You're Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!!
March 5, 2010 10:08 AM Subscribe

"Everybody betray me. I fed UP with this world!" It's The Room soundboard.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates (57 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite

Previously.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:09 AM on March 5, 2010

Oh, hi soundboard

(The Room is in the house, NSFW YT BTW)
posted by filthy light thief at 10:18 AM on March 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Leave your stupid comments in your pocket.
posted by BobbyDigital at 10:29 AM on March 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

I didn't hit her! Oh, hey MetaFilter.
posted by StrangerInAStrainedLand at 10:37 AM on March 5, 2010

I did naht hit her. I did naaaaaht.
posted by fire&wings at 10:39 AM on March 5, 2010

This movie is a highly enjoyable movie. But I do not and probably never will understand how it was financed. God bless America!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:44 AM on March 5, 2010

I've not seen it. On a scale of Uwe Boll films how bad is The Room?
posted by Artw at 10:47 AM on March 5, 2010

> I've not seen it. On a scale of Uwe Boll films how bad is The Room?

Apples and oranges. Uwe Boll is a lazy hack who churns out lazy, boring movies. The Room is...well, it's kind of like an alien observed life on earth for a few ~~years~~ ~~months~~ days and then decided to film a relationship drama. All of the basic elements of human interaction are there, but it's all wrong somehow.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:52 AM on March 5, 2010 [21 favorites]

I like all the football in The Room.
posted by Mister_A at 10:54 AM on March 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Our drinking game involved each person picking a name and drinking whenever that name was mentioned. Oh hi, Denny. Hi, Mark. Oh, Denny, Denny, Denny.
posted by sawdustbear at 10:54 AM on March 5, 2010

An interview with the computer business' own Juliette Danielle, who invited all of your friends. Good thinking!
posted by davidjmcgee at 10:56 AM on March 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

A lot of the people I know who think this film is a hideous and hilarious misfire are themselves responsible for some terrible work. It's like there is a food chain at the bottom of the food chain, where the wretched feed off of mocking each other's mediocrity.

Normally, I agree with you. I don't have that much patience for people watching bad movie on purpose, when there are so many *good* movies that need an audience. But there are two exceptions:

One is Nic Cage's "Wicker Man." The other is "The Room." It really is something.*

*haven't actually seen the whole film. But the clips on Youtube are pretty fantastic.
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:00 AM on March 5, 2010

If you're curious about The Room this 17-second exchange- with the odd music, the non-sequiturs, the continuity gaffes and an exchange completely alien to normal human communication- pretty much encapsulates the film. Although it is missing Tommy Wiseau's muscular butt.
posted by joechip at 11:01 AM on March 5, 2010 [13 favorites]

OH THAT'S VERY INTERESTING STORY when I moved to San Francisco uh with two suitcases and I didn't know anyone and I have...
posted by uaudio at 11:03 AM on March 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

What was the interesting part?
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth at 11:16 AM on March 5, 2010

For fans of this movie, do check out After Last Season (MeFi thread). There's a DVD out now. You Will Love It.
posted by naju at 11:18 AM on March 5, 2010

Hi doggie.
posted by haveanicesummer at 11:20 AM on March 5, 2010

Also, if you've never seen THE ROOM and you need a primer, here's an article I contributed to on The Onion AV Club and a viewer's guide some friends and I made (also on the Onion):

"The New Cult Canon: THE ROOM" by Scott Tobias

A Viewer's Guide to THE ROOM
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth at 11:20 AM on March 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

Our drinking game involved each person picking a name and drinking whenever that name was mentioned. Oh hi, Denny. Hi, Mark. Oh, Denny, Denny, Denny.

How did this turn out? This will affect my life in ~~many~~one important ways.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:26 AM on March 5, 2010

Is Birdemic the new The Room?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 11:28 AM on March 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

You know that species of creepy, overly sincere guy who tells unfunny and disturbing jokes to strangers he waits in line with at the coffee place? It's like that guy (who also has Fabio-ish hair and an unplaceable accent) somehow obtained a few hundred thousand dollars and made a movie to bring to life his daydreams about women and the world generally, and it turns out his impression of the world comes from the non-porn parts of porn movies and commercials for new episodes of soap operas. And then he decides, what the hell, it's my movie, I'll take the starring role, even though I am actually the worst actor ever, even though my absolute woodenness makes Andie McDowell saying "Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed" in Four Weddings and a Funeral look Oscar-worthy.
posted by sallybrown at 11:28 AM on March 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

My workplace is rather quiet and spontaneous laughter doesn't go unnoticed.

