View Poll Results: Anyway, how you rate this?

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  • I tired, I wasted, I love it, darling!

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  • I FED UP WID DIS MOVIE!!!

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Thread: The Disaster Artist (James Franco)

  1. #1
    Evil mind, evil sword. Ivan Drago's Avatar
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    The Disaster Artist (James Franco)

    Last edited by Ivan Drago; 11-23-2017 at 05:47 PM.
    Last Five Films I've Seen (Out of 5)

    The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Mackesy, 2022) 4.5
    Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (Crawford, 2022) 4
    Confess, Fletch (Mottola, 2022) 3.5
    M3GAN (Johnstone, 2023) 3.5
    Turning Red (Shi, 2022) 4.5
    Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 5

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  2. #2
    Evil mind, evil sword. Ivan Drago's Avatar
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    I'm going to be a part of a group review of this for the website I write for, so my full thoughts will come before its official release here (December 8th). But until then, I can tell you that it's hilarious enough for both Room enthusiasts and the general public to enjoy, while portraying Tommy and Greg in such an endearing way, and staying grounded in its realistic depiction of Los Angeles.

    This was everything I wanted it to be, and I can't wait to see it again.
    Last Five Films I've Seen (Out of 5)

    The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Mackesy, 2022) 4.5
    Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (Crawford, 2022) 4
    Confess, Fletch (Mottola, 2022) 3.5
    M3GAN (Johnstone, 2023) 3.5
    Turning Red (Shi, 2022) 4.5
    Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 5

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  3. #3
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    James Franco's lead performance keeps the movie consistently fun. But there's not a lot of insight here. Unlike Ed Wood, which I think successfully explores what happens when reckless ambition is unmatched by discernible talent, this film seems to waver between a highly romanticized version of Wiseau's quirks and moments of unnecessarily pointing out why the awful movie he made is funny. I did not like the celebrity 'testimonials' that open the film. And all along, I got the nagging feeling that I was helping add to Wiseau's completely unjustified celebrity. But it's clearly a film made with joy and I did laugh a lot. I would perhaps have enjoyed a film that wasn't so clearly in bed with its subject matter.
    Last edited by Spinal; 12-04-2017 at 01:54 PM.
    Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
    The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
    Us (Peele, 2019) ***1/2
    Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
    Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
    Shadow (Zhang, 2018) ***
    Oslo, August 31st (J. Trier, 2011) ****
    Climax (Noé, 2018) **1/2
    Fighting With My Family (Merchant, 2019) **
    Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013) ***

  4. #4
    In the belly of a whale Henry Gale's Avatar
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    Yeah, I got to see it on Friday, and I had a blast watching it, but it's hard for me to really separate my own love for The Room, Sestero's book, the strange phenomenon of it all, and even having met awkwardly met them both Wiseau and Sestero in person (to this day Tommy is the only time I've felt downright speechless and weirdly frozenly nervous to speak with someone "famous", as he has just as much of an enigmatic energy as you'd assume, with him being so hard to read or even know how he perceives your admiration of him), to really know how to put a real discerning critical eye to Franco's film here. But I will try!

    I did love watching it, but Spinal I basically agree with every issue you bring up, and I have a lot of other feelings in terms of stuff that doesn't work or is misjudged in its framing, even if they make the film more effective, especially for those who are not versed in the bizarre world of its cult (a.k.a. most people). But again, it's largely very well-made and has so much great material to pull from that I think Neustadter & Weber's screenplay is the key thing that really pulls it all together nicely to make a handsomely streamlined narrative basically just about two people who would never have "made it" (in the sense of any of us simply knowing their names for technically doing the thing they set out to), if it weren't for one another, even if this movie had to be the way, and that their fragile friendship would basically foreshadow the contention between Tommy's passion project and the world's perception of it, proving that the his contempt for Greg had nothing to do with him, but had more to do with own insecurities about the world and other people, both being thing he largely doesn't understand, despite his desire to so vividly, unashamedly put himself out there for them.

