“A Review and A Defense Of Watching Bad Movies
This book is split into two stories that run parallel to each other in alternating chapters. On the one hand, we’ve got the story that chronicles the making of the movie The Room. If you haven’t seen The Room, it’s pretty batshit. I recommend it because…well, it’s hilarious, and it’s also something you don’t see a lot, which is a glimpse into the mind of one very bizarre person. Once you’ve seen the movie, these sections of the book clarify a lot of things. Yes, there is a new character introduced in the very last scene, and yes, he’s basically a stand-in for another character. Yes, there is a reason you’re confused by some of the day/night/day chronology. No, this movie isn’t horrible because it was a one-take job or something. It took a lot of doing, and oftentimes the classic, bad takes came as the best takes after three hours.
The portions of the book directly related to the making of The Room are fantastic.
The other story in this book is about the author, Greg Sestero, who also plays Mark in The Room, and his relationship with the filmmaker, Tommy Wiseau.
After reading both together, there’s no doubt in my mind that Wiseau is absolutely out of his mind. Or more accurately, the way he perceives and experiences the world is something that will never, ever make sense to anyone else. He’s wildly unpredictable, secretive, and difficult to understand, not on an empathetic level, but on a very basic level. So in that sense, I can identify that a friendship and working relationship with Tommy Wiseau would be a very difficult thing to manage.
However, I think that Sestero was not honest about his motivations. He used Wiseau, plain and simple. He stayed in Wiseau’s LA apartment while Wiseau was living in San Francisco, and he payed very low rent. His main complaints seem to come when Wiseau has the audacity to raise the rent on Greg, asking him to pay HALF. You know, the amount a roommate usually pays when occupying half an apartment.
Throughout production of The Room, Greg Sestero definitely pulls more than his weight, but make no mistake. He was paid, and in addition to what he described as a healthy paycheck, Tommy Wiseau bought him a car. As in a brand new car. I don’t get the impression that a single person in the cast or on the crew thought this movie would ever be finished, let alone that it would become the cult hit that it has. Which brings us to the question, if you’re working on a movie, banking on the fact that it’ll never see the light of day, how sorry can I feel for you when it does?
There’s a lot of other stuff going on, but overall I’ll say that regardless of whether or not Tommy Wiseau is a shitty man, Greg Sestero was a shitty friend to him, and the impression I get from the book is that Greg doesn’t feel apologetic about this because Tommy is rich, weird, and still perceives Greg as being his friend.
And the other big problem with these sections, as the two parts of the book come together you keep expecting to hear just how this kid from Eastern Europe came to be a multi-millionaire. And you get to the part where he scrabbled hard and made his way through France, then Louisiana, then ended up selling trinkets in San Francisco. And then we see that he owns several huge properties in San Francisco and operates these huge retail operations. But the meaty part, the part about how that all happens, is conspicuously absent. Hey, if you don’t know, you don’t know, but I can’t help but feel that you’re pulled through the book with some promises of answers that you will not get.
So that’s the book. Totally worth reading if you’ve seen The Room, vital reading if you’re a fan of cult movies in general. But as far as the order of things goes, definitely see the movie first. You’ll be amazed how many questions you ask during the movie (“Wait, is that the same footage from the previous sex scene?”) are answered directly in the book. And yet, the whole production is so bizarre that the answers only make it MORE interesting.
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On bad movies:
I guess I have to start by defining the kind of movie I’m talking about when I say I’m a fan of bad movies.
For me, the movie has to be something that is fully believed in by the filmmakers. That’s the key difference between a watchable and unwatchable bad movie, and that’s why a movie like The Room is interesting to me in a way that Sharknado is not.
Musically, this is why I think Miley Cyrus will go down in history as a lot more famous than her twerk partner/victim Robin Thicke. This could be a gross misinterpretation, but I feel like Miley Cyrus is a little nutty, really believes in what she is doing, and she sells it. I feel like Robin Thicke wants to wear sunglasses and have haircuts.
I think this line used to be clear in the movie world until around the time of Snakes On A Plane when no one could really tell whether the original purpose of the movie was tongue-in-cheek or not. It seems a bit of revisionist history to say the movie was made with an ironic stance because if you watch it, they don’t really go for broke in terms of snakes doing wild shit. However, the title alone sets it pretty far in the irony zone.
However, confusion aside, it’s usually pretty easy to know whether a movie is something bad that I will enjoy. Sylvester Stallone is a cop in the future who was cryogenically frozen and his name is John Spartan? I’m in. Sylvester Stallone is a cop in the future who loses his job and is named Dredd? I’m in. Sylvester Stallone is a cop in the present and his name is Tango? Obviously, I’m in. Jason Statham beats up guys to a dubstep soundtrack in an overly serious attempt to save a young girl from a drug cartel that’s more serious than ridiculous? Pass. James Bond is gritty and realistic? Pass.