That being said, knew I shouldn't have clicked on this link and I knew I shouldn't have clicked on "Hi doggie." But I just couldn't help it.
posted by Kronoss at 11:30 AM on March 5, 2010

A lot of the people I know who think this film is a hideous and hilarious misfire are themselves responsible for some terrible work. It's like there is a food chain at the bottom of the food chain, where the wretched feed off of mocking each other's mediocrity.

I am completely untalented at nearly everything and would probably produce a terrible film if I tried to write and direct one myself, but I personally think The Room is intrinsically hilarious or at least enough of an anomaly that it's genuinely entertaining.

I have seen a lot of bad films, but they are mostly bad because they were mediocre in some way (production values, editing, writing, acting, etc.). Plan 9 From Outer Space, for example, is not much more than a standard sci-fi movie made for almost no money and some random footage of Bella Lugosi edited in.

The Room is bad on an entirely different level, it has no semblance of a coherent plot, the lead actor can barely speak English, and most of the interactions between the characters are completely baffling to the point that it makes you wonder if Wiseau had ever actually talked to anyone in real life. It's relatively easy to find that kind of off-kilter terribleness in bad written works, but in the film world the barrier to entry is high enough that not many films actually get made that are unintentionally so far off from the elements of a normal film.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:34 AM on March 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

I think it would be great to get Brandon Bird, for example, to make The Room Action Playset, or a colorform book, or those scratch-and-apply sticker thingy. Make your own incomprehensible scenes! Have them play an eniter game of football while only being 6 feet apart at all times! Get one of those greeting card voice chips so whenever you open the book or playset, it says "Oh, Hi there!"

As bad as this film is, and all the mocking it gets, he got the film made. That in itself is an amazing accomplishment. All the countless barriers and impossible challenges that stand between a filmmaker and the premier night keep most projects from getting off the ground to begin with. That fact alone gets him some credit. He did it. He had no control over the reaction to it, both positive and negative, but he rolled with it, played it for all it was worth, and he has made a midnight movie cult classic. He will do more, and people will give him the money to do so. And that makes me happy.

This film is the equivalent of these early tests of flying machines, disasters, but people want to see it again and again. I love bad films, and I was beginning to think we would never again see the likes of Coleman Francis, Anthony Cardoza, Ed Wood, and such. Tommy Wiseau is hope for the future.
posted by chambers at 11:38 AM on March 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's like that guy (who also has Fabio-ish hair and an unplaceable accent) somehow obtained a few hundred thousand dollars

Hah. His production and marketing budget was SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS.

The first week's (and only week it was in theaters, not as a midnight show years later)box office take was something like $1200, if I remember correctly.
posted by chambers at 11:41 AM on March 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

His production and marketing budget was SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS

I no longer feel even slightly guilty for mocking him. WHY LISA WHY WHY!!!
posted by sallybrown at 11:48 AM on March 5, 2010

Sorry to play pocket psychologist, but what makes The Room so terribly, terribly funny isn't simply its shitty production values, although all that helps helps. It's that the film appears to be a pretty good representation of a truly narcissistic mind. The main character, played by the film's writer/director, is constantly praised by everyone in the film for being a fantastic human being, yet these same people turn on the protagonist for no discernible reason. No one's actions make sense until you accept the director's worldview, which is so bizarre and unreal that laughter results. The movie is the unusually pure vision of an unusual mind. It's so fucking funny.
posted by Bookhouse at 11:48 AM on March 5, 2010 [13 favorites]

What was the interesting part?

Leave your stupid comments in your oh that was quoted already. Hey, dondwurrieaboudid.

For anyone who hasn't seen this yet, I recommend watching it without having read a primer. Get a pizza, a bottle of scotch and a bottle of vodka and you're all set.

Also, be sure to watch the Tommy Wiseau interview included on the DVD. It's beautiful.
posted by cog_nate at 11:51 AM on March 5, 2010

Thank you for this. Thank you so much.

