Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 30: The Room

A Story, goes one idea, should answer the questions who, what , when. Were, Why and How.

The room, as a film, poses another questions

What the f-k?

Seriously WTF.

We start off with Johnny who we are told works at a bank – I’m not sure what bank would hire a guy with scraggly shoulder length hair who looks like he does or did a lot of drugs and works out – seriously he looks like Iggy Pops workout partner. Anyway Johnny is in love with Lisa. He arrives at the room – a room in their apartment – with a red dress that Lisa puts on and then they start to make noise about some afternoon delight when it comes  this kid Danny who is something – surrogate son or something who says he wants to watch –yeah the film starts giving off all sorts of wrong from the word go.

First we have a pillow fight and love scene were we get to see so much more of Johnny than we want to – and the sex scene’s a bit off too. Not to be crude but it seems like Johnny is inserting his manhood into her navel.

Well hell everything in this film is off.

Someone has noted that both this film and Bridemic were made as a result of the producer/writer/director’s wanting his vision to come to the screen. But while with Bridemic you see that the idea of the director was to make something important about global warming while honoring Alfred Hitchcock (both of which it fails to do in a magnificent horrible way) honestly I can’t figure out and a lot of folks can’t figure out why the hell the Room was made. What is the point?

A lot of this strangeness has to be laid at the feet of the auteur of this picture Tommy Wiseau who plays the lead Johnny (big surprise).

I’m honestly not sure what accent he has – vaguely eastern European but it’s really he comes off as some sort of space alien or I think more like a human clone raised by space aliens with only a limited experience with how humans react – to anything.

A plot point is that he does not get the promotion he was hoping for at the bank he’s been working at – apparently for a while- and he utterly melts down expressing his anger at the bank – it’s like dude – if you’re that good at your job there are other banks . Johnny is either happy or recreating in agony.  Moderately unhappy is foreign to him.

And everybody else in the film picks up on this vibe and stats acting like that as well – you’re constantly saying wait humans don’t do this.

And I’d have to say plot point isn’t really the accurate phrase – things happen in this film and are then never spoken off again. For example – Lisa’s mother announces that she has breast cancer, Lisa says oh it’s just breast cancer. The point is never mentioned again. Earlier in the film it turns out Denny – Johnny’s surrogate child – who seems a bit wrong himself – is tangled up in drug dealing – and that is never mentioned again.

The film also tells us that football is played by men in any sort of clothing who toss the football back and forth to each other at a distance of at most 10 feet. That’s not football, that’s called having a catch.

Anyway the main story is that Lisa who has been living with Johnny for five years now and is engaged with the marriage a month away has decided that she doesn’t love Johnny anymore and starts an affair with Mark – Johnny’s best friend.

We know Mark is Johnny’s best friend mostly because Johnny keeps saying that in the weird accent of his “oh Hia Mark. You’re my best friend”

And there are the endless times were other members of the cast – especially Lisa’s mother keeps saying what a great guy Johnny is and how sensitive he is and oh god just shut up.

After Johnny discovers the affair he completes his downward spiral – saying everyone has betrayed me! Why! Why did this happen to me! He’s not in a mood to listen to the idea that man is born to trouble as sparks fly upward and all that. So what he does is stick the huge pistol they took from the drug dealer back earlier in the film (and wouldn’t that have been sent to the police?) into his mouth and shoot.

We end with about 8 minutes of all actors saying “Johnny wake up’” and such while the pool of  blood from the back of his head lovingly expands – it’s very creepy. Johnny as martyr to… well this is the problem – to what?  It’s hard to say.

The Room is one of the strangest films I have ever seen – but in the others the strangeness was intentional as the story being told is odd or unusual or the manner of the storytelling was odd – in this case the strangeness stems from inside Tommy Wiseau.

Watch with a pizza with elaborate toppings.