By David Futrelle
So I recently rewatched The Room, probably my favorite bad movie of all time, and was struck again by how much director Tommy Wiseau’s views of women mirrors those of Men’s Rights Activists and, well, a pretty high proportion of those who post regularly on Reddit.
If you haven’t seen The Room — and if you enjoy this blog you definitely need to! — it’s a comically inept film about the ultimate “Nice Guy” being wronged by his cruel, narcissistic and thoroughly hypergamous “future wife.”
I did a post on The Room as an unintentional MRA film a while ago but I’m not sure if I managed to convey just how Reddity it is. One line that stood out for me when I watched it this time was this bit of wisdom from Mark on the female of the species:
I just can’t figure women out. Sometimes they’re just too smart, sometimes they’re flat-out stupid, other times they’re just evil.
It’s not even the strangest, or worst, line in that infamous scene, but watching it this time, that line struck me as pretty much what you’d get if you could scientifically reduce all of Reddit to a single comment.
Since I couldn’t find a clip of just that line, here’s the entire scene. Trust me, it’s well worth the one minute and fifty-seven seconds it takes to watch it.
The Room was made in 2003. I don’t think you could make a comparable movie today, as all the male characters, in order to be believable, would have to spend so much time on Reddit they’d have no time left over to interact with anyone else in the real world.
http://www.pmslweb.com/the-blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/14-I-m-the-guy-who-talks-shit-online-funny-sarcastic-meme.png
Space Ghost and Tommy Wiseau
https://youtu.be/xr_fi5I5kjg
Tommy Wiseau was really serious about The Room. He wrote it as a play in 2001 and adapted the play into a 500 page book.
Thanks to you, David, I also saw the parallels between the movies themes and the whole MGTOW, MRA, RP , WTF philosophy. I’d also like to as that apparently the sex scene between Johnny and Lisa is related because Tommy basically jumped the actress who played Lisa for the first scene, and she said she’d leave if he did it again. Tommy Wiesau seems like he’d gotten on reddit or ROTK
According to something I read, after filming with 35mm and an HD camera.. he went with the 35mm print. Having seen that short take from the movie, let me just say, I can see why he went with 35mm. Those are the worst matte painting backdrops I’ve seen in any 2000s era film. And the set looks like it was clearly not made of the actual building materials. The “brick wall” is clearly a drywall-like panel. Note the seams. And I know such things are available, we used them at the haunt. If you use them right, there are no visible seams.
I think even the “chipped stone” rail isn’t, there’s clearly no stairs to get up to the roof… corrugated steel construction over painted 2x4s on top of a permanent building? I mean, we’ve got it on some of the haunt buildings, but those are either temporary, or for a specific look, or over storage that just needs to be kept not wet.
If it had been printed (in the movie sense) from HD, these “cheap” sets would have been even more glaringly obvious.
And thats just one scene.
Isn’t that just people in general?
“Everywhan betraayed me I’m fed up with this w0rl”
I’m looking forward to the film adaptation of The Disaster Artist (The book about the making of the film, as well as the unlikely friendship between Greg and Tommy), but yeah, the sexism in the film is rife.
Especially when Tommy dry humps his girlfriend’s dress, ew.
I liked the bit toward the end of the clip when the guy with the long hair decides to try to have a go at acting.
The ‘acting’ reminds me of the animations The Cheat made on the Homestar Runner site (http://www.homestarrunner.com/)
For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGm2WhTJSd0
This is definitely famous for its awfulness as my son knows about it and he is 18 and generally oblivious to stuff outside his interest. He actually wants to see it, which I can only condone on the grounds that he wants to be an actor and it is good for him to see examples of terrible acting.
I was thinking of completely the wrong movie when I first read this.. the oscar nominated movie Room, in which a young woman is imprisoned for years in a garden shed where she bears a child to her captor. That’s a pretty MRA film as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_(2015_film)
@Mary: I did that too and was momentarily confused, especially as I’ve seen neither film.
Now I’m obsessed with the idea of someone dubbing scenes from Room with the sort of ‘acting’ seen in The Room. It’s a niche obsession, I admit, but it might kind of make a point.
For WWTH and other corvid fans.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40436177
I love this disaster of a movie in that it gets absolutely everything wrong. The writing is wrong, the dialogue is wrong, the acting is wrong, the cinematography is wrong, the casting, the sets, the props, the editing, the marketing, everything.
There is not a single moment when watching this movie that I’ve gotten bored. Every scene and moment where a slightly more competent filmmaker than Tommy Wiseau would have done a less terrible but more boring job, Wiseau manages to screw up every single teeny tiny detail so hilariously that the first time I watched it, I had my mouth hanging open almost throughout the whole movie.
