The Room

I have decided recently to write a book, entitled 100 Movies You Should See Before You're 21. I am trying to write at least two pieces on American films a week for the next year, each about 2 1/2 pages in length. This is the first of these pieces, written about what is hands down the worst movie you will read about in this book. In fact, it may be the worst movie you ever read about, hear about or see in your entire life.

The Room

Directed Tommy Wiseau

Written by Tommy Wiseau

Starring Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero, Juliette Danielle

“I cannot tell you, it is confidential.”

“Oh, come on! Why not?”

“No, I can’t. Anyway, how is your sex life?”

-Johnny and Mark

You may think you have seen bad movies. You may be one of those people who saw Catwoman and thought you’d never see anything worse. You may feel that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg raped Indiana Jones three summers ago. And you may be one of those people who has seen so much Mystery Science Theater that you couldn’t imagine anything worse than Manos: The Hands of Fate or The Beast of Yucca Flats. You may think you know what bad cinema is.

You haven’t seen The Room.

Before I discovered The Room I was just an average person who thought the worst movies ever made were all made by Michael Bay or Ed Wood. And then my friend and fellow bad-movie-lover Savannah Dooley told me about The Room, this bad movie people saw on Saturday nights in L.A. After I saw this film, I felt it was my mission in life to tell everybody about this movie and get them to see it. So far, I’ve been pretty successful. It’s the cinematic equivalent of being a born-again Christian.

Tommy Wiseau, the man behind the 21^st century’s greatest disasterpiece reeks of liquor, has an accent of unidentifiable origins, and an ego the size of Saturn. Nobody really knows anything about him: where he’s from, what his day job is, or how he managed to raise six million dollars to make this film. But when Tommy Wiseau made The Room, he truly believed that he was going to make a great film. When it was released in 2003, The Room only found its way to two or three theatres, and was laughed off the screen by the serious critics.

But soon the film began to develop a cult following of people who claimed that it was so bad it actually was good. Midnight screenings began in L.A. soon afterwards, and when it became really popular, Tommy started showing up at them, answering (or rather, non-answering) the audience’s questions, and saying the same couple of lines every single time (my favorite, “You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don’t hurt anyone”).

The Room, a film “with the passion of Tennessee Williams” as the trailer advertises, is a love triangle between all-American Johnny (Mr. Wiseau), his best friend Mark (Greg Sestero, affectionately nicknamed “Sestosterone”), and his fiancée Lisa (Juliette Danielle). After the first ten minutes of the film, Lisa decides out of nowhere that she doesn’t love Johnny anymore and begins to have an affair with Mark. The rest of the film meanders along until its inevitable climax, when Johnny realizes he’s been cuckolded. But that doesn’t even begin to explain it.

I am going to try and explain to you why this movie is such a disasterpiece the best I can. My explanations may not be very good, but they will hopefully convince you to run out and see this film as fast as you can.

1. The film is set in San Francisco. How do I know this? Because every single scene begins with a shot of the city. Whenever the audience sees an establishing San Fran shot, they shout out, “Meanwhile, back in San Francisco!”

2. The spoon rule. There is a picture of a spoon in a frame by the telephone in the house where the movie takes place. The only hypothesis I can postulate about its appearance is that it was a fake picture that you get when you buy a frame at Pottery Barn, only the prop man never took out the fake picture. So now every time you see it, you throw plastic spoons in the air and shout “SPOON!” Expect to get hit by flying cutlery several times when you watch this film.

3. Every single character greets each other with the words “Oh hi .” It’s as if Tommy thought we’d forget the names of the characters in this film very fast, so “Oh hi Denny,” “Oh hi Mark,” “Oh hi Lisa,” and even “Oh hi Doggie” show up throughout the course of the film. The “hi doggie” moment, by the way, is arguably my favorite in the whole film—and that’s saying something.

4. Lisa’s mother Claudette (played by Carolyn Minnott) is truly one of the dottiest characters in all of film. She seems to have short-term memory, or rather, Tommy does, because her most famous line refers to something which is never brought up again throughout the course of the film. She’s talking to Lisa and casually says “No one wants to help me, and I’m dying!” “You’re not dying, mother,” Lisa says. “I got the results of the test back,” she replies. “I definitely have breast cancer.” Never once do we hear this again. As a result, cries of “CANCER!” whenever she enters the frame are heard in the theatre.

5. Denny, played brilliantly by Philip Haldiman, is one of the great mysteries of The Room. Who is he? Why does he look up to Johnny as a father figure? What kind of drugs was he on? Why does he bite that apple in the film? Is he retarded or is he just a little slow? All these mysteries will be cleared up when you see the film…or not.

