The Disaster Artist

The Disaster Artist is an adaptation of The Room starring James Franco and his brother Dave Franco. The Room was a terrible movie I've dubbed (whenever I talk to other people about it) "so bad, its bad." So why would a smart artist actor James Franco want to do a movie about it? The answer to that is (probably) because The Room is a Hollywood success story. Sure it didn't get any awards and isn't a 'good' movie but it has a cult following and a fan-base that loves Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero. And now that The Disaster Artist has done well James Franco and Tommy Wiseau can rest easy knowing they both did a great job in Hollywood. Sure it might be comedic relief but that's not the point. The point is that Tommy came from nowhere and is now a movie star. The dream of every actor that comes to LA. Just like my dream to become a guitar player. And I'm from Wisconsin so I might as well have come from nowhere.

The cool thing about the movie is that it was sort of autobiographical. It shows Tommy trying to be an actor in acting school and he fails hard. When he comes to the realization that he may never become a famous actor he decides to make a movie of his own. Nobody knows where Tommy comes from or where he got his money to make a movie. Let's just say he's probably some sort of financial investor, like how he played a banker in San Francisco with long hair (premise of The Room). Anyways (how is your sex life?), Tommy figures the only way he can become a star is if he does it himself, everything from producing, directing, acting, and casting. A novel idea but nothing to take lightly. You can sink or swim, even more so in the movie business than in music. Seeing his humble beginnings on screen makes me think that everything I do to become a famous guitar player isn't enough. I have to increase everything I do tenfold if I wanna be like Tommy. Or just play so bad its bad (bad as in good, like the jazz cats say). One thing to note is that Tommy worked hard to make The Room a cult classic, even spending tons of money to keep the movie playing in a theater for two weeks so it could get a chance to be nominated for awards. He also had an ad out back when the movie came out that had his real phone number on it.

Its a funny movie but it wasn't as funny as seeing The Room for the first time. Now that's funny, especially the sex scenes. Instead, I watched this movie and took in the more documentary aspects of it rather than any particular laughs, or any laughs at all. However, the audience laughed a lot and they're right, its sort of a funny. But I've seen it all before, all the jokes, the scenes, and Franco is not as funny as Wiseau (but he tries). This movie recreates scenes from The Room in exact frightening detail. Sure its cool that they recreated scenes but to make it exactly to the point that the lighting and shading and details of the rooms (ha) were identical? Now that's something a madman would do. Or just somebody who really loves The Room. In this day and age I suppose that's maybe not so farfetched.

Oh, hai Mark!