Ha, ha, ha! What a story, James Franco!
I wrote a positive review of The Disaster Artist, by Greg Sestero, on the West Chester Public Library’s blog around the time that it was first published. It tells the true “behind the scenes” story about the development of one of the worst movies ever made, The Room. Since then, I’ve acquired my own copy of The Room and watched it several times. My friends and I cannot stop quoting it to each other. It’s a terrible film in a way that’s extremely entertaining.
The film version of The Disaster Artist focuses on Greg’s friendship with the writer, director, producer, and star of The Room, Tommy Wiseau. They both express a dream to “make it” in Hollywood and move to Tommy’s apartment in Los Angeles. But neither of them find much success with acting. So Tommy decides that he’s going to make his own movie, the next great American drama: The Room. And nothing goes as planned, due to Tommy and Greg having no idea how to make a movie and Tommy refusing to listen to the advice of his cast and crew.
Overall, I thought it was a decent movie. I’m glad that Franco encourages us to sympathize with Wiseau rather than mock him. It has a good message at the end about the nature of success and failure. I recommend watching it if you’re familiar with The Room.
However, the book is much, much more interesting. Some of the best (or worst) stories got left out of the Disaster Artist movie entirely. Such is the nature of adaptations, but I would’ve liked to have seen more scenes that dealt with the strange production of The Room. If you’ve never heard of this movie and want to learn more about it, definitely check out the book first.