Inside The Room

During a brief Q & A before the film, a heartless gal in the fourth row asks Tommy Wiseau if he’s “had any work done,” like, to that mug of his, or like, has his face always looked like that? There, inside the cavernous Music Box Theater, is an even split between guffaws and howling cringes, and an unruffled Tommy, brushing the flowing Howard Stern locks out of his eyes, nodding like he’s heard that piece of sarcasm before, he says: “Vat do you mean?”

You can tell that Tommy Wiseau is a lonely, pathetic man. Despite a heavy Eastern European accent he insists on being American-born, as if acknowledging the real place of his birth will conjure memories he’d rather not revisit. But you can probably accurately extrapolate much about his formative years through the film that he has directed/written/starred in/produced. At some point in his life, he:

• Was euphemistically called ugly
• Got his heart smashed into little pieces by a cruel woman whose name is either “Lisa” or sounds likes “Lisa” or starts with the letter “L”; this stupid woman didn’t realize that he would have been a great financial provider for her, and so she thus lost a great man
• Longingly stared out of his bedroom window at a close-knit group of guys who were sauntering down the street, laughing, throwing the ol’ pigskin around
• Was sipping at the water fountain in high school and noticed the star quarterback, Mark, greet a couple other popular jocks with a series of complicated handshakes
• Missed his prom night but was too ashamed to tell his parents that he couldn’t find a date so he rented a tux anyway and just drove around all night; most likely he’d nervously asked a pretty blonde gal named Lisa if she would do the honor of being his prom date and she narrowed her eyes and replied, “Ummm... do I know you?”
• Spent an entire month reminding everyone he knew about his upcoming birthday, and assumed that people were acting indifferent because they were planning an epic surprise birthday party, which of course never ended up occurring
• Wished his nagging mother would just die already, perhaps from breast cancer.

It’s easy to imagine a thousand plausible turning points in Wiseau’s life, most of them involving some sort of very public humiliation – perhaps one day during college he ran across campus, dodging raindrops, holding a stack of books, until he slipped into an explosive pile of mud and heard cries of “FREAK!” from a pack of shirtless frat boys parked in a giant monster truck with KC lights – resulting in a very public meltdown that consisted of him shaking a fist in the air, screaming “GAHHHHHHH” and “I SHOW YOU, I SHOW YOU ALL,” resulting in him many years later creating a movie that would exorcise the demons of his past, a movie so phenomenally and unintentionally awful that it, dubbed The Worst Movie Ever Created, would develop a rabid cult following, selling out midnight show venues across America, a movie that would inevitably draw comparisons to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in terms of audience participation, where enthusiasts recite lines and throw plastic silverware at the screen. This movie would be Wiseau’s vindication, a solipsistic statement of being, and, at the very least, a vehicle for displaying his ox-like lovemaking skills. This movie would be called “The Room”.

“Ah meant to make it zat bad – it eez a black comedy,” Wiseau insists, but how can he not be fully aware that people are laughing at him and not with him? Everyone in the room laughs their asses off at “The Room,” especially me, but a small part of myself is a bit disturbed by wondering what environment could have possibly shaped the man that made this god-awful movie. Just a small part, though.