I have nothing new to say about the complex fascination I have with the movie, but what amuses me most is trying to get SOME sort of handle on this guy, on who he is, where he came from, and how he could possibly have made this thing. It blows the mind, and not just in a pure "great bad movie" sense. There's more to this. This is an utterly amazing social specimen, to be enjoyed and studied for all of time. It's the work of someone who has such a completely different view of reality than you or me that he actually thinks it's appropriate to have a mother tell her daughter she has breast cancer in a scene and then never have it be mentioned again. For example, I mean.

I think characters say "hi" to each other so much because he actually thinks that movies need to do that; that is, scenes need to start with introductions and hellos, just like in real life.
posted by ORthey at 11:55 AM on March 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I hear that Mr. Wiseau actually speaks normal American English, and that he affects the accent for everything creatively and promotionally related to The Room. Can anyone confirm?
posted by infinitewindow at 11:56 AM on March 5, 2010

you know what movie reminded me of the room? Korean vampire flick Thirst. just cos of all the overlong pointless sex scenes! I was ready for an intermission like they do when you see the room in L.A.
posted by jcruelty at 12:01 PM on March 5, 2010

ORthey - read some of the interviews, and you'll see Wiseau takes it all very seriously. And in the interview with Juliette Danielle, as linked above by davidjmcgee, you'll hear that he doesn't understand how bad the movie was while making it.

He takes his craft very seriously. There wasn't a lot of cracking up on set. But I can remember one time that I just lost it. It's the line where Johnny has locked himself in the bathroom and he says, “In a few minutes, bitch.” I was doing okay until I saw the entire crew in my field of vision, stifling their laughter. I couldn't help it. Tommy came out and demanded to know what was so funny. That made it worse!

But if you cringe at the thought of sitting through a bad movie by itself, I highly recommend the Rifftrax for the film. If nothing else, there is dialogue to distract you from the gratuitous sex scenes. And it should make up for the lack of anyone being beaten to death with their own arm.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:10 PM on March 5, 2010

The thing about The Room is that you can't make something like that on purpose. If you set out to create something with this weirdly earnest tone and these hilariously aberrant "social" interactions, it just wouldn't work. The Room can only arise spontaneously, never by design.
posted by Mister_A at 12:20 PM on March 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

I want to see this film, but I'm afraid I'll be let down. "I don't see what the big deal was. That wasn't that hilariously awful and bizarre."

Also, having made my own awful movie, I'm not one to point and laugh.
posted by brundlefly at 12:31 PM on March 5, 2010

I know there's the danger of over-selling the badness of this movie, but man, it's like as weird as Santa Sangre in a totally non–self-aware way, which is oddly beautiful.
posted by Mister_A at 12:35 PM on March 5, 2010

Is Birdemic the new The Room?

Having somehow managed to watch this twice in 24 hours, I can say it's a contender. The awful CGI is what draws people in, but as Bookhouse pointed out, low production values are not enough to catapult a film into this upper echelon of shit. Birdemic luckily also shares with The Room the impression that it was created by someone from outer space only roughly in tune with regular human interactions.

The canon of awful movies has a strange balancing act between amateurishness and quality production. So say, Michael Bay movies may suck, but virtually nothing with a $100M budget can enter this same stratosphere of awful. But on the other hand, giving a teenager a handycam and $20 for beer is not enough to make a sincerely awful movie. There needs to be a certain degree of earnestness and the sense that the creator got enough marginally talented people on board because of that earnestness.
posted by Adam_S at 12:36 PM on March 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I hear that Mr. Wiseau actually speaks normal American English, and that he affects the accent for everything creatively and promotionally related to The Room. Can anyone confirm?

I had to leave the LA screening early (like really early) this past weekend. On my way to the parking garage I rode in the elevator with Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero. I didn't let on that I knew who they were, and Tommy seemed to still have an accent while they talked. It maybe wasn't as thick and incomprehensible, so it could be that he plays it up in certain instances.
posted by dogwalker at 12:50 PM on March 5, 2010

The Room is in the House!
posted by ALongDecember at 1:00 PM on March 5, 2010

Oh damn, everybody betray me.
posted by ALongDecember at 1:01 PM on March 5, 2010

Oh hi, ALongDecember.
posted by Mister_A at 1:26 PM on March 5, 2010

brundlefly- It is definitely worth watching. I was on a bad movie kick for a while after finding The Beast of Yucca Flats on DVD at Walgreens, and after wading through several Ed Wood films, I stumbled upon The Room.