It’s a pearl among shitty movies. A beautiful pearl so expertly and lovingly crafted out of pure shit that you have no choice but to admire it.
And yeah, the movie’s worldview is extremely misogynistic. Lisa’s character makes no goddamn sense, and it’s such a Nice Guy(TM) self-pity fantasy that if it wasn’t so hilariously terrible in its execution, it would be just another bad movie made by just another sexist shithead. To me, the existence of this movie is another piece of evidence that no one with ideas like the MRAs’ is capable of making a good movie, and that all you can do at anything they say or do is laugh.
@ Alan Robertshaw;
that’s… umm… that’s just… ummm… yeah…, Alfred Hitchcock did a flick along those lines in the mid-20th century, right??
I haven’t seen it. Don’t intend to after reading everything above, either.
These pillocks have always been around in one form or another. They were there when I was a teenager, there when I was at university, there when I entered the world of work, and so on.
In my forties now, and the ever-present ‘blameeverythingonwomen’ festival has mutated from what was fringe bitterness into a massive online cult.
The internet has changed everything. It’s the same with extremist political nuttiness. When I were a young ‘un, the people attracted to stuff like Nazism and extreme leftism had for the most part, to subscribe to hard-to-find newsletters and equally hard-to-find mailing lists to share ideas, arrange meetings, rant, etc. Now it’s all a couple of clicks away, and any 14 year old with a chip on his shoulder can be initiated into all kinds of unpleasantness with alarming speed.
What a world we live in. Actually, a completely flat one, according to some (another bizarre cult that has exploded online).
Whilst I agree with you, I do know that the AVERAGE young man (certainly the young men my sons know) is not vulnerable to this. We see this as pervasive on the internet, but most young men (and women) IRL see it for the extremist nonsense it is.
Those who are vulnerable to it – yes, I guess it may make their problems worse. I wish we could get a clearer idea of actual numbers, because the optimist in me says it cannot be a significant number, but they are good at producing copious amounts of drivel that we can all now see.
@Ellesar:
Despite the tone of my previous post, I’m also cautiously optimistic.
I’ve seen both sides of this. I have friends 20 years younger than myself, who recognise the drivel pumped out online by the likes of the Alt Right for what it is. Great news there. On the other hand, a young man was recently dismissed from the company I work for, for a lunchtime meltdown which started as a discussion with colleagues about immigration, and then descended into an explicit rage-fuelled racist rant. I’d spoken to the individual concerned a number of times before his dismissal. He was open about previous mental health issues, and was happy to be working again after an extended time away. He was also open about the dysfunctional nature of his family background. He was pleasant enough, but was clearly desperate to steer the conversation onto politics, immigration, and Islam. He also made clear that he distrusted any and all mainstream media and got all his ‘news’ from social media and Infowars.
Now, he’s obviously jobless again. A vulnerable individual more or less radicalised by his online habits.
My concern is that nearly a decade of austerity here in Europe, has created a great deal of vulnerable young men, who are looking to both blame and lash out.
Enablers online, are clearly rubbing their hands with glee.
Why is it called ‘the room’?
From IMDB:
“Tommy Wiseau esoterically addressed several fan questions in a special Q&A feature filmed for the DVD release. Among these are “Why is it called ‘The Room’?” (to which Wiseau replies that the title is meant to evoke a safe place for viewers) and “Why is everyone playing football in tuxedos and standing only three feet apart?” (which Wiseau doesn’t answer except to say that football is fun and that playing it without protective gear is a challenge). ”
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Tommy_Wiseau_(Earth-616)
What? I really dont understand ))) room didnt make me think ‘safe’. Actually, ‘the room’ little bit frightful, like you will be locked inside…
A safe space for special manflakes? Complete with a hugbox for guys who are grossed out by actual human flesh that is not their own?
Or (as many women have found out the hard way) a box where men confine us to keep us from escaping and just generally being ourselves?
So many questions…
I introduce my folks to The Room and its glorious schlockiness now it’s become kind of an in-joke between me, my brother and our parents. We casually quote it so often that if we’re dining out, people all around us must think we’re nuts.
Any Mammotheers who have not seen it, stop what you’re doing, get your hands on a copy and behold the pinnacle of bad movie magic. It really is that hilariously bad.
And yes, it is that misogynistic. More than just the quote that Dave highlighted, this is the one that just cements how the film feels about women:
The first I ever saw of the film was in the review by Doug Walker (back when he was actually entertaining) and his reaction was just perfect: “That’s not funny.”