Making a movie about the making of another movie, it doesn’t get any more meta than this. The Disaster Artist is a hilarious watching experience about two people dreaming of becoming stars in Hollywood. One of them is Tommy Wiseau, which isn’t his real name. Tommy is a long-haired dude who could be typecasted as Frankenstein or Dracula (but don’t say that to him or you might hurt his feelings). Is Wiseau a psychiatric patient who escaped and wants to be a movie star? It’s plausible.
In normal circumstances not just anyone can make a Hollywood movie. You need luck to get discovered, courage to push your ideas to producers but most of all money. Wiseau didn’t have any luck in finding producers who wanted to work with him. But luckily he had cash, loads of it. How this vagabond-looking guy came in the possession of a bottemless bank account, remains a mystery. The background of Wiseau is shrouded in obscurity.
Short synopsis
James Franco does a terrific job playing the enigmatic Wiseau, while his brother Dave Franco portrays Greg Sestero, who meets Tommy Wiseau in an acting class in San Francisco. Sestero is quite the opposite of the eccentric Wiseau: very shy and insecure about how to be an actor. Tommy makes Greg an offer to move to L.A. At first Greg hesitates cause he can’t afford it, but then Tommy tells him he has a spare apartment in Los Angeles and Greg can move in with him.
After two years of trying to launch their careers, Wiseau and Sestero decide to collaborate on a project called The Room, which is a screenplay Wiseau has written. They manage to gather a full cast and crew and begin shooting. It steadily becomes obvious Wiseau isn’t exactly talented as an actor, director and screenwriter. But he has the funds to keep the project alive. Where all the money comes from, nobody knows.
My opinion
I think The Disaster Artist and original The Room are both good examples of what’s wrong in Hollywood. While The Room is genuinely bad (but bad to the point it becomes funny again), its parody The Disaster Artist is a really fun watch. I have to applaud the producers and director James Franco for showcasing great attention to detail. At the end of The Disaster Artist you see frames of the Room next to the imitated ones and the similarities are uncanny.
That Tommy Wiseau was able to make The Room, just goes to show how money is what really counts in the movie industry. Maybe Wiseau had very serious intentions to make a good movie, and the result turned out slightly different, to use an understatement. But if one looks at the average blockbuster that comes out of Tinseltown, The Room suddenly becomes more… authentic. Just look at what commercial movie theaters are showing these days: Pitch Perfect 3, 24 hours to Live, Insidious: The Last Key, The Greatest Showman and let’s face it, all the films in the Marvel universe (of which I saw nothing). Those movies are made with only one intention: gross as much income as possible.
Tommy Wiseau didn’t want to make money, he dreamed of being a real actor. Even if he had to make a bad movie to make that dream come true. That’s the real significance of The Room: pointing out the weaknesses of the star system. In that way it’s justified Wiseau and Sestero became cult stars. Why should actors who appear in unremarkable action movies with almost no plot have more right to be successful?
It’s time the movie industry becomes less an industry and more an artistic branch. But that won’t happen in this world, so as long as there are mediocre movies coming from Hollywood, let’s watch The Room and give Tommy Wiseau the credit he deserves.
