The Room Is On Fire And She's Fixing Her Hair

Some people say you get what you pay for, some say you get what you asked for, and still others say you get what you deserve. I'm not sure which category this particular scenario falls under, but at the end of the day I am happier as a result. I am referring to my viewing of The Room. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon an article which described this movie as the Citizen Kane of bad movies. Well, that's like telling a fat person there's chocolate in the next room, or yelling "Kool-Aid!" in the middle of a trailer park. It's was instantly irresistible. Oh, hi Mark.

I'll just say up front that I now consider this the worst movie ever made, but I loved every minute of it. This movie is bad in so many ways, it seems to invent movie conventions just to screw them up. Bad acting? Check. Mind numbing dialog? Check. Actors missing their marks? Check. Plot lines abandoned? Check. Inexplicable scenes? Check. Framed photo of a spoon? Check.

This movie is so bad that one is tempted to think it may be intentional, until you realize that several million dollars went into the making of this film, and that director/writer/producer/main star Tommy Wiseau is just as brain addled outside of the film as in it. You'd also be hard pressed to see where the money was spent, certainly not on professional actors. Maybe that football was autographed by someone famous.

So the plot, as it were, revolves around Tommy and his girlfriend/fiancee/wife(?) Lisa and their rocky relationship. Mark, Tommy's best friend, is sleeping with Lisa. There is also a teenage boy named Denny who apparently wants to watch Tommy and Lisa have sex, to which Tommy seems rather unconcerned. Speaking of sex scenes, there are a few of them sprinkled throughout, and they may very well be the most unerotic ever committed to film. Lisa is not attractive, and Tommy looks like Howard Stern crossbred with Arnold Schwarzenegger. There are also numerous disembodied moans that clearly do not come from either of them. Denny hiding in the closet perhaps?

Other characters include Lisa's mother, who informs her early in the movie that she has breast cancer, and then it's never mentioned again; Lisa's sister, who likes to have sex in Lisa's house rather than her own and who finds her sister's affair comical instead of hurtful; and Tommy's other friend Peter, who appears to be a psychologist or psychiatrist.

The movie is full of disjointed scenes that have no setup or payoff, and make little sense even within themselves. The scene where Mark, Tommy, Denny, and Peter toss a football around in tuxedos immediately spring to mind. Are they getting ready for Tommy's wedding? Who knows, as it is left unexplained. Why are they only standing three feet apart whilst tossing the ole pigskin? When asked that question in an interview, Wiseau said that was not a goof and that everyone should try it. Another scene involves Denny and a drug dealer. There is no indication beforehand that Denny is in any kind of trouble, and no mention of these events afterward either. The scene does introduce the gun that will come into play at the end, and it gives us this wonderful bit of dialog: Denny: I owe him some money. Lisa: What kind of money? Denny: I owe him some money. Lisa: What kind of money? There is also the "Oh, hi Mark," scene, which has no setup whatsoever, but is pure hilarity:



At some point in the movie Tommy goes to buy some flowers for Lisa, as he is still unaware of her fornicating with Mark, and to the fact that she is a straight up bitch. No worries though, because we are about to see what happens when two actors speed read their lines and throw coherency out the window:



Eventually Tommy gets wise to Lisa and Mark's canoodling, or does he. This all depends on which scene you are watching. He seems to figure it out when he sees the two of them making out at his party, and we get this fantastic scene full of pathos:



Later on though, he feels the need to hook up a tape recorder to the phone to record their conversations. Hitting the record button and leaving it running, it still manages to capture a conversation hours later. So many things inexplicable about this: Just how long is a cassette tape? Why does it not record any other phone conversations? Does a normal cassette player have the ability to be hooked up to a phone? It is all proven moot anyway as he can clearly hear the conversation taking place behind a thin bathroom door.

I'll not spoil the ending for you. Suffice to say it certainly left me wanting more. I hope Wiseau makes another movie of the same caliber someday, although he will be hard pressed to top this one. In many ways, this is his Citizen Kane. He hit one out of the park, as it were, on his first try. It may be all downhill for him from here on.

Transmission out.