The Room | |
---|---|
Theatrical release poster
|
|
Directed by | Tommy Wiseau |
Produced by | Tommy Wiseau |
Written by | Tommy Wiseau |
Starring |
|
Music by | Mladen Milicevic |
Cinematography | Todd Barron |
Edited by | Eric Chase |
Production
company |
Wiseau-Films
|
Distributed by |
|
Release date
|
|
Running time
|
99 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $6 million |
The Room is a 2003 American independent romantic drama film written, directed, produced by and starring Tommy Wiseau. The film is primarily centered on the melodramatic love triangle among amiable banker Johnny (Wiseau), his fiancée Lisa (Juliette Danielle), and his conflicted best friend Mark (Greg Sestero). A significant portion of the film is dedicated to a series of unrelated subplots, most of which involve at least one supporting character and are unresolved due to the film's inconsistent narrative structure. In an interview included as a special feature on the DVD of the film, Wiseau briefly explains the title as alluding to a room's potential to be the site of both good and bad events; in Sestero's book The Disaster Artist, Sestero recounts that Wiseau, when writing the stage-play script from which he adapted the film script, at first planned to set the entire play inside a single room.
Ross Morin, an assistant professor of film studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, United States, described The Room to Entertainment Weekly as "the Citizen Kane of bad movies". A number of notable publications have labeled it as one of the worst films ever made. Originally shown only in a limited number of California theaters, The Room quickly became a cult film due to its bizarre and unconventional storytelling and various technical and narrative flaws. Although Wiseau has retroactively characterized the film as a black comedy, audiences have generally viewed it as a poorly made drama, a viewpoint supported by some of the film's cast.
The film inspired a 2010 video game of the same name, a 2013 book titled The Disaster Artist, and an upcoming film based on The Disaster Artist, called The Masterpiece.