The Room

Thursday, July 02 2009

Last Friday night I went and saw the midnight showing of 'The Room' at the Music Box. It had been recommended to me by a friend of mine at our last 'Bad Meaning Good' event and he had sung it's praises as a gloriously terrible movie, undoubtedly worthy of inclusion in the 'Bad Meaning Good' pantheon of shitty films. Being the self-styled connoisseur of shitty movies that I feel I am, I was naturally intrigued and wanted to know more.

So when I recently saw that The Music Box was running midnight showings of the movie, it felt like a rather serendipitous turn of events... Something I dare not miss under any circumstances. The stars had aligned themselves and I was destined to be there watching that very, very stupid movie.

However, I was not the slightest bit prepared for what I was about to get myself into. When I arrived at the theater it was a madhouse. There were large groups of people cheering and shouting at every visual cue that the credit sequence had to offer. They cheered fanatically at the first on-screen appearances of individual characters within the movie... They spouted dialogue in unison... They seemed to have a ritual to correspond with nearly any and all scenes in the movie, no matter how arbitrary or unimportant (and believe me when I tell you that virtually every scene in 'The Room' could be characterized as both arbitrary and unimportant). Clearly I had found myself in the midst of a serious cult phenomenon; one to rival any other I've ever encountered in the world of midnight movies.

Apparently this movie has been logging screen time in L.A. for several years now, earning it not only a huge, ritualistic cult following, but also a variety of recognition from noted folks in the comic community who have even been known to host private screenings and the like. The cult of 'The Room' is a refined beast of simultaneous mocking and adoration that MUST be witnessed in it's proper setting (the midnight show) to truly be appreciated.

There's little I could say about the feature itself that hasn't already been repeated ad nauseum across the internet. I can assure you though that what you may have read is absolutely true... 'The Room' is a mind-fuckingly retarded trainwreck of a movie from start to finish. It is a heaping, steaming pile of shit that defies description or even reasonable comparison. It exists in it's own sort of unique micro-universe of idiocy and it is... Absolutely, 100% bloody fucking hilarious from top to bottom.

'The Room' is a movie that could seemingly have been written by a 4th grader. It's a kitchen-sink drama that offers little in the way of ACTUAL drama and lots in the way of half-assed ideas, dead-end subplots and the like; none of which have even a remote sense of depth or gravitas. The sets are ridiculous, the acting atrocious, the writing is the stuff of junior high drama... All things considered, it's an epic failure on every level that a movie is meant to succeed.

What makes something like 'The Room' so endearing is that the man behind the whole production, the mysterious and elusive Tommy Wiseau (not just the writer/director but also the main character in the film itself), appears to have been trying to make a serious movie. There's no clear evidence in the movie that the endless parade of camp and unintentional humor that you're witnessing on the screen was premeditated or controlled in any way at all. It is this very evasive quality that gives the movie it's accidental magic and trainwreck-like qualities. It is an element that couldn't possibly be forced or somehow bottled; it is merely a colossal failure on the behalf of the entire production that somehow manifested in an end result that is both endlessly watchable and hilarious.

This brand of humor is extremely difficult to categorize or accurately describe given the accidental nature of it's existence so ultimately, attempting to explain the brilliance of 'The Room' can be a frustrating, if not entirely futile endeavor. If you're interested in reading more though, I would suggest giving the following resources a look:

-Official site

-View the trailer

-Entertainment Weekly: The Crazy cult of 'The Room'

-Variety

-The Chicagoist

-The Decider's Secrets of 'The Room' revealed

-The Onion AV Club: A Viewer's Guide to 'The Room'

-The Onion AV Club: Interview with Tommy Wiseau
(My favorite part of the interview being Tommy's response when asked about the predominance of cheesecake in one of the movie's famously absurd scenes: "I do like cheesecake, I’ll be honest with you. That to me, is coming from my life. Some people do like it, I’m one of them.")

... So yeah, there is apparently an endless amount of verbiage devoted to this movie in the internet and because of this fact, I've decided to forgo indulging too many plot or scene details and instead suggest that you all go see this movie as fast as you can, preferably in theater if possible, but if not via Amazon, where it's available for the modest price of $8.99. It will be the best $8.99 you've ever spent.

'The Room' will be showing again at The Music Box on July 24th and 25th. I will be enthusiastically indulging in my second viewing of the movie on Friday the 24th at midnight of course and I would encourage any and all interested parties to tag along for the fun!

Tags: The Room, Tommy Wiseau

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