    The Room was never going to be good in any traditional sense. And say it somehow, miraculously was, it's still very possible that no one would ever be really talking about it today. It still would've been something made so far outside the system, as well as outside any parameters of common sense as a production, that its top-to-bottom aura of being an absolute anomaly is what translates so purely to it as a film, and that's what's carried it between people telling the next person that they had to see it for years now. It's a remarkable piece of work for how it's made, entirely in terms of its looks and feels as a final product, regardless of needing to know the potential "why" story of its hazardous production as the key narrative necessary to explaining its insanity onscreen. And maybe that might in some way contradict everything here and mean that I think that makes this movie pointless as anything but another Franco "What if I.." exercise, but I think it really does manages to be a good movie for its time about the definitive bad movie of its time, and perhaps that's the jock-y position it was going to succeed on (in terms of at worst, it would still get higher marks than its subject, with the all-time faintest praise of "At least it's better than The Room!") against the weirdos of its cinematic worldview, but the fact that it's as truly interested and sincere about how it treats this story is what I think truly justifies it all, and that commitment is what leads to making it such an enjoyable experience, and even weirdly emotionally effective one.

    If this is the way the masses come to appreciate and connect to The Room in a way similar to how I have for many years, then all the better for it. But to me, the original film is everything I ever needed to be fascinated with it. Having said that, I'm glad this film exists both for its merits as a self-contained story (as much as it strains that with its beginning and ending bits) but especially as a more accessible entry point, a bigger cultural celebration of it, and overall something more of justification for it being as prominent as its sure to be over time.

    You can never explain something as truly insane as The Room, but The Disaster Artist is an interesting exploration in attempting to do so with all the information it has by people with more expertise in the field.

    Oh and it's also very funny and worth seeing for that alone, which seems like is kind of a big goal for it. Maybe I just should've said that?

    *** / 7.6
    Last edited by Henry Gale; 12-04-2017 at 05:01 AM.
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  5. #5
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    Yes, my perspective is from somebody who watched The Room once many years ago and didn't really get nearly as much pleasure from it as other people seem to. I mostly thought it was just boring.
    Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
    The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
    Us (Peele, 2019) ***1/2
    Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
    Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
    Shadow (Zhang, 2018) ***
    Oslo, August 31st (J. Trier, 2011) ****
    Climax (Noé, 2018) **1/2
    Fighting With My Family (Merchant, 2019) **
    Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013) ***

  6. #6
    Evil mind, evil sword. Ivan Drago's Avatar
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    Last Five Films I've Seen (Out of 5)

    The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Mackesy, 2022) 4.5
    Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (Crawford, 2022) 4
    Confess, Fletch (Mottola, 2022) 3.5
    M3GAN (Johnstone, 2023) 3.5
    Turning Red (Shi, 2022) 4.5
    Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 5

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  7. #7
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Is Tommy Wiseau for real?

    I mean, is he just an astoundingly eccentric individual? Or is he one of the greatest trolls of all time?

    With so much mystery around his past, and interviews being so baffling and strange...is he really this guy? Or is he a persona invented by someone who has method acted their way through life for 20 years?

    I saw an interview with him and Franco (I think it was on Kimmel), where Wiseau openly stated that his accent is constantly changing. Which would mean he’s putting it on, right?

    So who is this guy really?
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  8. #8
    His accent is real. He is Polish.

    I think he is also a compulsive liar. When people started to like The Room as an unintentional comedy, he's like, "No, I totally meant to make it a comedy," in an effort to save face.

  9. #9
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    But what he said about himself - that he constantly changes his accent - is what was weird to me.

    Do you mean him saying that about himself was part of his pentiant for lying?
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  10. #10
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Spinal (view post)
    Yes, my perspective is from somebody who watched The Room once many years ago and didn't really get nearly as much pleasure from it as other people seem to. I mostly thought it was just boring.
    There's ten minutes of so-bad-it's-good material in The Room, the rest is just bad. There are way better bad movies to love.

  11. #11
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    So who is this guy really?
    I imagine if we knew this, people would feel less comfortable giggling at his goofy antics. A mysteriously wealthy guy who has moved to a different country and doesn't want you to know anything about his past or how he acquired his money? Yeah .... that's probably legit.
    Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
    The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
    Us (Peele, 2019) ***1/2
    Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
    Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
    Shadow (Zhang, 2018) ***
    Oslo, August 31st (J. Trier, 2011) ****
    Climax (Noé, 2018) **1/2
    Fighting With My Family (Merchant, 2019) **
    Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013) ***

  12. #12
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    There's ten minutes of so-bad-it's-good material in The Room, the rest is just bad. There are way better bad movies to love.
    Samurai Cop is tops for my money.
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  13. #13
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Samurai Cop is tops for my money.
    That reminds me, part two is somewhere on Roku...

