Cult film’s status leaves no ‘Room’ for improvement
When something is described as the best-kept secret in Los Angeles, it usually means it is the worst-kept secret among adolescents wallowing in various forms of pretension. One look at the gigantic line for the September screening of The Room at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Theater in West Hollywood did little to refute this stereotype.
The queue, which stretched all the way around the top floor of the shopping complex, was mostly composed of 20-somethings with skinny jeans and Avril Lavigne-slung ties. But the enthusiasm that greeted the smash-flop’s writer, director and star — the infamously enigmatic Tommy Wiseau — was a far cry from cynicism.
Torn apart · Through midnight screenings, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room became an unlikely cult classic after its Los Angeles release in 2003. - Photo courtesy of theroommovie.com
After standing precariously on a flower pot to greet his adoring fans (and, inexplicably, rallying them to count to four in unison), the lanky, long-haired some-kind-of-European made his rounds, stopping to fist pound various teens and take pictures with his many admirers, always sporting a goofy smile and a Nixonian peace sign. In a wave of sincerity not sported by hipsters in years, the crowd swallowed him whole.
The Room, a dubiously financed independent flick that first gained notice because of an ominous billboard in Hollywood that Wiseau rented, was released in 2003. It was overwhelmingly ignored.
Since then, the movie has slowly built a cult following in Los Angeles, where it is shown on the last Saturday of every month at Sunset 5. The crowds, which have grown exponentially in the past year following press coverage of the phenomenon, are reminiscent of Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight viewings at Time Square — boisterous, costumed and toting plastic utensils.
The movie is only one part of the sound and fury that surrounds the monthly pageant. The DVD jacket and billboard credit it with “the passion of Tenessee Williams,” a blurb that appears in quotes, though without attribution. The movie is also self-heralded as a “quirky black comedy,” breezingpast the fact that all the comedy is blatantly unintentional.
But how did The Room come to be the humorless romp so critically unacknowledged and flocked to by Angelenos?
The truth is there is no one element of the movie that gives it its je ne sais quoi. Its main character, Johnny, is a 40-something businessman with a horrible accent (almost all of which is painfully dubbed over in post-production) in love with Lisa, a blonde, tragically big-boned girl who it turns out is having an affair with the film’s one attractive character, Mark.
The audience must endure three graphic sex scenes between Johnny and Lisa. The scenes recycle the exact same shots to the tune of “You’re My Rose,” one of the many strange hip-hop/elevator music fusion songs that appear in the film.
Lisa also enjoys several romps in the sack with Mark, her erstwhile flame who experiences strong but fleeting feelings of guilt for sleeping with his friend’s fiancée.
Lisa’s faults are numerous, and the audience latches onto them with the cheerful vindictiveness.
In one scene, a strange protuberance appears in her neck, moving grotesquely every time she talks, prompting general groans of disgust. (One viewer came dressed as Lisa, complete with black pipe cleaners above her eyes and a prosthetic neck bone.) She is strangely guy-polar, vacillating between protesting her love for Johnny and placing seductive, come-hither phone calls to Johnny’s self-professed best friend, Mark.
Lisa’s mother, Claudette, is equally psychotic. Portrayed as a shrill gold-digger, she brings up one of many plotlines that are thereafter ignored for the remainder of the film.
“Everything is going wrong at once. Nobody wants to help me. And, I’m dying,” she tells her daughter in one of her many three-minute visits.
“You’re not dying, Mom,” Lisa says with an annoyed sigh. And then comes one of the best-delivered lines of the film. (A general anticipatory hush fell over the audience at this point.) “I got the test of the test back, “ Claudette says, shrugging her leopard-print clad shoulders. “I definitely have breast cancer.” She says this as if submitting a confident order to a Starbucks barista.
Watching The Room makes one wonder what evil shrew screwed Wiseau over in the past, as the movie seems like a poorly shrouded and heavily self-indulgent autobiography. Johnny is the American businessman, friend to all, beloved by random flower-shop owners and baristas, but ultimately is barrel-rolled by the (sort of) buxom blonde social mountaineer.
In the end — even though Johnny’s story is saccharine and self-pitying — the audience applauds him and booes his evil fiancée, his conniving best friend and his ostensibly cancer-ridden mother-in-law.
Here is the beauty of The Room: It is the first movie to rally a generation lost to cynicism around the core, wonderfully schmaltzy story of the Everyman. Sure, the audio may look as if it’s been poorly dubbed from another language (it’s not), and the video looks as if the director of photography was working with a faulty focus lens (we can only assume this was not the case). But ultimately, The Room is Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece about how a greasy-haired, thickly accented Christ figure can win the affection of his peers by just being his unintelligible self — an archetype that speaks to scenesters everywhere.