Gut Check: The Disaster Artist
A movie about the worst movie may be the best movie of the year.
The movie The Room and the art of Sheppard Fairey are forever intertwined in my memory and live in a box marked 2006. Around the same time I was seeing OBEY Giant stickers all over the place, I was seeing snippets of the movie The Room on commercials for Adult Swim and trying to figure out exactly what it was. It looked like something that should have been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 yet somehow was never available on Netflix. Not because they didn’t have it, but because all of the copies were unavailable. Needless to say, I had to see this movie.
By the time I was able to see The Room in its entirety, it was already a post-peak pop culture phenomenon – the spiritual successor to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. People attend showings of The Room the same way they attend The Gathering of the Juggalos. It’s an EVENT. Any theater brave enough to show The Room has a member of their management team read a list of Do’s and Don’t’s to the audience before the movie starts rolling. Audience members are reminded to not scream too loudly as there are undoubtedly first timers at the theater, not to go too hard on the furniture, and only to throw plastic spoons at the screen. I’m specifically not going to explain that part to you; it’s something you need to see for yourself.
The Disaster Artist is a movie about the making of the movie The Room, which has inspired the culture of aforementioned spoon throwing. I cannot wait to see this movie.
Going In, I Knew: Greg Sistero, co-star and producer of the greatest worst movie ever made, had written the book, The Disaster Artist, on which this movie is based. The Franco boys, James and Dave, had optioned the book with designs to turn it into a movie. This is the stuff pipe dreams are made of. A star, James Franco, whose brand is being aware of how unaware he seems, is making a movie about the worst movie ever made in which the star/director/producer/creator/writer is largely unaware of the chaos he is creating around him.
James Franco is making a movie about bizarro James Franco.
This is the movie equivalent of putting pineapple on pizza. Actually no… It’s a film about the guy who first decided to put pineapple on a pizza.
Gut Reaction: This movie is the 2017 answer to Boogie Nights. Stick with me on this one.
There are two types of movies about movies: Entourage and Boogie Nights. Entourage – which focuses completely on the excess of fame and the dopeness thereof – being young, rich, famous, and being able to bring all of your friends along. The skies are always blue, the people are always beautiful, and the money never runs out. It’s Hollywood with all the cheat codes turned on.
Boogie Nights is a movie about the porn industry, but not about porn. The LA porn scene in the 70’s is just the backdrop; the movie is about the people living in that world and how they got there. Boogie Nights is about trying to build a house on a rapidly eroding beach before all the sand washes out to sea. It’s a movie about the delicate balance of searching for the one special thing about yourself in an ocean of infinite sadness.
The backdrop of The Disaster Artist is the production of the worst movie ever made, but the story is about the people trying to live a dream they know is minutes away from expiring.
Biggest Question: Is James Franco’s Tommy Wiseau going to be closer to Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash or Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump?
What Are You Excited For: Every single frame of this movie.
Best Case Scenario: This movie is the objectively funny Boogie Nights.
Worst Case Scenario: The Disaster Artist gives up halfway through and just becomes a sketch about a terrible movie.
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