  14. #14
    3-2-1 Let's Porg Neclord's Avatar
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    I think there's definitely a less cuddly version of this story to be made, but I liked it anyway.

  15. #15
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Samurai Cop is tops for my money.
    Troll 2 and Wolf Devil Woman for me.

  16. #16
    Piss off, ghost! number8's Avatar
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    I will put The Room far above failed genre pics, because I feel like it engages your brain to make sense of it much more than the over-the-top trashiness of championed bad movies do, and that's just more satisfying for me to laugh at than stilted acting, gonzo plotting, or cheap effects. There's a recognizably sincere attempt at a singular point of view in The Room that theoretically could track to what one would call a story, but along the way it became absolutely incoherent because of this guy's warped understanding of human behavior (The Disaster Artist book's insight into Wiseau's bizarre day to day relationships with people really put this clearly for me). It makes sense that the cult following for it started in LA. It's like a deconstructed drama template that's been put back together wrong. I love it dearly.
    Quote Quoting Donald Glover
    I was actually just reading about Matt Damon and he’s like, ‘There’s a culture of outrage.’ I’m like, ‘Well, they have a reason to be outraged.’ I think it’s a lot of dudes just being scared. They’re like, ‘What if I did something and I didn’t realize it?’ I’m like, ‘Deal with it.’
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  17. #17
    All of the purportedly "so-bad-they're-good" movies that I have seen are just plain bad and boring. It's something I have never gotten into, the ironic celebration of shitty film-making. I only watched The Room because I read the book and I wanted to see the final product. Yeah, it's bad and boring, but at least I could spend most of the time recalling the behind the scenes gossip from the book, which helped me grind my way through it.
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  18. #18
    Piss off, ghost! number8's Avatar
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    Saw this last night. And oh man, as someone who's been swimming in the Tommy Wiseau mystery for 10+ years now, do I have thoughts. I can't help but to compare it to the book, which is tonally very different, but I do think this is well done as a comedic story of the behind the scenes making of the movie. You get a different portrait of Tommy here than you get from the book. Franco seems to have gotten chummy with Wiseau over the making of the film, and I wonder if that colored the outcome. I keep thinking about how Wiseau said Franco's movie is 99% true, while he said Sestero's book was only about 40%. I think that's tied to his need to be seen as a sympathetic dreamer, which the movie positions him to be.

    This movie paints Wiseau and Sestero as the two dudes from American Movie. The book has a more sinister edge to the way it described their friendship, and even self-compared to Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley. For that reason, I think the book is far more interesting of a story than this movie, but I think Franco doesn't really want to Heart of Darkness or Ed Wood this thing. I think he just set out to make a love letter to both The Room and the cult following it has amassed. It's obvious in the way it transplants the baffled reactions to The Room into the dialogue of the crew members, especially Seth Rogen's Sandy. A lot of the jokes here hinges on the audience's hindsight knowledge (which is why I think you get so much more out of this movie if you know The Room intimately).

    The celebrity testimonials that opened the movie was weird at first, and the staggering amount of cameos got distracting, but by the end I kind of got the role they served, especially watching the painstakingly recreated The Room scenes. This movie is as much a vanity project for Franco as The Room was for Wiseau*. This is really just a bunch of his buddies getting together to pay tribute to a movie they all love (he even invented a meeting between Cranston and Sestero that never happened in real life, just to shoehorn in his Why Him? costar). It's like he made this just for the chance to do a Tommy Wiseau impression that makes his friends laugh, rather than to show how mysterious and fascinating Tommy Wiseau is. This is a Hollywood version of Tommy, which means it's also a huge gift to Tommy from Franco, because this movie finally fulfills Tommy's dream of being seen as a hero, rather than a Frankenstein's monster.

