"the disaster artist"

A24

There has perhaps never in the history of cinema been a film more tediously revolting than "The Room," Tommy Wiseau's accidental disasterpiece, a delirious work of art that has somehow, through sheer act of penetrative ambivalence, managed to infect our cultural consciousness to become a 14-year home movie phenomenon. Its genesis best explained in Greg Sestero's 2013 novel, "The Disaster Artist," which was also written by Tom Bissell, tells of a fortuitous relationship bolstered by two starry-eyed dreamers, who go on to live in infamy as the creators of the best worst movie ever made. Sestero, Sancho Panza to Wiseau's hectoring Don Quixote, meets his soon-to-be partner inside an acting studio in San Francisco, and before long, both are compelled to face their metaphoric windmills, jousting the gatekeepers of Hollywood's elite, armed solely with a pocket full of dreams and a never-answered-for disposable income. In many respects, it is Sestero's lack of reluctance to follow a man like Wiseau into battle, a man who has proven time and time again to be a hindrance rather than an asset, which renders this retelling so peculiar and fascinating. The hellish, tortuous interlude of back-stabbing, paranoia, and absurdity that abounds is just icing on the cake. 

And it is Tommy's complete lack of self-awareness that drives most of the comedy in Franco's new iteration, panging back and forth between soul-crushing rejections and cursory on-set mutinies. With good reason, for Wiseau is a telltale narcissist, without the know-how to back up his confidences as an actor or director, making his canny inability to deliver a simple line of dialogue so comical it becomes the climactic-du-jour of the entire film. Yet, when all is said and done, Wiseau does indeed manage to pull off the impossible, and though "The Room" appears to be nothing more than the wild smatterings of a filmmaker's vainglorious worst instincts, there remains a sort of 'falling with style' grace to it which has earned its keep amongst the pantheon of late-night cinemagoers. With each and every screening, Tommy's ambitions become more self-evident; he pines for the success, acceptance and adulation of Brando without putting the necessary hours in, and pushes his cast and crew to the breaking point, holding their goals and ambitions hostage because they are just as, if not exponentially more, ill-conceived than his own. Wiseau subverts every rule in the Hollywood playbook, and against all odds, prevails. Not in spite of his bad decisions, but because of them.

The schadenfreudian reaction to his work however, seems to be at odds with Tommy's inclinations to be taken seriously — a six million dollar rebuke aimed squarely at the naysayers who castigated Wiseau as an all-too-familiar pariah, a man who needed to be stamped out early on, if only to spare him the misery of it all. Wiseau's stroke of genius, evidently, was to market and distribute the film as a black comedy rather than the Tennessee Williams drama he had always intended, and by doing so, gave the project new and lasting significance. It is a hot mess of a miracle that the film exists at all, and an even hotter, messier miracle that James Franco and Co. optioned the rights to it once Sestero's semi-autobiographical book went public. The breezy meta biopic never punches down, and the laughter created is communal rather than mocking. Yet the utter lunacy of following a man such as Tommy around for 2 hours in pursuit of the American dream almost makes one feel patriotically sympathetic to his cause — especially since said man refuses to admit he's not even American. No one on earth, not even Tommy, could have predicated this strange organism would find new life, immortalized by Franco, Rogen and Apatow, and that prediction is the fundamental nucleus of "The Disaster Artist." The willingness to achieve one's dreams, no matter how insurmountable, all whilst moving ass backwards (and somehow) recouping expenses, is the American dream incarnate.

"THE DISASTER ARTIST" Rated R. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes.