{"id":40164,"date":"2023-06-22T10:26:36","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T14:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=40164"},"modified":"2023-06-22T10:26:36","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T14:26:36","slug":"the-disaster-art-of-the-room-and-making-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/22\/the-disaster-art-of-the-room-and-making-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disaster Art of \u201cThe Room\u201d And Making Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Returning to theaters with a special \u201ccelebration\u201d screening for one night only on June 27th<\/sup>; tickets for the event can be purchased at Fathom Events<\/a> in participating theater box offices. Some locations<\/a> are subject to change.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in 1999, my uncle was clearing out his old stuff and decided to give me his old camcorder. At that time, I was probably seventeen. I decided I wanted to become a filmmaker. He\u2019d had this old camcorder from the early 1980\u2019s that had no sound, was color (I use the word loosely), and could only really attach to the VCR if you wanted to film with it. In either case, I\u2019d decided to play with it for a while and then staged a short film with my brother and sister. It was the three of us in the middle of the night filming a horror movie in my small bed room. We ended up with about a four minute video. The four minute \u201cshort film\u201d had taken us about eight hours to film, overall.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And we cooperated with one another and the filming went smoothly.<\/p>\n

Granted, the movie stunk, but we worked well together.<\/p>\n

What shocked me at the time is that I couldn\u2019t believe it\u2019d taken so much time to construct only four minutes. What I learned that night is that filmmaking is hard. It\u2019s fucking hard. You could argue with me that I didn\u2019t really make a movie, or wasn\u2019t really filmmaking. Look, I don\u2019t care. The point is that I had a clear vision of what making a movie was, and that I learned that making movies of any kind, be they short form of feature length is really hard and exhausting. I think that\u2019s basically why \u201cThe Room\u201d has survived for so long as a cult classic and midnight movie gem. It\u2019s so bad, it\u2019s so utterly bad. But when you get right down to it, you can kind of understand what Tommy Wiseau was going for, here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m not discounting all of the stories about Wiseau or ignoring his inability to be even remotely lifelike on screen, but making movies is tough. And if you\u2019ve seen or read \u201cThe Disaster Artist,\u201d you tend to come away with an understanding not just of movie making but of \u201cThe Room.\u201d Watching \u201cThe Room\u201d today, it exists in a period of time that you can never quite pin down. I think that\u2019s what contributes to its ethereal quality. Although it was made in the early aughts, the movie looks like it\u2019s stuck in a time period that\u2019s not the millennium, but not exactly modern times either. It\u2019s almost dream like in how it unravels its narrative, and how it\u2019s entirely composed. Tommy Wiseau is working on another wave length throughout \u201cThe Room,\u201d and you can see it in how the narrative is so absolutely bipolar.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a torrid love triangle, gang, crime, drama, psychological thriller. It also wants to be erotic in many respects. Tommy Wiseau doesn\u2019t write his characters like human beings, but more like how an alien visitor observing us through television soap operas views a human being. No one talks like regular human beings, they don\u2019t react like human beings, and they don\u2019t even commute like human beings. I know very little people that spend all their time solving their problems on the roof of their apartment building overlooking the city. And I\u2019ve never met anyone that passes the time by playing touch football in wedding tuxedos.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Whether it was based around misuse of resources or lack of resources, \u201cThe Room\u201d offers so many glimmers of baffling production choices. You almost watch it completely baffled, mouth agape, while simultaneously gazing in absolute horror. I think even if Wiseau hadn\u2019t cast himself as Johnny, \u201cThe Room\u201d would still be the otherworldly cult classic it is today. It\u2019s poorly cast but you remember the characters. It\u2019s poor in artistry but I defy you not to pick at least five favorite scene. It also garners absolutely piss poor writing but it\u2019s also infinitely quotable.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost accidentally a genuine piece of art.<\/p>\n

Making movies is really fucking hard, and \u201cThe Room\u201d is just god awful. But I\u2019ll bet we\u2019ll still be talking about it in ten years.<\/p>\n