    * My friend said after the movie that it would make a fun double feature with INT. LEATHER BAR.
    Quote Quoting Donald Glover
    I was actually just reading about Matt Damon and he’s like, ‘There’s a culture of outrage.’ I’m like, ‘Well, they have a reason to be outraged.’ I think it’s a lot of dudes just being scared. They’re like, ‘What if I did something and I didn’t realize it?’ I’m like, ‘Deal with it.’
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  19. #19
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Many lifetimes ago, one of my friends hosted a bad movie night once a week. It was decided that 1980's The Apple was the Citizen Kane of bad movies. I believe Gymkata was like the Tokyo Story.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  20. #20
    Guttenbergian Pop Trash's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting number8 (view post)
    I will put The Room far above failed genre pics, because I feel like it engages your brain to make sense of it much more than the over-the-top trashiness of championed bad movies do, and that's just more satisfying for me to laugh at than stilted acting, gonzo plotting, or cheap effects. There's a recognizably sincere attempt at a singular point of view in The Room that theoretically could track to what one would call a story, but along the way it became absolutely incoherent because of this guy's warped understanding of human behavior (The Disaster Artist book's insight into Wiseau's bizarre day to day relationships with people really put this clearly for me). It makes sense that the cult following for it started in LA. It's like a deconstructed drama template that's been put back together wrong. I love it dearly.
    Yeah I love it too. Something about the late 90s/early 2000s DIY indie aesthetic gone horribly wrong, plus the retardo Cassavettes singular point-of-view of Wiseau, plus the complete lack of self-awareness surrounding Wiseau and his misogynistic antics, plus Wiseau's bizarre almost Borat-like vaguely European, vaguely foreign persona. It's just a goldmine.
    Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:

    Top Gun: Maverick - 8
    Top Gun - 7
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
    Crimes of the Future - 8
    Videodrome - 9
    Valley Girl - 8
    Summer of '42 - 7
    In the Line of Fire - 8
    Passenger 57 - 7
    Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6



  21. #21
    Piss off, ghost! number8's Avatar
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    The Room prepared me to become a Yorgos Lanthimos fan.
    Quote Quoting Donald Glover
    I was actually just reading about Matt Damon and he’s like, ‘There’s a culture of outrage.’ I’m like, ‘Well, they have a reason to be outraged.’ I think it’s a lot of dudes just being scared. They’re like, ‘What if I did something and I didn’t realize it?’ I’m like, ‘Deal with it.’
    Movie Theater Diary

  22. #22
    Cinematographer Mal's Avatar
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    Franco's performance is amazing. Dave Franco ... ehh not so much. But the scope of the picture and its tale of two buddies trying to make it is so entertaining and not too fantastical as a story of triumph. Tommy is a weird dude but the film keeps his interesting bits on the ground. Its not a perfect picture but the overall storytelling is strong and quite enjoyable.

  23. #23
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Am I really alone in thinking Franco’s impression of Wiseau is terrible?

    I mean, maybe his overall performance in the film is great.

    But he doesn’t resemble, sound like or act like Wiseau at all.
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  24. #24
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    But what he said about himself - that he constantly changes his accent - is what was weird to me.

    Do you mean him saying that about himself was part of his pentiant for lying?
    On Stern, him and Franco were on; Apparently he got a dialect coach and is constantly trying to get rid of his accent so he can get more roles, which is why sometimes he sounds so different.

    The most fascinating thing I find, is where he got the $6 million to shoot the the Room in the first place (which btw, is hilarous in itself that movie cost that much to make... since it's literally only 3 sets). He will say he got it from investment property and selling denim .

    His response exactly was: "I buy an apartment building for $2 million and sell for $3 million- I make a million dollars"
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    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
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  25. #25
    Piss off, ghost! number8's Avatar
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    That's one of the things revealed in the book that the movie cut completely. Sestero did find out that he's some kind of real estate whiz while filming The Room, among other facts about Tommy's origin, and put it in the book much to Tommy's chagrin. I think the movie either didn't want to get on Tommy's bad side, or thought it's more compelling form him as a character to stay a mystery.

    The book has a scene where Tommy reveals to Sestero that he was the owner of an entire multi-story building right on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf district. My jaw dropped when I learned that.
    Quote Quoting Donald Glover
    I was actually just reading about Matt Damon and he’s like, ‘There’s a culture of outrage.’ I’m like, ‘Well, they have a reason to be outraged.’ I think it’s a lot of dudes just being scared. They’re like, ‘What if I did something and I didn’t realize it?’ I’m like, ‘Deal with it.’
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