6. Characters appear and disappear with alarming frequency. About twenty-five minutes into the film, two characters appear to have sex in Johnny and Lisa’s house. We have never seen them before, and they aren’t properly introduced. Characters keep coming into the film without any introduction, even in the last twenty minutes of the film—the time when you should never introduce anyone new!

7. Of course, the main reason to see The Room is to see the mysterious Tommy himself. With his strange accent and bad hair, you may find yourself wanting to talk like him after you’ve seen the film. Simple phrases like “I did not” become “Ah did naaaaaht” in his dialect. But of course, the most famous line in the film is the moment where he truly believes the spirits of James Dean and Marlon Brando have possessed him. Lisa claims that he hit her, even though we haven’t seen such a thing occur. During their confrontation, Tommy stands up and yells, “You’re lying! I never hit you! YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, LISA!” After you see it, you’ll never stop saying it.

I’ve seen The Room four times now, and my friends are starting to hate me because I begin almost every conversation with “Oh hi,” and scream ‘SPOON!” every time I see a spoon. This movie has warped my perception of reality. Because I know that somebody made a movie that is so inept on every level, from the bad sex scenes to the bizarre characters, I can’t look at any movies the same way anymore. And all my friends who I’ve turned on to the film have slowly become obsessed with it, taking their friends to go see it and absorbing everyone into a giant cult.

I’ve included a picture of me and my friends the second time I saw the movie with an audience. From left to right are my friends Jack and Dylan, myself, Tommy, my writing partner Jon and my oldest friend Ted. I look maniacally happy, as though I have received the greatest Christmas gift of all time. And in many ways, The Room is the gift that keeps on giving.

Kick-Ass Review

I finally got around to seeing Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass today, which I enjoyed, although I didn't quite "love" it. These days I feel sort of neutral about most action films. I'm very explosion-ed out. I enjoyed Star Trek and Avatar last year, but wasn't as crazy about District 9 or Sherlock Holmes. And part of the reason is because I'm really sick of the way action films are structured. Every time I go to one I know that for the final thirty minutes I'm going to be bored because it'll be the part where they UNLEASH ALL THEIR PYROTECHNICS. I get that these filmmakers can blow shit up, but when the heroes just start fighting like crazy while the camera goes into slow-motion, that's when you lose me.

Kick-Ass has a lot going for it, and it's a very enjoyable film. It starts off very well, with Aaron Johnson's Dave Lizewski deciding to experiment with crime fighting. At first he's beaten to a pulp and given metal appendages, but he improves with practice and becomes a phenomenon as "Kick-Ass." Johnson is an appealing actor in the Jesse Eisenberg/Michael Cera vein, but he gets the rug pulled out from under him in this film by Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), and in more ways than one. A daughter-father combination of crime fighters, not only are they better crime fighters than Kick-Ass, but they're also more fun to watch. Who doesn't want to watch a twelve-year-old girl shoot a bunch of guys? And who doesn't want to watch Nicolas Cage being a total badass? Cage may make some stupid career moves, but this definitely is not one of them.

As I've insinuated, it's Moretz's film to steal, and she does it admirably. Watching her all I could think was, "Why isn't Dakota Fanning doing movies like this?" The novelty of her character and the sheer fun she has playing her are what make the film a fun ride.

Now, on to the issue of the film's "moral reprehensibility." I know a thing or two about this, because last night when I was seeing the Hypocrites' brilliant new production of Cabaret, an old woman got really pissed off at me for picking my nose, saying it was "socially unacceptable." But getting back to the point, some critics have derided Kick-Ass for being violent. Roger Ebert, in an unusually bizarre review, was angered by the film's low regard for human life, since Hit Girl kills several thugs without a shred of remorse. I like Ebert's writing, but I really can't explain this. He gave Watchmen four stars, and that had far more cringe-worthy action than this. And does anybody really think that little girls are going to see this film and go "I want to kill people now?" Enough violent movies get made so that people shouldn't have to worry about one making any real difference.

I think there's another issue with the violence which most critics haven't picked up on: it's inconsistent. Kick-Ass is a film about the difficulties of being a superhero in a world which doesn't have any. So at the beginning of the film, Kick-Ass is beaten to a pulp. And I would have liked for the violence to take that sort of gritty tone. Had Don Siegel or John Boorman directed Kick-Ass, no one would be complaining about the violence because not only would they have found clever ways to indicate it, but it would have been consistently realistic. Siegel would never have Hit Girl running up walls shooting people in slow motion. That was where I turned off my brain cells and went to the bathroom. Even though I was enjoying the film, I was disappointed that it went for violent excess instead of in-your-face realism. Then again, it's a comic book, so realism doesn't exactly apply.

