The Disaster Artist

This film is a fascinating look into the world of the bizarre, real life character, Tommy Wiseau, with layers played deep, wide and masterfully by James Franco.

James Franco is nominated for Best Actor and should be up for an Oscar, too.

Full disclosure – this film hits a bit close to home for me as I had a film, also made in L.A. in the late 90’s, with a few “difficult” people, which didn’t turn out the way I hoped. As I said to a good friend (who co-starred with me), I don’t think we made “The Room” with our film…but maybe we should have.

There’s something to be said for being so bad it’s good. The middle is where the bulk of art sits and, eventually, suffers the cruelest death of all: anonymity. The real life Tommy Wiseau was not about to let that happen. His drive to make what he was sure was a great film, and his courage to stand up when it was clear it wasn’t, and continue to push it into a “cult classic” is admirable at least.

When James Franco is good, he’s one of the best actors I’ve ever seen. He has a way of taking over the screen just like James Dean, whom he famously portrayed in the excellent made for TV biopic…also in the late 90’s. To push the Dean connection further, Wiseau was similarly fascinated by Dean. His friend Greg Sestero (played by James’ brother, Dave Franco, in “The Disaster Artist”) introduced Dean to him.

To see James Franco rehashing Dean in Wiseau’s famously awful homage to “Rebel Without a Cause” is a head-shaking, “Oh My God did this really happen?” moment. And therein lies the rub.

How much of this did happen? There are times when it feels very Andy Kauffmanesque. What was intended to mess with people and what is just bad art? Wiseau has said the film is 99.9% accurate, while the source material Franco used, a book Sestero wrote called “The Disaster Artist: My life inside the Room, the Geatest Bad movie ever made”, was dismissed by Wiseau as only 40% true.

James Franco leans heavily upon the idea that The Room is, indeed, bad art that the audience turned classic by their own reaction. The real-life Wiseau is such an enigma that it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. Where is he from? How old is he? Where did he get his millions? “The Room” is reported to have cost upwards of six million dollars (?!).

I haven’t seen “The Room” and I don’t think I’d bother unless it was with an audience and I was there to experience the Rocky Horror like sensation of it. Everyone agrees it’s awful – but in a group, something happens to it and that is, indeed, fascinating. There’s an argument to be made that a film, if truly worthwhile, should work for a single person at home alone or on the big screen in a sold out theater. But that may not be fair or realistic. The truth is, all media are subjective and we are all affected by each others interpretations of them. “Good” or “bad” are highly subjective terms. But if we’re measuring effect – The Room is measurable.

It recently had a one night, nationwide release on 500 screens across the country as a result of the success of The Disaster Artist. Fathom events will be showing it again on January 10, 2017.