How The Room's Greg Sestero turned the worst movie ever made into a buzz-worthy blockbuster
When writer, director, producer and madman Tommy Wiseau first conceived of his movie The Room he imagined "a riveting cinematic experience that would leave people so shaken they wouldn't be able to sleep for two weeks." That's not how it turned out.
The Room, now widely accepted as the Citizen Kane of bad movies, is so remarkably inept, irrational, and surreal that it's hard to understand what makes it so compelling.
It is unintentionally hilarious. And ultimately it is the story behind the film, the ambition and enigma of Tommy Wiseau that supersedes the farce that's happening onscreen. You laugh, but at the same time you wonder: Who is this guy? What is he trying to do? How did this happen?
"Oh, hai Mark!"
The person with the answer to these questions is Greg Sestero. He's the co-star of the film. When Wiseau offered him the part of Mark in 2002, he was a young, out of work actor with a day job making eight dollars an hour. Wiseau was his friend but Sestero was sure he knew the kind of movie he would make.
"I thought 'No way in hell am I going to be in this film.' I had read the script. I was like, 'You know what? I probably should keep my retail job and just help him and not be in this thing,'" Sestero tells me on Day 6.
Sestero's friendship with Tommy Wiseau is one of the compelling storylines in his book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made.
A film adaptation of The Disaster Artist starring James Franco and Seth Rogan is making the rounds at film festivals prior to a December release. The movie has buzz and is getting rave reviews. Anyone who's seen The Room wants to know the story behind it and the strange caveman-like star-director who willed it into being. That story is nearly as mystifying as the movie itself.
A "grand and sincere dreamer"
As Wiseau is preparing to make the movie that would change their lives, Sestero had agreed to help behind the scenes. But Wiseau wanted him on screen.
"[Tommy] willed me to do it. He basically forced me to be in The Room and I agreed because at the time, you know, I didn't really have any money."
"And I was going to be on set everyday anyway because I was helping him make it. So why not step in front of the camera say a few crazy lines and then that would be it."
"And that film will never get released."
On Friday, June 27, 2003 The Room premiered in a Los Angeles movie theatre, one of two screens Wiseau hired to show his movie. Three months earlier a billboard filled with Wiseau's terrifying face popped up on Highland Avenue. It was an expensive ad campaign bankrolled by Wiseau and meant to position his film alongside major studio releases. It was a serious attempt to put The Room in contention for the Academy Awards.
"Tommy went all out with this film," Sestero says.
He believed that his talent was to make this searing drama.- Greg Sestero, author of The Disaster Artist
"He is a big fan of Tennessee Williams, you know, Orson Welles. And he believed that his talent was to make this searing drama."
"Tommy, when he's just himself, is one of the funniest people I've ever met. Everything he does has an element of comedy. I don't know if he fully knew that at the time and so when The Room was screened for the first time there were laughs throughout the entire thing." "
"And I think he was probably a little taken back."
"Warped, accidental genius"
Greg Sestero first met Wiseau in an acting class in San Francisco. In his book, Sestero describes a pirate-like and slightly hunchbacked Wiseau murdering a Shakespearean sonnet.
"He was terrible, reckless and mesmerizing."
"It was really refreshing," he says.
"Being in an acting class you always feel like, you know you're insecure, a lot of ways, when the teacher is commenting on your performance. And he went up there and he didn't care about any of that."
"He believed in himself even though you couldn't understand what he was saying half the time, and he told the teacher 'No. I believe in what I'm doing.'"
"And I said 'Good for him!'"
It led Sestero to ask Wiseau to partner with him on a scene.
He believed in himself even though you couldn't understand what he was saying half the time.- Greg Sestero, author of The Disaster Artist
"Everybody was kind of taken aback, a little scared of him and I thought 'You know what? I've got nothing to lose. I haven't gotten many parts. I don't know. Just try to work with this guy'".
He sees it. Sestero recognizes in Wiseau the qualities that would later bring such a strange and compelling energy to The Room, a talent he calls "warped, accidental genius."
"It was just too bizarre meeting Tommy in an acting class being at a point in my life where I would be receptive to working with someone as eccentric as Tommy and just going with it. And for all this to happen I feel like there was something bigger that I didn't see."
The gift of The Room
Wiseau's back story- where he came from, his accent, the source of his wealth- is partially uncovered in Sestero's book, but Wiseau is clearly paranoid about controlling this information. Now The Disaster Artist is about to blow up with the release of the film adaptation. How did his friend, the terminally secretive Tommy Wiseau, feel about Sestero's book?
He compares it to the success of The Room, each of them pitching in on the other's project and neither knowing how successful they would be.
"My goal was that it would become its own film like Ed Wood or like Sunset Boulevard. And that's the way I saw this story: We had a dream and we were outsiders that didn't fit in and we came together and tried to go after it."
Now the outsiders are seeing their strange story again, this time as a Hollywood genre movie, a buddy flick.
"It's a bizarre look at a friendship that is very different and two people that should never have come together but only did because they shared a dream."
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