Still Can't Seem to Get Out of The Room
The Room has been around since 2003 and is arguably starting to, if it hasn't already, become completely played out. I am sure it will remain a cult favorite and be around for a long time. I have no doubt about that. I recently did enjoy going to a midnight showing with lots of yelling at the screen ("Hi Denny!"), plastic spoons tossed around the auditorium, a few footballs in the audience and several people dressed up as Lisa and Johnny.
Whether you think The Room is some sort of zeitgeist, so bad it's good or just a warning to filmmakers to be careful what they wish for, it seems to be all around us. Tom Bissell wrote a great article about it in last month Harper's Magazine, there is a talking Johnny bobblehead for sale and a few fans have gone as far as creating an online video game for it. I guess there is something unmistakably built into the celluloid of this goddamn film.
My original attention was to write a short post about Tommy Wiseau's new movie, The House That Dripped Blood on Alex, which screened at this summer's Comic Con, but like some weird force of nature, The Room refused to be ignored. Be it strange alchemy, odd twist of fate or irony on steroids that conjured this film into such an underground success is beyond anyone, but the odd and oddly confident Mr. Wiseau. If his next film is as badly interesting as his first hit, I'm sure I'll be smoking up to go check it out. But my doubts run high as I usually.