If you have never seen The Room you should, well should may be too strong of a word. But if you have a weird sense of humor and love terrible movies, this movie is amazing. Some years back a friend of mine told me to watch it, but that it was better to watch in a crowd and to mock it. A lot. Watching it with about 4 people was fun, but if you have never gone to a showing in a theater with people treating it the way they would The Rocky Horror Picture Show (costumes, props, etc.) then you're missing out on the best level this movie could ever achieve.
I had not yet seen it this way, with plans to do it one day, because the local movie theater, the Prytania, shows it at midnight on a regular enough basis that I should have already seen it this way. I'm glad I waited though, I was lazily clicking refresh on facebook or twitter (who cares which really when you're reloading the page for the 1000th time), and I see the Prytania say, "The Room"Love is Blind Tour 2013" is coming to the Prytania Jan 18 & 19. Come See Tommy and Greg in Person. Tickets on Sale soon!" I immediately turn to Geoff and say, "OMG Geoff, Tommy Wiseau, we need tickets, gah!" That may be paraphrased, but it was about that coherent. I text some friends, get back some expletive-filled responses I won't share here and we start constantly watching the internet for when tickets go on sale.
On to the night of the showing! If you've done any research on Tommy Wiseau or watched any interviews or listened to anyone talk about The Room you know that he has said he lived here, is from here (New Orleans), was homeless here, if you know the truth leave it in the comments, but we still may not believe you. There's so much mystery, even wikipedia is not sure what year he was born. Why do we care? Why don't you? (I don't know...) His answers to most things have been less than helpful, we'll get to that more in the Q&A section.
Order of the night: Show up to the movie an hour early, pick up tickets, stand in line making jokes about whether or not Tommy's in there watching whatever movie is playing in the theater before this showing, watch 2 guys cross the street separately but at the same time in tuxedos (one of them being my friend) they later toss a football around to the line of people's enjoyment (watch the movie), and then joke about whether that's Tommy getting out of a cab in front of the theater (it wasn't). But we do see him show up, with an employee of the theater (what was that car ride like?!) I keep leaving out that Greg Sestero was at the showing too (Oh hai, Mark.) and I shouldn't because he seemed like a normal dude along for the ride (again more of that in the Q&A section).
Tommy (Mr. Wiseau) gets cheers from the line and then he walks the entire length of the line high-fiving all of us! We squee like little girls because it's fun(ny) and watch intently to see what he'll do next. He starts tossing the football around to people in line, continuously telling people to throw it lightly, I guess we're too strong for him? Shortly after they let us get to our seats.
We pick out our seats, 5th row, so we can see the Q&A up close and personal without straining our necks once the movie starts though.
There's a line forming and we realize there's merch sales and autographs and pictures happening! Geoff, Stephen (tuxedo friend), and I get in line. Stephen dressed as Tommy for Halloween and wanted the picture of this autographed. When we were almost to the front of the line we hear Tommy ask a guy what his name was so he could autograph his shirt, the guy says, "Josh." Tommy looks confused. We try to pay better attention to what is happening, we're pretty sure he spelled Josh with a G and then tried to correct it. Although, while it makes no sense, thought I heard "there's no R." We're giggling a lot by this point because it's exactly and nothing like we imagined already. Now it's our turn. Tommy signs my movie, he got my name right from me spelling it to him though I think I confused him at the end when I said "a" but still Rhelittleline is a pretty good name. He hands my movie to Greg and says (what I hear) "Here, write the date." And in my head I was like, "Um the date..." but I must've misheard because it was his signature. We take our picture with the 2 of them, which I was laughing hysterical because of the weirdness and because I see the pointing motion Geoff is doing.
picture by: Stephen, waiting for the Prytania to post theirs.
Then it's Stephen's turn. Stephen shows the picture to Tommy & Greg and they're both like, "Wow, yeah good job on the costume." Tommy, however, adds a nice statement after about how it's a good costume, "but he's not as chubby" as Stephen was in the picture! And then rambles on about how many sit-ups a day he does to not be chubby, he said a number but I'm crying laughing I forgot. Stephen gets a lot of writing on his autographs, the best being "You're tearing me apart, stranger." (Making me realize, just not, I should've asked him to write, "you are my rose" on my dvd, please tell me one of you got that written by him. Autograph picture: http://instagram.com/p/Upt9ActxYs/) They take their picture and we are on our way.
The guy announcing Tommy & Greg for the Q&A walks up front and immediately is shouted at by a fan, "Y U No Tommy?!" Oh internet culture... Blah blah blah Tommy & Greg get on stage where Tommy asks for the tuxedoed people to join them.
Tuxedo football!
