AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS8/10 6 years ago
[7.6/10] If I had my druthers, I’d go into every movie cold as cold can be. No trailers. No synopsis. Nothing but a reliable recommendation that what I was about to see will be good. If I can manage it, I prefer to be surprised by a film, to let its wonders and splendors unfold without any preconceived notions or expectations.
I could hardly have gone in less cold for *The Disaster Artist*.
I’ve watched *The Room* at least once a year since I first saw it in 2010. I’ve shared it with friends and (reluctantly) family. I’ve gone to midnight screenings where plastic spoons are thrown and audience members shout ripostes and inside jokes back at the screen. I’ve heard Greg Sestero himself provide live, running commentary on his most infamous on-screen appearance. I’ve seen predictably awkward interviews with Tommy Wiseau and struggled through his disjointed jumble of a sitcom. I’ve read the book, by Sestero and Tom Bissel, that *The Disaster Artist* is based on. And I’ve quoted and ruminated and formed deep, committed opinions about Wiseau’s unlikely, unintentional masterpiece and everything that’s spun out from it.
Which is to say that mine is an inherently unfair opinion when it comes to *The Disaster Artist*. Because rather than taking the film as I find it, I cannot help but compare it to what I know of the story it’s interpreting, the ways that it reflects and condenses both the book and film it’s based on and around, and my own expectations for how that story should be told. It’s the sort of thing you can try to compartmentalize and set aside, but it seeps in, if for no other reason than that it affects how the movie feels to me, however much I might like to take it in as though I were wholly unwashed.
Apart from my personal hang-ups, *The Disaster Artist* is a fun story of a young man and his oddball friend finding the world’s most bizarre-but-earnest way to ever “make it” in Hollywood. It is a thoroughly funny flick, one made by individuals who clearly have plenty of affection for the source of their fun, and seem to have as much sincere joy in recreating it as they do any derisive schadenfreude from pointing out how inept a film *The Room* is. There’s a lot of love in *The Disaster Artist* -- for *The Room*, for Wiseau and Sestero, and for the idealism and determination it takes to make a movie, any movie, that can earn such a reaction from its audience.
But there’s not a lot of complexity or darkness. That’s fine in a vacuum. Lord knows there’s plenty of grim and gritty takes on a myriad of lighter properties out there. But it strips one of the most interesting features of the book -- its revelation that Tommy Wiseau was not just the deluded but harmless object of fun that fans of *The Room* had (somewhat patronizingly) constructed him as, but could instead be scary, or repugnant, or genuinely horrible to the people in his orbit.
*The Disaster Artist* grazes this idea, showing Tommy to be unreasonable and think-skinned at times, but it mainly wants you to root for him, to succeed in this strange quest and, to be frustrated with him at times, but ultimately to hope that things work out with his improbable hopes. There’s nothing wrong with that. Like most characters translated from real life to the silver screen, the Tommy Wiseau of *The Disaster Artist* lacks many of the rougher edges of his flesh and blood counterpart, more of a naive and fearless dreamer, albeit an inept one, than the difficult figure he cuts in real life.
Despite the quirks and kinks that are sanded down for the cinematic translation, James Franco *is* Tommy Wiseau in the film. *The Disaster Artist* may leave out uncomfortable details of Wiseau’s life and personality, but Franco captures every bit of his mannerisms and demeanor without resorting to caricature and makes it all look effortless. He disappears into the role, one that could easily have been a series of tics and exaggerated impressions, which instead makes this larger-than-life, almost unbelievable individual feel like a real human being, regardless of his eccentricities. It’s the biggest achievement in *The Disaster Artist*, and one that speaks to Franco’s commitment to the character and the real man underlying him, who is so faithfully translated in his presence and bearing, if not in every detail of who he is both on and off the set.
The same is true for Franco (who also directed the film) with regard to the *The Room* itself. *The Disaster Artist* faithfully recreates scene-after-scene from the ignominious original with clear reverence for the source material. The movie parcels out these remade sequences judiciously, making them enjoyable but not tedious for longtime fans, and true enough to pique the interest of first-timers who may not realize how accurate the recreations are. There is an attention to detail on display, demonstrating how Franco & Co. did their homework.
Thankfully most of the comedy comes from the characters, or original takes on situations described in the book, rather than mere efforts to prompt the audience to point and laugh at reenactments from *The Room*. Seth Rogen in particular steals the show with his sarcastic comments as the film-within-a-film’s on set director. *The Disaster Artist* is anchored around *The Room*, but its creators have the good sense not to just cannibalize the curio they’re aping.
Instead, Franco and his team use *The Room* and the story of its creation, to deliver an *Ed Wood*-esque lesson in the beauty of making something you believe in, that can affect people and be the culmination of your dream and your hard work, even if what you produce doesn’t meet traditional standards of quality or garner the reaction you imagined. *The Disaster Artist* seeks out the beauty in the singular-if-inept qualities of *The Room*, in the misguided but idealistic Tommy Wiseau, and in the rocky but rewarding friendship between him and Greg Sestero. That is certainly laudable.
It just doesn’t line up well with reality. That’s not necessarily a problem, or at least it shouldn’t be. That’s the beauty of storytelling and adaptation, it can plumb the depths of real life and mine it for nuggets of truth and purity from the inevitably more complicated affairs of real people, and transform them into something digestible and heartening.
But there’s an irony to that process in *The Disaster Artist* because *The Room* wasn't just supposed to be Tommy Wiseau’s magnum opus. It was meant to be his star-making debut and self-feting. Johnny of *The Room* is clearly Tommy’s idealized version of himself: generous, surrounded by friends, and meant to be seen as underappreciated for his magnanimous nature by anyone and everyone in his life. *The Room* is meant to reveal Tommy Wiseau as an artist and a talent, but it’s also a personal calling card, one where the thin veneer between Tommy and Johnny unveils a man who not only thinks of himself in terms of these delusions of grandeur, but believes this film would instill those same delusions in other.
And yet, as all great art does, *The Room* ended up revealing the real parts of its creator, and they were not as attractive or commendable as Wiseau tried to present them on the screen. *The Room* does evince a sense of idealism, yes, but also a clear sense of vanity, of perceived martyrdom, of inescapable misogyny. Wiseau tries to present an idealized version of himself, and ends up showing his true self, problematic warts and all.
The irony is that in creating a dramatized “behind the scenes” version of the “real” Tommy Wiseau, it’s *The Disaster Artist* that presents an idealized version of him. The Tommy of this film is too lacking in perspective to realize how unlikely his dreams are to be realized, but persists nevertheless. He can be difficult at times, but primarily because he values his project and his vision. And he can be a bit overly possessive, but it’s always framed out of a sense of hurt, of believing in a friendship he doesn’t know how to properly reciprocate.
The film meant to show us the true Tommy Wiseau instead gives us Wiseau’s best self, while the man’s own attempt at hagiography puts his worst impulses on display. That too is the glory of film, where one man can be the subject of two films, each presenting very different versions of who he is, and both can be true after a fashion. *The Disaster Artist* may not present the Tommy Wiseau I’ve come to know through his work and words and choices before and after *The Room*, but it uses what he represents, more than what he is, to lionize the medium itself and the fools who would dare fraternize with it, when it recreates him and his work on the silver screen, and in that way, does more justice to Wiseau than even the man himself could.
