As I drove back in the darkness tonight, heat lightning began to flare across the sky as though it meant to light my way home for the specific purpose of writing this post. I will begin at some point last night....
I went down to Alexandria to meet up with my friend Pete to get some oysters, because we had been talking about getting oysters for what feels like months. They were most delicious and we had an excellent time, and under normal circumstances I would devote more writing space to this.
Immediately after seeing Pete, I went to go get a drink with CJ as part of a late-birthday thing. I would also normally devote more writing space to this. However, something happened within ten minutes of meeting up with CJ that irrevocably changed the course of this blogpost. Someone- and I can't remember exactly who or how, mentioned offhand that they had heard that Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero were in DC and doing some shows that weekend. My hand immediately went to my phone, and because we live in 2011 and technology is awesome I almost instantly had two tickets for something involving Tommy Wiseau for today at 5PM. At the time I did not really understand what I had just purchased, but I knew that I had done my future-self a great service.
I am blurry and I have no idea where I am or what is about to happen to me.
Before I continue, I need to cover a few basics for those who may be unfamiliar with the subject matter of Tommy Wiseau.
I am not and have never been a concert-going, celebrity-worshiping type. My general attitude is "hey, they're just people on a stage doing their thing. It's cool but, seriously, there's no need to obsess." There is a hole in my statement which allows for a Tommy Wiseau exemption from that general attitude. I'm pretty sure he isn't "just a person." He is either an alien or the most brilliant and dedicated actor who has ever lived.
In 2009 CJ introduced me to the work (singular) of Mr. Wiseau by forcing me to watch his magnum opus: a movie called "The Room." This is a movie which he wrote, produced (for $6 million that he... earned... somehow), directed, and starred in. It is a movie which instantly blew away all of my conceptions as to how bad a movie could possibly be. It is so bad, in fact, that it inspires incredulous spasms of laughter from start to finish. It is the funniest movie I have ever seen.
The plot follows a man named Johnny (played by Tommy Wiseau) who is supposedly a perfect man with a perfect life and a perfect future-wife (yeah, that's the way it's phrased) named Lisa.
Here he is as seen from the front row.
For absolutely no reason whatsoever beyond being pure evil, Lisa decides to cheat on Johnny with Johnny's BEST FRIEND (a fact that is repeated over and over just in case you missed it the first time) Mark. Mark, played by Greg Sestero, does approximately half the work of a cardboard cutout of himself in any given scene and puts up absolutely no fight when Lisa seduces him. Also, Lisa's mother has just found out that she has breast cancer (a fact which is never again mentioned).
Later, Lisa hatches a super-evil plan to get Johnny drunk for no reason (he doesn't drink, but he also doesn't put up much of a fight when given a drink.) with what can only POSSIBLY be a combination of scotch and vodka (AKA Scotchka, the drink that will NEVER catch on.). Johnny gets drunk and then in the next scene bursts onto a rooftop shouting that he did not hit Lisa. "I did naawwwwwt." It is only a couple of scenes later that Lisa tells her mother that Johnny hit her. Her mother does not seem to care. Also, there's a strange college student who wanders in and out of their apartment and seems to be mentally unstable. Also, there are other random people who sneak into their apartment to make out for no reason. Also, there are gratuitous "love" scenes whose descriptions I have left out for the purpose of being a decent human being.
Nothing that happens above changes the characters in any way. The film thus continues to its only possible conclusion. I will not ruin it for you. Just trust me that no amount of explanation can really get across the absolute train-wreck of a movie that this is. If you believe that another movie is the "worst movie ever" then you are wrong. This movie is worse than Plan Nine from Outer Space, Troll 2, Howard the Duck, Battlefield Earth, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and anything else you can think of that is supposed to be a so-bad-it's-good movie.
That insufficient description provided, I will now take us back to the theater where CJ and I arrived today about an hour early (to get good seats). We discovered that what we had bought tickets to was not, in fact, a screening of "The Room" attended by Mr. Wiseau and Mr. Sestero (which is what they have been doing for the past eight years.). Instead, amazingly, it was the second ever staged reading of an adaptation of "The Room" that would star Mr. Wiseau, Mr. Sestero, and actors drawn from Washington DC. Actually, scratch "staged reading" from the previous sentence. Tommy decided that the actors could learn all of their lines (in one day) and that it would be better just to do a live performance of the play itself. This makes perfect sense if looked at from the point of view that one might IMAGINE Tommy Wiseau to have.
We couldn't resist getting up on the stage to take a picture. I mean, we're in "The Room."
It was exactly what you would expect a completely improvised play to look like, except it had Tommy Wiseau in it. He strutted around with an amazing stage presence, looking exactly as he does in the movie: Louis XIV locks of dazzlingly gross hair, bizarrely muscular arms, the torso of an albino armadillo, and the voice of an alien who has memorized 1970's American music as covered by an Eastern European children's TV show. That may seem excessive as a description, but it's as close as I could come to the truth with mere words.
