Starring: James Franco, Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, Josh Hutcherson, Zac Efron, Hannibal Buress, Melanie Griffith, Sharon Stone, Jacki Weaver
OUR RATING: ★★★★☆
Story:
Bio-comedy drama directed by, produced by and starring James Franco which follows the meeting and friendship of the actor Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) and Tommy Wiseau (James Franco), the actor, writer and director behind the 2003 cult film The Room, a film often hailed as the Citizen Kane of bad movies. The story chronicles the steps leading up to the making of the film and the chaotic production itself.
Best Quotes (Total Quotes: 36)
Tommy Wiseau: Los Angeles, everybody want to be star. You have to be the best and never give up.
Acting Teacher: Okay, who here can really reveal themselves to the class? Anybody?
Tommy Wiseau: I’ll go.
Tommy Wiseau: Don’t talk about me. Don’t tell class, not to anybody.
Greg Sestero: No, of course.
[reading from the script in an audition]
Tommy Wiseau: Show up on time, try not fall asleep everybody.
Casting Director: Am I hearing an accent?
Tommy Wiseau: Uh, no, no. What do you mean?
Casting Director: Can we just take it again? Try to lose the accent?
[Tommy turns and says the lines in an even more heavy accent which is totally unintelligible]
Greg Sestero: [to Tommy] When I get up on stage in front of people all I can think about is, “What if they laugh at me.” You man, you’re fearless. I want to feel that too.
Greg Sestero’s Mother: Hold old are you?
Tommy Wiseau: Don’t worry. I’m Greg’s age.
Greg Sestero’s Mother: You’re nineteen?
[Tommy shrugs his shoulders]
Greg Sestero’s Mother: Yeah, I just turned fourteen.
Tommy Wiseau: Yeah, happy birthday.
Casting Agent: You have a malevolent presence. You are a perfect build. I could see you as Dracula, Frankenstein.
Tommy Wiseau: I’m not Frankenstein! I am hero.
Tommy Wiseau: I don’t care, I’ll do it.
Tommy Wiseau: You and me we both have this dream
Greg Sestero: Yeah, I guess we do.
Tommy Wiseau: Now we’ll be famous. We’ll show them.
Tommy Wiseau: You know, Greg, you and me, we are the same.
Greg Sestero: Oh, yeah, how, how’s that?
Tommy Wiseau: We both have this dream that we’ll be famous.
Greg Sestero: Yeah, I guess we do.
Tommy Wiseau: Watch out, here we go!
Tommy Wiseau: “To be or not to be!”
Judd Apatow: It’s not going to happen for you. Not in a million years!
Tommy Wiseau: But after that?
Tommy Wiseau: This town, Greg. They don’t want me.
Greg Sestero: I wish we could just make our own movie.
Tommy Wiseau: A great idea.
[writing his script for The Room]
Tommy Wiseau: [voice over] So there’s this guy, Johnny, a true American hero, to be played by me. He has it all, good looks, make friends, and also maybe Johnny is vampire. We’ll see.
[continuing to write his script for The Room]
Tommy Wiseau: [voice over] And then this beautiful girl. Anything for my princess.
[continuing to write his script for The Room]
Tommy Wiseau: [voice over] She betray him. And then this got Johnny, he go crazy.
[referring to Tommy’s script The Room]
Greg Sestero: You really going to make this thing?
Tommy Wiseau: We are going to, yeah. Together.
Sandy Schklair: This set of the alleyway looks exactly like the real alleyway.
Tommy Wiseau: That’s right.
Sandy Schklair: Well why don’t we just shoot in the real alleyway?
Tommy Wiseau: Because it’s real Hollywood movie.
Sandy Schklair: Oh, yeah. Sounds good.
Sandy Schklair: Ready, and action!
[Wiseau steps into the scene after opening the rooftop door, pauses before saying]
Tommy Wiseau: What line? What is the line?
[Schklair reads out the line]
Sandy Schklair: “I did not hit her. It’s not true. It’s bullshit. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark.”
Tommy Wiseau: Okay.
[Wiseau goes in through the rooftop door and closes the door]
Sandy Schklair: Action!
[Wiseau enters the scene again through the rooftop door, he pauses again]
Tommy Wiseau: What is the line?
Sandy Schklair: Take thirteen. Action.
[Wiseau enters the scene again through the rooftop door]
Tommy Wiseau: I did not hit her, I… Okay, okay. Line?
[after several takes the crew simultaneously quotes Wiseau’s line that he keeps forgetting]
Crew: “I did not hit her. It’s not true. It’s bullshit. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark.”
Sandy Schklair: Take sixty-seven. Action!