I'd like to add that the film contained one of my favorite movie moments in this past year. When Hit Girl goes into the lobby of the building to kill all the thugs at the end of the movie, the music behind her is Ennio Morricone's theme from For a Few Dollars More. I then wondered what it would be like if Sergio Leone made a comic book movie. Now that would kick ass.

College ACB--The Scum of the Internet

I posted this piece on Facebook recently. Needless to say, the response its gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. I have submitted it to people at NBN, and hope that it gets in there at some point.

“Have you ever heard of College ACB?”

The speaker was my friend Diana Morales (name changed), on the afternoon of April Fools day this quarter. I was having dinner with her in Norris and she was telling me about this college gossip site that I had never heard of. Well, why should I have? I really try to stay out of gossip, because one has to find ways of keeping sanity at this age.

I went onto the website and typed in my name, knowing that due to keeping a fairly low status on the party scene, I probably wouldn’t come up. But lo and behold, I found a thread written about me. It was started on April 30th of last year, and it said, “Jeremy Fassler—sooooooo cute! Does anyone know if he’s single?” I was a bit flattered to read this. I was even more flattered to read, “Oh girl, if he is, I’m about to snatch that upppppp!”

And then came the part I probably shouldn’t have read, which simply said, “Are you kidding me? If anyone is in RTVF 230 you know how fucking annoying this kid is.” Another poster agreed. And that’s when I was introduced to the meanness of this website.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been surfing College ACB, not only to find stuff written about myself, but about other people as well, and I dislike the fact that I do so. I have become no better than the people who actually post on the website (although I still have yet to post anything). I only care about reading dirty details of people’s sex lives, and laughing at ridiculous rumors. But how would you feel if someone on a message board wrote, “Kale Clauson is totally gay, I just ate a warm hot load of his shit two weeks ago”?

I’m going to be honest. There are some people at Northwestern who I don’t like. But I would never go to such extremes by posting about how much I hate them on College ACB. There are some people who have taken it upon themselves to make this one sorority senior’s life a living hell by posting her name first on all the “Most annoying” and “Girl I’d least like to fuck” threads. I would really hate to be this girl. I haven’t met her, probably won’t, but the things written about her are enough to make any decent human being cringe. They’ve called this girl “smelly little troll,” “girl who chases dick hardcore,” and other things that I can assure you are much, much worse.

And in the last couple of weeks, I’ve started feeling bad about myself because of the things written about me. Something else was written about me, although they didn’t reference me by name. It was someone who was mad at me for correcting Professor Sconce in my History of Hollywood Cinema class, who called me a “dweeb” and said I should shut up because I suck. I really do resent this anonymous form of internet bullying, and I only wish I knew who this person was so I could tell him to his face.

But there’s an even better solution, which is to stay off the website and ignore it. The truth of the matter is that the internet makes everybody meaner. I’ve known this ever since 8th grade. I got involved in an IMDB message board war between an uber-conservative user with five or six different accounts, all variants on the words “Titanic Sucks.” Whether or not he was actually the uber-conservative homophobe that he touted himself to be I will never know (for all I know, he may have been a she). But I would engage in daily battles with this man, and leave only feeling awful about myself and about the state of the world. Since then I have not posted anything on IMDB, and refuse to get involved in message boards. And I don’t want to get involved on College ACB.

To spend time on College ACB is the most counter-productive bullshit I can think of doing, and I’m sorry that I know this website exists. I’d be a much happier person if I didn’t, and I urge all of you not to get involved with this site ever. Not only will it suck up hours of your life, it will make you think of your student body with less respect. I pity the people who post on there, for there must be something very sad about them to engage in such a mean activity.

Oh, and to all the people I’ve taken film class with who dislike me, I am proud that I know as much about film as I do, and no, I will not stop talking in class just to pacify you. You may have won the battle, but you’ll never win the war.

First Postings

This is the 4th blog I have started on Blogspot.com. Thanks to the encouragement of my friends, I have decided to link all the pieces that I write back to this website. There is not much I need to say about myself at this moment, but I should add that "The Truth of the Matter" is one of my favorite phrases to use. Hence, the title.

There will be updates. Probably sporadic ones, since I'm busy with many other things right now, but I think it's time I started doing one of these.

Who knows? Maybe I'll attract some new followers.