The Room.

The other day whilst getting my hair done, I was telling my amazing stylist about this horrifying movie I had seen about a month ago. And, because it is such a weird culty movie, I thought I should share a little bit about it here, to inform the ... masses ... hehe.

Until Britt and Joe posted about it on their blog, I had never heard of The Room. Then shortly after that I received an email from the aforementioned friends instructing me to see this movie as soon as possible.

I brought up this movie to my brother who said he'd heard of it, and tried to watch it once, but got twenty minutes into it and decided that that was not what he wanted to do with his day. Now, after seeing it, had I not watched it in an entirely delightful interactive theater environment, I would have vomited and thrown the dvd into the garbage and lied to Netflix about it. As it was, I did almost vomit anyway. I want to make it clear that I am NOT recommending this movie to anyone, that being said, I want to share what our viewing experience was like.

Before they started the movie, they aired the first 17 episodes of R Kelly's Hip Hopera "Trapped in the Closet." I had never heard of this before, because I don't get out much apparently. It was VERY... well, it happened. My hands down favorite episodes are 9 and 10. Yikes.

Then, they had a couple of trivia questions about the room, to win a bobble head of producer, writer, director, star, and all out crazy person with ill-fitting skin Tommy Wiseau. (One of the trivia questions had to do with the fact that one people who was part of making the movie has their name spelled two different ways in the opening and closing credits.) Then the disclaimer came, "if you've never seen this movie before, you're going to be pretty horrified by the first thirty minutes. The first thirty minutes are unlike anything you've ever seen, but if you can make it through the first thirty minutes, you'll be in for a treat. After the movie we'll show an interview with Tommy Wiseau because you're going to be wanting some answers, but you won't get any answers, only more questions."

I was expecting a really badly made movie, to say it is the most ill planned film ever produced would not be an exaggeration. (I can only think of Attack of The The Eye Creatures - their typo, not mine - as competition for The Room.) The dialogue is disjointed, confusing, and down right creepy sometimes, to say nothing of the actors who are all unattractive, creepy and highly annoying always. I don't think I could narrow down my favorite thing about that movie. Was it the fact that one of the actors was replaced mid way through without any sort of explanation? Was it that the mother character said, "the doctor called, and I definitely have breast cancer" and then nothing was mentioned ever again about it? Maybe it was all of the football tossing sequences, or showing the "Full House" house as an establishing shot. Maybe the fact that every time the camera found the little picture of a spoon that Johnny and Lisa have in their living room, everyone in the theater yelled spoon and tossed plastic spoons at the screen? Nope, it was the fact that in the interview Tommy Wiseau, master filmmaker, stated that the reason some of the shots were out of focus was because he used both a digital camera and a 35mm, because he didn't know they weren't compatible, and that he planned to make a documentary and write a book on the differences between the mediums.

If you feel the bizarre need to seek out this horrifying movie, don't watch it alone. You need lots of people around, because it takes a village to watch The Room. And if you drink, lots of alcohol.

And if you do watch it, call Joe, he does a dead on Tommy Wiseau, and every time I'm on the phone with Brittney, he steals the phone and does one of the bits from the movie and leaves me in stitches.

P.S. for a better, more complete rundown of the movie, so you won't have to ever watch it to satisfy your curiousity, check out Matt Singer's IFC primer. Delightful.