[Wiseau opens the door again and enters the scene]
Tommy Wiseau: I hit her!
Sandy Schklair: No! Do you want to change the line?
Greg Sestero: You’re doing great, man. We’ll get there.
Sandy Schklair: Action!
[Wiseau doesn’t come through the rooftop door to do his scene]
Sandy Schklair: Action! Action! Action!
Tommy Wiseau: You’ll have to say it out loud, I can’t hear in here!
[Wiseau opens the rooftop door and pops his head out]
Tommy Wiseau: Say action so I can hear.
Sandy Schklair: Okay.
Sandy Schklair: Okay, action!
Tommy Wiseau: I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark.
Sandy Schklair: What the fu… It doesn’t work if you’re looking at the camera!
Sandy Schklair: Action!
[Wiseau does the scene again]
Tommy Wiseau: I did not hit her. It’s not true. It’s bullshit. I did not hit her. I did not.
[throws a water bottle on the ground]
Tommy Wiseau: Oh, hi, Mark.
[there’s a pause, then Greg prompts Schklair to applaud, with the rest of the crew joining in]
Sandy Schklair: Yeah!
[Greg hugs Wiseau]
[doing a scene from The Room]
Tommy Wiseau: You are tearing me apart, Lisa!
Tommy Wiseau: Well I give them job, I give them salary, I’ve spent five million dollar on this movie, Greg!
Greg Sestero: Five, are you kidding me? Five million dollars, what…
Tommy Wiseau: And they are not grateful! Nobody respect my vision!
Greg Sestero: Where were you born, Tommy?
Tommy Wiseau: Right, that not part of the scene.
Greg Sestero: Do you want an easier question? Where does the money come from, huh?
Tommy Wiseau: Stop! This on camera!
Greg Sestero: I know it’s on camera, just like you wanted!
Greg Sestero: You are a villain!
Tommy Wiseau: I do this whole movie for you, Greg!
[Tommy is doing the scene where he’s shoots himself in the head, he’s supposed to be dead but instead grabs a red dress and rubs it to his crotch]
Sandy Schklair: Cut!
Tommy Wiseau: Why you cut, Sandy? This is great, it’s real acting!
Sandy Schklair: If you’re going to writhe around with a dress maybe do it before you shoot yourself in the head and blow your brains out.
Tommy Wiseau: I disagree.
[referring Tommy being nude]
Greg Sestero: Tommy, this is unnecessary.
Tommy Wiseau: No, very necessary. I need to show my ass to sell this movie.
[as Tommy is trying to have sex with her in one of the scenes]
Juliette Danielle: I think you’re aiming a little bit high.
Tommy Wiseau: I aim where I aim. Just do the scene.
[watching on the monitor at the same time]
Sandy Schklair: Why is he having sex with her belly button? He knows where her vagina is, right?
Tommy Wiseau: This my movie, and this my life.
Total Quotes: 36
What do you think of The Disaster Artist quotes? Let us know in the comments below as we’d love to know.
Trailers:
Simplistic in tone and intent, one of the new films from the mind-bogglingly prolific James Franco ends up being a clumsy love letter to bad film-making, glorifying a Hollywood wannabe who had more money than talent.
The film centres on the strange relationship that develops between aspiring ‘actors’ Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) and Tommy Wiseau (brother James), who are attending the same acting class. Greg is entranced by Wiseau’s interpretation of Brando’s ‘Stella’ scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, even though their teacher and fellow future thespians giggle in bewilderment at his patently awful performance.
Asking the outcast student if they can work together, Greg’s sincere interest takes Wiseau by surprise, and simply because of this befriends the young man quickly, while trying to maintain an air of cool aloofness. It isn’t long before the duo decide to move to Los Angeles together, much to the disdain of Greg’s mother (Will & Grace’s Megan Mullally), staying at a decent apartment Wiseau has owned for years. Hitting the pavement to hopefully grab that chance at stardom, agents and interviewees couldn’t see two more different people standing before them; Greg a blonde, wholesome-looking all-American, while Tommy comes across as some shadowy, thick-accented creature from Eastern Europe, even though he continually tries to convince those around him that he is from New Orleans.
Greg does secure an agent (a brief appearance by Sharon Stone), but Tommy is unsuccessful, and retreats from the process as anyone who does want to hire him wants to do so as a villain. Seeing his friend falling into a state of depression, Greg eventually encourages Tommy to write his own project, and soon after a script is laid in front of him. The Room is about to be born.