Don’t get me wrong, I might enjoy a Statham ass-kicking with a purpose movie. But I’ll never enjoy it the same way I enjoy Hard Target, the movie where we hunt the deadliest prey: man. One could certainly argue that an even deadlier prey might be a man who isn’t a homeless schizophrenic, but I digress.
I find that people seem to be in two camps about bad movies. There are people who love them and people who don’t. And for the most part, people who don’t will say they find bad movies to be a waste of time. Why should I watch something bad when there’s an infinite number of good choices out there?
To an extent, I agree. I don’t make a habit of reading bad books, for example. As fun as it might be to review and tell someone about later, the reality of reading a bad book is me sitting, alone, for several hours, doing something I don’t like.
Which gets to the key of bad movies, or, as I’ll call it, Pete’s Guide To The Enjoyment of Bad Movies.
1. Do not watch a bad movie alone.
A bad movie unshared is a bad movie. A bad movie shared is an experience. Even if the movie is horrendous and unfun, you’ll bond with your fellow watchers.
2. Drink booze.
I’m serious about this one. I don’t know how people watch a bad movie sober and alone. This is how people work, not have fun.
3. If you can turn it into an event, all the better.
Bad Movie Night is, I would argue, more fun than Movie Night. Because with Movie Night, you’ll probably watch good shit, but my good shit isn’t your good shit (See Demolition Man from the above paragraphs). With bad movies, we can mostly agree on what’s bad. Not to mention that you can go to screenings of movies like The Room or, my new favorite, Fateful Findings, and sit with an audience of people who are laughing their asses off.
4. Go on a bad movie date.
Bad movies can be great date movies because, well, a date to a good movie is only as good as the movie. A bad movie is as good as the experience. These horrible movies are true date movies.
4. Highlight the Unexpected.
Part of the fun of a bad movie is that the actors, directors, whoever will make choices that would never fly in a big budget romcom. Neil Breen of Fateful Findings would not be cast as an action movie hero. He doesn’t fit the Schwarzenegger role in Preadator. But in his movies, he’s the Schwarzenegger. And the Robin Williams. And the Will Ferrell. And the Denzel Washington. If you want to see something unexpected, these movies are a good place to do so.
5. Let go of your pride.
There’s a lot of accusations going around about what it means to like something ironically and what the value of that might be. Yes, I enjoy bad movies, and it might be in an ironic way if your definition of irony accommodates the fact that I enjoy these movies on a level other than their makers intended.
The sad thing is that irony has become inseparable from hipsterism, which has become a shorthand, lazy way to criticize something. You can say something is hipster and nothing else, and people will know you don’t like it and that the fact you don’t like it is someone else’s fault. It’s not your fault that you don’t like fedoras. They are appreciated by hipsters, and therefore are empirically bad. If a group of people are bad and like something, that thing must also be bad.
So when I enjoy The Room on an ironic level, I do not enjoy it as a relationship melodrama that really changes the way I think. I enjoy it because I can tell that it was reaching for that, and it fails in spectacular fashion.
I don’t know how to laugh ironically. When I laugh at the line “What a story, Mark” it’s legit. Whatever makes a laugh happen, that laugh is the same laugh I get from a joke that was MEANT to be funny.
Which brings me to the last thing here. If you’re an unfortunate person, like me, who doesn’t find a lot of “funny” movies funny, then you’re kind of screwed. I don’t think romcoms are funny, ever. I don’t have confidence in the fact that Adam Sandler will make me laugh again in a movie. I think that Judd Apatow movies have walked a line in their mature/not mature way, and they just don’t do a lot for me. I actually get angry when I’m expected to laugh at an old woman casually smoking weed or talking about sex. I’m sorry, but I have very little confidence that Pitch Perfect will make me laugh so hard my face hurts, make me laugh so much that I want it to be not funny so I can catch a break.
The Room makes me laugh like that. As does Fateful Findings.
I’m not saying I’m more sophisticated or that someone who loves Anchorman 2 is stupid or pedestrian or whatever. I own Ghostbusters 1 & 2 and will watch each of them WAY before I watch Citizen Kane or some shit.
All I’m saying, I’m pretty sure, is that nobody has designed a laugh machine that separates the laughs I’m supposedly generating to be ironic and cool from tha laughs that emerge because what’s happening on screen is goddamn ridiculous and has to be seen to be believed.”