My memory is pretty good, but it is impossible to remember everything so correct me, add more things I forgot in the comments, just be nice.
Things I remember from the Q&A in no particular order:
Tommy asks everyone to ask Greg a question first and then him, in that order, for everyone. (Hope you thought of 2 questions!)
After a question about the inspiration for The Room, which by the way had to be repeated a trillion times because he couldn't hear or understand the question. He says something along the lines of, "Let me school you on the English language..." The audience goes silent with giggles, because um, WHAT?! You're going to tell us about the English language. "When you used the word inspirational. In. Spir. Ation." um something something "people." People were his inspiration.
"Why did you name the movie, The Room" While he probably meant it was because we all have that place we think of as our room where we're safe and all that kind of stuff, he went on to say, "We all have that room it could be a bedroom, a forest...." Bedroom could be quoted wrong, but forest is absolutely not quoted wrong. I love my room the forest.
If you ask him about the "sex scene" he will correct you, "we do not call it a sex scene, it is a love scene" If you've seen the movie you'll love the next thing he told us, "The second love scene is not the same as the first, they were filmed separately." Hahaha, right.
Someone asked if he was going to recite his Shakespearean sonnet for us. He said yes and continued on with sonnet 116.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love... etc etc etc, let's move on next question." Am I giving him too much credit putting this much of it? I really don't remember how far he made it before the et cetera.
Greg was asked what else he was working on and I've got to say I'm pretty excited about his answer. He said he was writing a book based on his time working on The Room. Tommy cut him off and basically laughed at him (BTW his laugh in real life is really as awkward as it is in the movie) and said he wasn't going to read it anyway. Greg's face looked pretty happy and like he knew that, which leads me to believe this book will have plenty of stories that we want to know and Tommy wouldn't want shared or even realized existed. I will read this book.
Side note: Apparently during this Q&A Greg leaned to Stephen and said, "Tommy has no clue people are laughing at him." And when Stephen asked if Tommy was always like this, Greg said, "Yes." It makes you almost feel bad for laughing, but it's too much fun, plus he's making so much money off of our terrible senses of humor.
Tommy was also asked if he was a transvestite vampire, to which he got annoyed that the first question wasn't posed to Greg! The guy changed his question, "Greg, do you think Tommy is a transvestite vampire." Greg said something like maybe or possibly. When it was Tommy's turn to answer he rambled about believing in all kinds of vampires and lore and whatnot, "move on, next question."
When asked if there was ever a threesome between Tommy, Greg, and whomever (would we really want to know this...) Greg immediately says no and Tommy says, "Maybe in my dreams." Greg's face was pretty funny at this. (Sorry for all the "you had to be there moments.)
Apparently Greg's favorite scene was shoving a guy into trash cans. And his favorite tradition is the throwing of spoons (we'll get to that) and Tommy's favorite tradition was all of them. Because, honestly, we don't really think he knows what's going on when he watches his movie with an audience. I really do wonder what he thinks.
Tommy had mentioned all the belts he was wearing and was wondering why no one wanted to talk about his accessory line. Geoff decided to ask something, "Greg, how many belts are you wearing?" "Uh, one." "Tommy, same question." "Five." And then something again about making them. I wanted to know more about this, will there be a clothing line in stores? Some of the belts seemed to be on sale at the merch table, so there was that. Red studded The Room belts.
Before the movie started he let us know how excited he was about the Blu-ray because of CL. Combo languages. If I understand correctly you can watch the movie with, for instance, English and French subtitles. At the same time. Of course the crowd chants for subtitles at this point and we watch the movie with English subtitles, yep just the one. Which worked out nicely because the crowd and music were definitely louder than the dialog. Not that it matters, I think the movie would make just as much sense as a silent film, but who wants to miss out on all the one-liner gems (not to mention the lovely soundtrack).
There are lots of things you should expect when you watch The Room in a crowd. Plastic spoons being thrown every time the framed spoon picture is shown, The Full House theme being sung when shown stock footage of the row of houses, everyone quoting the flower shop scene (best 17 seconds of film in history according to statement in the Q&A section when asking Tommy why the scene wasn't longer. "Was the car being towed?" I think he said, "there just wasn't time.") There's other things to expect, but I don't want to ruin them all, plus I'm sure you can pull up youtube videos on it. Also, there's always random stuff being shouted and that can vary based on the cleverness of your audience.
Speaking of youtube videos, hopefully I'll be back to edit this post soon when my friends post the few videos they got during the Q&A, so I can share more of the fun with you and figure out some of the answers I forgot.
5-star evening.
EDIT: I'm really sad, I remembered 2 more Q&As when relaying the story to some friends yesterday and didn't write them down immediately and have now forgotten them again. Oh well, you get the gist of the evening!
