The first time I watched The Room, I experienced it the way most people probably do: a friend told me there was a strange-as-hell film that I had to watch. The friend who introduced me to Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece was a connoisseur of bad movies and all things Mystery Science Theater 3000-adjacent, so I knew if he was praising the film’s insanity, it had to be something special. For those who haven’t seen The Room, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary today, the film wastes no time letting you know how weird it is. The Room never lets up on the weirdness, introducing us to a world of multiple, similar sex scenes, football catches in tuxedos, experienced rooftop confessions, an unexpected cancer diagnosis, “me underwears,” plenty of framed photos of spoons, and some of the most unusual pronunciations and sentence structures ever uttered in the English language. What my friend showed me wasn’t a movie, it was an experience.
In the years since seeing The Room, my love has only grown for this oddity, and similarly, the world has embraced The Room, reaching cult status with startling speed. Theaters around the country have been playing The Room consistently for over a decade now, with screenings still selling out frequently, and with Wiseau and star Greg Sestero often appearing. The book The Disaster Artist, written by Sestero and co-writer Tom Bissell, told the story of making The Room, and the film adaptation earned a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar. Hell, in the Marvel comics universe, Wiseau is even an alien that the Guardians of the Galaxy are trying to find. And while many other baffling films have come in the wake of The Room, from Birdemic to the filmography of Neil Breen, none of these films have come close to the throne that The Room sits on.
'The Room' Will Make You Reconsider What Makes a Movie Good or Bad
But here’s the thing about The Room: it makes me completely reconsider film criticism. The Room is both a terrible film and a masterpiece. Wiseau attempted to make a great American drama, and instead, he made a brilliant worldwide comedic phenomenon. The Room is a singular vision that could only be made by the auteur Wiseau, and yet, almost anyone could’ve made a better film. The Room proves that a director’s intent doesn’t matter in the long run, but also makes one reconsider what makes a film successful. The Room is both one of the worst films I’ve ever seen and my favorite film of 2003. The Room will drastically alter your perception of what makes a film “good” or “bad,” and if it doesn’t, maybe you’ve accidentally watched Brie Larson’s Room instead.
Part of what makes The Room so addictive is that it’s a bad movie that still manages to be entertaining – which is in itself a miracle, considering the monotonous sex scenes and the lingering shots of San Francisco that go on for way too long. But the fact that The Room is bad and remains the same level of engrossing throughout is impressive. Even the best films can’t keep you on the edge of your seat for 99 minutes the way The Room can.
In case you’re unfamiliar, The Room tells the story of Johnny (Wiseau), who seems to have it all: a successful job as a banker, a beautiful fiancé Lisa (Juliette Danielle), a great best friend in Mark (Sestero), a random college-aged ward by the name of Denny (Philip Haldiman), and a revolving door of friends and future family always stopping by his apartment. But Tommy’s perfect life isn’t so perfect after all. He doesn’t get the big job at the bank, Lisa is cheating on Johnny with Mark, rumors are flying that Johnny might have hit Lisa, and Denny is seemingly involved with local drug dealer Chris-R (Dan Janjigian) for a single scene. As the walls start to fall, Tommy learns about everyone’s betrayal, and after a bedroom destruction scene that seems to be a Citizen Kane reference, Tommy pleads to God “why?,” before blowing his brains out (and soon after, somehow manages to hump Lisa’s sexy red dress). The Room, one of the most unusual films ever made, ends on a tragic note, as Lisa and Denny cry over Johnny’s dead body. THE END.
'The Room' Is Effective, Just Not in the Intended Way
Yet every time I’ve watched The Room, I do genuinely feel sorry for the character of Johnny. The character undergoes scene after scene of painful abuse at the hands of his fiancé and their friends, he’s mocked, pushed, and criticized behind his back, until he can’t take it anymore and ends his life. Yet what makes this story even more tragic to me is that this is a film that Wiseau (who also wrote, naturally) had to tell, and with Tommy taking on the role of Johnny, it doesn’t seem like a stretch that a much simpler, less insane version of this story might’ve actually happened to Wiseau, as The Disaster Artist implies. Wiseau spent millions of dollars to make The Room, a story that is probably at least slightly based on Wiseau’s experiences, and a film that without ever making a film before, made him decide he needed to pick up a camera to tell this story. Wiseau believed that he was making a serious drama, one that would make us sympathize with the story of Johnny. And while we might laugh far more than Wiseau ever intended, we still come to empathize with Johnny. If the journey isn’t what the director wanted, but the destination remains the same, does that make this film successful or unsuccessful?
On paper, The Room is a tragedy, and while Wiseau has refuted that this was supposed to be a serious film, there is something kind of sad about Wiseau putting everything he has into a film, and potentially exploring deep pains within himself, and that experience has led to a comedy where people dress up like him and have Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque traditions around the story. Imagine if you took the worst pain of your life, made it into a film—despite any lack of talent or affinity for the medium—and people made fun of it for two decades. Wiseau has seemingly embraced this take on The Room, but like Johnny’s story, there is a bit of tragedy to the overall tale of The Room, despite its continued success.
'The Room' Is the Audience's Film
But The Room also shows that directorial intention, in the long run, doesn’t truly matter. It didn’t take long before The Room premiered before audiences were making their own fun out of the experience. While Wiseau might’ve wanted us to feel his pain through this story, his viewpoint of the people he loves “tearing me apart,” instead, they found joy and humor. Without its unexpected comedy, The Room would have likely just been an eccentric guy who spent way too much money to make a movie that no one saw. But as it is, The Room has been viewed by millions, and Wiseau has shared his story with the entire world. Again, this wasn’t the path that Wiseau likely wanted for The Room, yet his film proved that the story of a film doesn’t end with the director, it ends with the audience and what they take away from it.
It’s also just a miracle that any movie gets made, and it’s astounding the experience of making The Room actually led to an actual film. And while great films come out every year, it would be impossible to make something of the quality of The Room intentionally. There would be no way to replicate what Wiseau is doing with The Room, and while film school could teach a class how to potentially make a great film, no one can teach you how to make something as idiosyncratic and unique as The Room. Only one person like Wiseau, with such a singular and determined point-of-view, could’ve made something like The Room, and that is legitimately impressive.
The Room isn’t likely what any of those involved intended it to be. For Wiseau, he wanted to make a drama, and he gave the world a comedy. For the rest of the team in front of and behind the camera, they surely didn’t expect this experience to last as long as it did. Every time I watch The Room, I don’t think of it as a bad film, I think of it as something that transcends such simple classifications. It’s a mess, for sure, and it seems like the work of a man that may or may not be of this planet, but it is successful as a film. It brings joy to almost everyone who sees it, it makes us sympathize with the character of Johnny, and it brings people together in a way that I’ve never seen a movie do before. The Room is an experience that unites those who have seen it, a common language that only people who have seen it can fully understand. The Room isn’t a great film, and yet it is a great film. The Room proves there are many ways a film can be considered successful, even if that flies wildly in the opposite direction of the original intent.
Wiseau often introduces screenings of The Room by saying, “You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don’t hurt each other.” Quentin Tarantino once said of Pulp Fiction that “if a million people see my movie, I hope they see a million different movies.” The audience for The Room has seen many different versions of this film, all of which are likely different than what Wiseau imagined. But there’s something magical and powerful about that, and shows the true beauty of film. The Room lives on today not only because Wiseau made something that only he could, but because the audience brought their own take to the film. Twenty years later, Wiseau has embraced that people might laugh at The Room, but the continued success of The Room and its legacy as being one of the truly great bad movies means that Wiseau has had the last laugh.
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