If you ever find yourself desperately in need of a plastic spoon but can’t think where to find any (and how many times has that happened?), look for a cinema that’s playing Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 movie The Room, and you should find enough plastic cutlery at the foot of the screen to last you a lifetime. For reasons that only a true ‘Room’-obsessive can explain, audience members habitually throw plastic spoons at the screen in a reference to the framed photo of a – you guessed it – plastic spoon; just one of the many bizarre and inexplicable visual metaphors in this ‘cult classic.’
It has been hailed as ‘The Citizen Kane of bad movies,’ a film so incredibly badly written, illogically constructed and appallingly acted that stalwarts of Worst Movie Ever charts have now found themselves a new champion. However, like a ten-car pile-up or a Vanilla Ice music video, some movies are so bad that they have to be seen to be believed, and The Room has slowly built up a loyal following who regularly attend midnight screenings, if only to throw spoons at the screen and quote lines like ‘You are tearing me apart, Lisa!’
All this may be obscure nonsense to most film fans, but it will soon be common knowledge now that James Franco has announced that he is to direct a film based on The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, which details the making of the film and its unlikely aftermath. Franco, himself, describes the original movie as achieving “a glorified cult status as possibly one of the worst movies ever made” in his Vice review of the book, co-written by Greg Sestero with Tom Bissell. Sestero was an old friend of Tommy Wiseau and a member of the production crew, who had to step in and play the pivotal role of Mark when the original actor walked off the set on the first day of shooting.
The Brüno-voiced Tommy Wiseau has become something of an internet sensation on account of some fascinating, wildly fluctuating, barely intelligible interviews, and his impressive 1987-era Ian McShane look. Not for the first time, comparison has been made to Worst Director Ever™ Ed Wood Jr, of Plan 9 From Outer Space fame. He, of course was the subject of one of Tim Burton’s most critically lauded movies, the Oscar-winning Ed Wood (1994), so who’s to say that Franco won’t mine similar gold from Wiseau’s tortured tale? Franco described The Disaster Artist as ‘a great portrayal of hopefuls coming to Los Angeles to pursue their ambitions…In many ways, Tommy c’est moi.’
The Disaster Artist will be produced by Franco and Vince Jolivette (Spring Breakers) and scripted by Ryan Moody, with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (This Is The End) executive producing.