Tommy finances the entire project, from the purchase of camera equipment, to securing studio space, to hiring an eclectic cast and crew who have no idea what is in store for them, including Sandy (Seth Rogan), Juliette (Ari Graynor), Philip (Josh Hutcherson), Dan (Zac Efron), and Carolyn (Jacki Weaver). Greg, along with his new colleagues, continue to wonder where Tommy is getting the money from, as the ill-fated production now has a multi-million dollar budget.
The Disaster Artist, going by the screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (500 Days of Summer, The Pink Panther 2, The Fault in our Stars), seemingly celebrates the cinematic incompetence on display. Everything is treated as a big joke, but then quite astoundingly tries to justify the end result during its misfired finale, assuming that laughing at a terrible film is the same as being swept away by a great one. This is quite a jaw-dropping point of view, one that would see more wannabe film-makers coming out of the woodwork, thinking it will be far easier to make a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movie than to actually strive towards something that people will admire and remember for all the right reasons. To picture an entire generation of Michael Bays is a scary thought indeed.
This is compared to Tim Burton’s infinitely more thoughtful Ed Wood (1994), which not only detailed the growing friendship between a group of similarly untalented artists who have been shunned by a ruthless industry, but also Wood’s endearing affection for, and protection of, Bela Lugosi, who had been unceremoniously discarded once his star had fallen. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski’s (The People vs Larry Flynt) intelligent script focused on the banding together of these lonely characters through a number of now-infamous film endeavours, and while they and Burton never purport their efforts as being any good, they never treat their subjects in a dismissive or condescending manner.
Characters are thumbnail sketches at best, with so many supporting players coming and going with frustrating suddenness (veteran Aussie actor Weaver just appears from nowhere, and is then wasted), while Wiseau himself is never explored in any genuinely interesting way. This undercuts what would have been a fascinating exploration into the worst kind of Hollywood film-making, showing why real auteurs like Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Thomas Anderson, and John Carpenter deservedly rise above the crowd. A fleeting romance between Greg and Amber (Alison Brie, who is as under-used here as she was in The Post) is ditched quickly, and seems to solely exist so there can be a totally unnecessary cameo by Bryan Cranston.
James Franco’s performance as Tommy comes across as a SNL caricature brought to the big screen. Never attempting to give this enigmatic person any shade or nuance, he comes across more as the long lost cousin of the Festrunk brothers (famously played by Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd on the long-running show) than an actual human being. Franco is always playing Wiseau for laughs, so any dramatic point that could be made about him and the industry is destroyed. Franco’s superficial direction amplifies this empty tone.
I have never seen The Room, which thanks to its notoriety has not only recouped its sizeable budget, but has distressingly made a profit (Wiseau has even gone on to make another feature film), all thanks to packed midnight screenings where patrons throw insults and spoons at the abomination showing on screen. When you see all the outstanding films from right around the world that have dazzled, involved, and entertained, but have been unable to pick up a proper distribution deal or make any money at the box-office, it makes it hard to look upon both this and its source with any kind of throwaway fondness, as championing this kind of ineptitude disheartens rather than delights. However, do stay right through the end credits, as you’ll encounter the one amusing moment in the whole film.
Rating: 2/5
If you have ever been a fan of movies past 2003, you might have heard of a little known film known as The Room. Written, directed, produced by and starring Tommy Wiseau, The Room is widely considered one of the worst, yet best movies ever made, sporting hilariously bad acting, bland direction and a lackluster plot, as such, it has gained a massive cult following over the years for being a generally hilarious movie to watch, not because of its comedic writing, but for its infamously bad, well, everything. So, when The Disaster Artist hit theaters in late 2017 with little fanfare, no one really expected much out of it. Many, myself included, simply dismissed the movie as a parody of sorts and had thought of watching it as such. To us, it had felt like an attempt to recreate the classic disaster-piece, but with James Franco as Tommy Wiseau.
To our surprise though, the film was much more than that. The Disaster Artist had gone down a route that no one had ever saw coming, the film had humanized the classic cult flick, the absurd, surreal and extremely overacted movie had suddenly become a project that the viewer could sympathize with. As much as we could laugh at Tommy Wiseau’s terrible acting, James Franco had managed to paint him in a light that the general public never saw him in. The world knew Mr Wiseau as a joke, a laughing stock, but we hardly saw him as a person that really put his heart and soul into his vision that, although terrible, was precious to him. The movie is still filled with memorable laughs, from James Franco’s spot on portrayal of the flamboyant Tommy Wiseau, to the overall relationship between Tommy and Greg Sestero, it never felt too serious or too lighthearted and got that middle ground that many films struggle to reach.
Surprisingly warm and heartfelt, The Disaster Artist is definitely a film to catch and watch if you have ever seen the original The Room, or if you’ve just heard about it from the countless YouTube videos and memes that it has spawned.
Rating: 4/5