When Si met Tommy

“The Room” with Tommy Wiseau @ the Prince Charles Cinema, London – 08.02.20

It was a slightly chilly February evening when we descended on London’s Chinatown, making our way swiftly through the crowds. There was a mixture of people, including Chinese citizens, wearing face masks amidst the scare of the coronavirus and racist English citizens blaming the Chinese for the coronavirus as we made our way to the Prince Charles Cinema. “Is this the queue for “The Room”?” my wife asked excitedly. “It sure is” replied an equally excited couple. Inside we were ushered down into the basement bar where we joined the line to the “merch” stand. As we queued a familiar voice could be heard behind us, “Oh hai everybody” a man said in a part Polish, part American accent. The voice belonged to Tommy Wiseau: the writer, director, producer and star of “The Room”, a film often cited as the pinnacle of “so bad its good”.

Released in 2004, “The Room” has gone on to gain a proper cult following, not because it’s good, but because it makes almost every cardinal sin of filmmaking. Despite this, audiences flock to see the movie projected on the big screen and take great pleasure in throwing spoons and insults at the film. Therefore it seems strange that the creator of the film would want to be in attendance to witness this mocking of his passion project. If you were being cynical it would be easy to say this was down to money but I think there is something deeper there.

For those that haven’t seen the film, and you really should, the basic plot of “The Room” involves Johnny (played by Wiseau), his girlfriend Lisa (played by Juliette Danielle) and Johnny’s best friend Mark (played by Greg Sestero). Johnny and Lisa seem to have the perfect relationship (apart from creepy neighbour Denny seems hell bent on getting them into a threesome) until one day Lisa begins an affair with a bemused Mark and then claims Johnny hit her. Along the way we meet a host of other characters including Lisa’s mum, drug dealer Chris R and Johnny and Mark’s other friend Peter to name just a few. The story is something straight out of a soap opera and to be fair, so is most of the acting (apart from Wiseau) but the film is also so badly made it’s hard not to admire.

As we neared the front of the queue we surveyed the merchandise on offer; a mixture of “The Room” memorabilia and clothing designed by Wiseau himself. We were served by a very smiley young chap who we found out was an actor and had worked with Tommy on his sitcom “The Neighbors” which was released on internet video on demand service “Hulu” a few years prior. We bought ourselves a copy of “The Room”, which is surprisingly difficult to get hold of in the UK so I presume most people have been viewing it illegally up to this point, and a copy of the aforementioned “The Neighbors”, which Wiseau signed for us and posed for a few photos.

Wiseau seemed like a nice guy, tired and going through the motions perhaps, but he had been only recently arrived from LA so that’s only to be expected. Before the film began, we were treated to the trailer to Wiseau’s forthcoming “Big Shark” which is exactly what you think it’s going to be. Then Wiseau made his way to the stage to answer questions from some eager audience members.

The questions were a mixed bag, and Tommy was a tad dismissive of a couple of them but there was a real gem when someone asked Wiseau how many belts he has to undo to pee, seeing as he often appears to be wearing at least five belts. Luckily Tommy saw the funny side. James Franco’s film version of “The Disaster Artist” (based on a book of the same name by Greg Sestero) got a mention a couple of times, but again Wiseau didn’t seem like he wanted to dwell on that experience too much. Tonight was very much about him and “The Room”… and so it should be. At times he began to go off on a tangent, something anyone who has seen an interview with Wiseau before will be used to. Before leaving the stage, Tommy passionately delivered a message of peace, love, no politics and to make sure we enjoy “The Room”, and oh boy did we!

Any mention of Wiseau in the credits was greeted with a huge cheer, as did Greg Sestero, but Juliette Danielle (who plays Lisa) was booed. I assumed this was because the character she plays is deeply unsympathetic and the cause of poor old Johnny’s demise but later on when a few people shouted that Lisa looked like a “fat Britney Spears” (even though she is FAR from being overweight, let alone fat) I couldn’t help but think that the negative reaction was aimed at the actress personally as opposed to the character. This was the only part of the audience participation (or should that be heckling) that felt mean spirited and did not sit well with me.

For the most part, the shouts from the audience were quite amusing; like when it is explained that Wiseau’s Johnny wanted to adopt Denny someone shouted “he’s like 30!” and when the character of Lisa’s Mum (who earlier in the film had confirmed she has breast cancer, only for this plot point to not be mentioned again) is seen at the end of the movie, someone shouted “why aren’t you having chemo?!”. Sadly, not all of the audience members had the knack of being funny and a few wannabe comedians became very trying as they shouted things out in the hope of getting a laugh, only to be met by awkward silence which bizarrely didn’t seem to deter them. As you would expect, all of the key scenes and famous bits of dialogue were cheered and quoted. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the shouts of “you’re tearing me apart Lisa”, “I did not hit her”, “oh hai Mark” and “anyway how is your sex life” were heard in the other screen of the cinema.

It wasn’t all about singing along to your favourite lines from the film though; there were also spoons… lots and lots of spoons. The set dressing of the living room, where most of the “action” takes place in the movie, seems to be filled with picture frames with images of various bland everyday items, almost as if the frames were bought and then no one bothered to put an actual photo in them, leaving the boring picture they are normally sold with. At least one of these frames has a picture of a spoon and whenever this appeared on screen, the cinema was filled with shouts of “spoooooon!”, followed by a barrage of plastic spoons thrown at the screen. Whilst being a huge waste of plastic, this does just feel like people making something out of nothing. The spoon image doesn’t appear that frequently, it’s not as if every photo frame features a spoon so it just feels like it’s something to fill the time during the handful of scenes that doesn’t include any of the famous quotes. The same could be said for the counting of each time the American football is thrown and the shots of San Francisco which were accompanied by chants of “meanwhile in San Francisco…”. Don’t get me wrong, these things are harmless enough but to my mind feels like it’s stretching the audience participation element of the screening somewhat.

Towards the end of the film I ducked out to see how Tommy was doing at the merch stand and he was still signing items and posing for photos, this time with a bit more gusto than before. I went and said hello again and he thanked me for coming and hoped I was having a good evening, which of course I was. Sadly I forgot to mention that I actually quoted some dialogue from “The Room” in my speech on my wedding day last year.

As the credits began to roll, we crunched our way across the sea of plastic spoons on the floor to the exit and it is safe to say that everyone had a great time. I imagine if you have never seen “The Room” before then a screening like this would be an utterly baffling experience but that’s not the target audience for an event like this, this was an evening where everyone was in on the jokes. After a near death experience Tommy Wiseau decided it was time he followed his dream to become an actor, and to be fair to him, he achieved his dream. Whether or not it was quite the way he wanted to is a different matter. I get a sense that Wiseau set out to make a serious drama film but in the preceding years, as people discovered the film, Tommy has decided to rebrand it as a dark comedy. Even as a black comedy the film fails because people are still laughing at it rather than along with it. This must be difficult for Wiseau so I do admire the fact that he has managed to go along with the mickey taking to continue his dream of being an actor. I just hope that he is at peace with it. Despite the mockery, the audience at the screening did genuinely seem to love Wiseau, myself included, and he has brought a lot of joy into peoples lives which is more than many actors have managed to achieve and that should be celebrated. Thank you for the good times Tommy, long may it continue and remember… “if a lot of people love each other, the world would be a better place to live”.