This isn’t
going to be a review with a score.
Non-fiction certainly can be analyzed and scored in terms of prose and
how well arguments are lad out or even the story is told, but Greg Sestero’s The
Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made
is an incredibly personal memoir about a truly awful movie. The Room is a 2003 drama (yes, drama, it
as a comedy is a retcon) and passion project for Tommy Wiseau, a man who
contains multitudes. It is an
incompetently made a, poorly scripted, and badly acted film that is notorious
on the Internet. It is also a film I saw
for the first time earlier this month with some friends because I apparently
don’t watch enough bad movies and this was the Citizen Kane of bad
movies. There isn’t any point to recount
the plot of The Room, it has one that is conveyed through absolutely no
consistencies and yet Wiseau somehow during filming tried to correct some of
his own plot holes and inconsistencies. The
Disaster Artist is two narratives in parallel: Greg Sestero’s attempts to
become an actor while becoming friends with Tommy Wiseau and the filming of The
Room. There is also a third
narrative, a proposed life story for Tommy Wiseau, a man Sestero reinforces as
incredibly guarded person who wants to be vulnerable but clearly doesn’t like
his own history and is enamored entirely with America. He is also rich.
The
relationship between Sestero and Wiseau is a fascinating one, as this is a boon
coming from Sestero’s perspective there is an inherent bias towards making
himself look good but reading The Disaster Artist and watching The
Room you get the sense that exaggerations are minor. Wiseau’s proposed life, presented in the
final chapters of the book, is filled with trauma and some basic explanations
as to why he can possibly be the way that he is. However, this does not excuse that Tommy
Wiseau as presented by Greg Sestero is manipulative, arrogant, and clearly has
his own baggage with women that implies misogyny. He is a man who loves movies, especially very
specific section of the American canon but seems to lack the creativity and
understanding of what makes a movie.
There are several points where he decries “Mickey Mouse stuff” and
presents himself as independent, even if his cinema influences are almost
entirely studio pictures. He is often
cruel to his staff, even Sestero who he admits is a friend. Relationships are often transactional, he
puts himself first, and he will screw people over to get his way.
Sestero
only starred in The Room because the money is good. For his part, his story and drive to act is
what drives many people to act. He’s an
example of a dime a dozen actor who goes eventually to Hollywood and just
doesn’t make it. It is his relationship
to Tommy that makes his story interesting, otherwise he is just another hopeful
who didn’t have the luck or connections to make it big. Sestero knows this, he looks back at his
roles as extras or the lead in Retro Puppet Master fondly. His experiences on The Room and with
Wiseau are rocky because Wiseau is a difficult person, but it is frustration
and not hatred that is where the book ends.
Sestero still works with Wiseau to this day, he is self-aware of what he
has done but he does ensure everyone else involved is portrayed fairly. If The Disaster Artist had a villain?
It is Tommy Wiseau and his pure artistic vision. The memoir leaves you with two fascinating
pictures of people and this feeling of that desire to fulfill the American
Dream. It’s both a how and a why
something like The Room exists, and those answers are almost entirely
far too normal for Hollywood.
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