The cast gamely slogged through what seemed to be an almost exact transcript of the movie (minus the "love" scenes) including all of my favorite moments. I say "almost exact" because some of my favorite characters (for example, the flowershop girl who later became the coffeeshop girl) decided to just randomly pop into scenes and add extra lines. I was okay with this.
"Hi doggie!"
"Hi Mark!" "Oh, we're playing football from three feet away again."
I forgot to mention that Greg Sestero spent the entire play trying to intentionally derail it by pointing out obvious things that didn't make sense. The audience joined in as well. At one point when a character added a line that was not in the original movie, a man behind me shouted "THAT'S NOT CANON!" This proved popular with the general audience and it was invoked several more times.
At one point while sitting on stage alone awaiting Mr. Wiseau for an entrance, Greg (as Mark) said something along the lines of: "I wonder what the hell I'm doing here." A member of the audience then yelled back "I bet you ask yourself that every day since he made the movie." Mr. Sestero then gave a thumbs up to the audience. This play had no fourth wall- the audience was a character as well.
"I definitely have breast cancer."
Also, Lisa's mom is younger and more attractive than she is because... why not.
And for good measure, go play football in the audience.
While we're at it, let's add a character who wasn't in the movie. His name is Travis. He exists to hit on Lisa's mom. There's more to this story later.
The play ended, as the movie does, with Johnny (Tommy) destroying EVERYTHING on stage. It was brilliant. Then he did something that was not in the movie (so it's not a spoiler) and suffocated himself with a plastic bag. When Lisa and Mark entered to find Johnny's dead body, someone in the audience yelled "he's still breathing!" and Greg nodded and slowly tightened the bag around Johnny's head. It was at the same time the most horrific and yet most amazing moment that I have ever seen on a stage. I love the movie, but somehow this play version of the movie was fifty times more awesome.
From left to right, Mark, Johnny's body, Denny, and Lisa
Then there was a question and answer session. Someone asked what Johnny and Lisa drank in the drinking scene, to which Tommy replied "ahhh... you have movie... you go watch... you know. Ask a real question." Someone else asked Tommy where he was from. "Nooooooo. That's not real question. Let me teach you lesson. English 101. Question. Ask me one." This proceeded for five minutes (he managed to not answer a single question, but in the most awe-inspiring way), at which point we were told that Tommy and Greg would be giving autographs and taking pictures.
CJ and I would never pass up such an opportunity, so we started standing in line. As we were in line, we saw that all of the other local actors who had been in the show were sort of milling about. One by one we called out to them asking for a picture.
This brave young man played Denny. Or Danny. Or Donnie. It really depended on how Tommy wanted to pronounce it at any given time.
Michelle, posing with her red dress, which she said Tommy asked all the girls to bring in.
While talking with the girl who played Michelle we got a lot of answers to questions that we had always wanted to ask. How was working with Tommy? Exactly how you would expect working with a crazy person might be. Were auditions like? Fifteen people showed up and they were all instantly cast. But there were only eleven on stage. Four of them quit. But there are only eleven characters. Tommy made up new ones so he could use everyone who came out. The character of Travis was made up on the spot by Tommy simply because Tommy liked the actor. The character of Peter took the roles of both Peter and Steve because Steve quit. This is ironic because in the movie version, the character of Steve was only created after the actor playing Peter quit. Had actors not quit, there were going to be back-to-back scenes repeated verbatim using different actors.
Most importantly: auditions were announced via craigslist. Had I been looking at the DC craigslist about a week ago, I too could have worked with Tommy Wiseau and been a part of "The Room." Anyone could have. Yeah.
Then we talked with the girl who played Lisa's mom, who gave us equally surprising and yet at the same time not-in-the-least-surprising stories about working with Tommy Wiseau. He made his money to finance "The Room" by selling fur pelts to North Korea. He would often sing in the shower and knew every word to "Part of That World" from The Little Mermaid. He would grab members of the female cast in inappropriate ways. There is no way to separate fact and fiction with this man.
Also, she was playing Lisa's mom because the original actress quit. Figures.
Finally, it was time to meet the man himself.
First, he autographed my shirt. It says "Love, Tommy. 06/11/2011."
Then he did the same to CJ's shirt.
Then we took our picture with Greg Sestero and Tommy Wiseau, thus completing some sort of lifelong dream I'm sure we would have had if we had known about "The Room" before two years ago. CJ and I look as though we've just met the real Santa Claus. That's how it felt, truly. I realize I sound as crazy as Tommy himself in saying that.
"Did you like eeet?" He asked me.
"Yes. So much. I want to be in it if you do it again next year." I said.
"Hey, yeah, ya nevah knooow. Send in a headshot."
This brings me to my final thought on this most epic and wonderful of nights. Tommy Wiseau may be playing the greatest trick that an actor has ever played. In the movie "The Prestige," a core plot device is that a GREAT magician will pretend, for his entire lifetime, to be something which he is not... all for one amazing trick which no one can explain. I can explain a lot of things. I enjoy understanding and rationalizing and working out how things work. I can not understand or explain Tommy Wiseau. I think that's why I'm such a fan... and why I'm holding out for the most spectacular reveal of all time.
