's not the biggest problem in the film at all, but interesting as a flaw that stands out beyond the other nuts and bolts cruddiness of the writing/directing/acting in the film.

Overall though, this was still a fun experience. The midnight showing I attended had a great *Rocky Horror*-style talkback going, and the gags the crowd came up with were as fun as the movie itself. *The Room*, in all its forms, is the gift that keeps on giving.

Truly, the Citizen Kane of terrible movies.