After having seen it, I feel like it was destiny for me to stumble upon it, sort of like the end of the bad movie journey.

Sadly, I didn't discover Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus until much later, that would have made a great penultimate film in my "journey". Just terrible.
posted by Clamwacker at 1:43 PM on March 5, 2010

Oh hey, let me tell you about my pal Reptilicus.
posted by Mister_A at 1:47 PM on March 5, 2010

SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS.

Entertainment Weekly offers a little background on the budget:

The filmmaker has always refused to discuss where he got the movie's $6 million budget, but he now hints that at least some of the money came from a clothing import business. ''I tell you a little bit, but that's it,'' he says. ''We import from Korea the leather jackets that we design here in America. If you work, you have to save money, right? I didn't get money from the sky. I was preparing, let's put it this way.''

Note that he doesn't specify which Korea.
posted by Iridic at 1:49 PM on March 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Here is Taihei Imamura's review of Reptilicus:

WTF, Gaijin?
posted by Mister_A at 1:53 PM on March 5, 2010

Took me four years to get around to see The Room. And despite walking into it fully cognizant of how terrible it was, I was absolutely, utterly gobsmacked by it. The great thing about it is that your immersion into the cold bath of it's awfulness is immediate and does not let up. Even after it's over you are left with a big box of chocolate covered WTF that you eat while humming "I Will".
posted by hecho de la basura at 2:34 PM on March 5, 2010

There's a Tommy Wiseau as Johnny action figure!
posted by theperfectcrime at 3:04 PM on March 5, 2010

I've said it once, I'll say it again. As soon as anyone brings up The Room, I immediately (and VERY unwillingly) visualize Tommy Wiseau's quivering naked flank. It's really quite traumatic. Damn you MetaFilter.....
posted by Go Banana at 3:14 PM on March 5, 2010

I must say Tommy there is a part of me that really enjoyed watching you on the screen because your presence is very, um, ah, let’s say anti-Hollywood. But when you are on the screen you look and sound most of the time like you’ve been drinking heavily. What were you drinking when you were filming The Room?

posted by the duck by the oboe at 3:30 PM on March 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

the duck by the oboe: That interview was amazing. His answers are so relentlessly positive, no matter how horrible the guy is to his movie, but he also dissembles like a politician. It's insane.
posted by haveanicesummer at 4:04 PM on March 5, 2010

I think I will actually have to sit down and watch this movie now.
posted by koeselitz at 4:25 PM on March 5, 2010

Did anyone ever figure out what it's called "The Room?"
posted by JHarris at 6:20 PM on March 5, 2010

Er, make that why it's called The Room. Sometimes I display an almost-Wiseauian capacity for misspeaking. You are my rose you are my rose you are my rose....
posted by JHarris at 7:09 PM on March 5, 2010

You assholes. Somebody should have warned me.
posted by koeselitz at 10:33 PM on March 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

You assholes. Somebody should have warned me.
posted by koeselitz at 10:33 PM on March 5

You know that scene in The Ring at the end when the mother is making the kid dub tapes? Yeah, this is kind of like that. Sorry.
posted by gc at 11:52 PM on March 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates: Is Birdemic the new The Room?

After reading your comment I sought out that movie and watched it with friends. Oh my god. I almost passed out from laughing during the bird attack scenes!
posted by JHarris at 12:50 AM on March 6, 2010

Saying The Room is a bad movie is not right. It's not even wrong.

The Room defies normal descriptions.

The Room is something that must be experienced, preferably with very close friends. Whatever you think this film is, is wrong. No amount of watching youtube clips or reading descriptions will suffice. An uninterrupted viewing is the only way to really get it.

I think The Room is definitive proof that parallel dimensions exist and can be traversed. I like to think in another time and place, The Room is that reality's Titanic.

I also have a pet theory that TW is actually a great artistic genius, and The Room is merely a prop in his all encompassing performance art masterpiece. I think it may be possible that TW had never seen a motion picture before, and created one, from scratch, based merely on passing descriptions he picked up from other people.

Note you can buy the DVD straight from the director for only $10, and he will autograph it if you ask nicely.
posted by discountfortunecookie at 10:25 AM on March 6, 2010

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You're Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!! March 5, 2010 10:08 AM Subscribe

You're Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!!
March 5, 2010 10:08 AM Subscribe