The Room (2003 Film) Tommy Wiseau

Development

Tommy Wiseau originally wrote The Room as a play in 2001, after seeing the film The Talented Mr. Ripley.[6][9] He then adapted the play into a 540-page book, which he was unable to get published.[10] Frustrated, Wiseau instead decided to adapt the play into a film, producing it himself in order to maintain creative control.[10][11]

Wiseau has been secretive about how he obtained funding for the project, but he told Entertainment Weekly that he made some of the money by importing leather jackets from Korea.[6] According to The Disaster Artist (Greg Sestero's book based on the making of The Room), Wiseau was already independently wealthy at the time production began. Over several years, he claims to have amassed a fortune through entrepreneurship and real estate development in Los Angeles and San Francisco, a story Sestero found impossible to believe.[12] Although many of the people involved with the project feared that the film was part of a money laundering scheme for organized crime, Sestero also found this possibility unlikely.[13] Wiseau spent the entire US$6,000,000 (equivalent to about $9,900,000 in 2023) budget for The Room on production and marketing;[6] Wiseau stated that the film was relatively expensive because many members of the cast and crew had to be replaced.[14] According to Sestero, Wiseau made numerous poor decisions during filming that unnecessarily inflated the film's budget, such as building sets for sequences that could have been filmed on location, purchasing production equipment rather than renting it, and filming scenes multiple times using different sets.[15] Wiseau also forgot his lines and place on camera, resulting in minutes-long dialogue sequences taking hours or days to shoot. Wiseau's antics on the set further caused the film's cost to skyrocket, according to Sestero.[16]

According to Sestero and Greg Ellery, Wiseau rented a studio at the Birns & Sawyer film lot and bought a "complete Beginning Director package", which included two film and HD cameras;[17] Wiseau was confused about the differences between 35 mm film and high-definition video, yet he wanted to be the first director to film an entire movie simultaneously in two formats. He achieved this goal by using a custom-built apparatus that housed both cameras side by side and required two crews to operate.[18][10] However, only the 35 mm film footage was used in the final cut.[19]

Casting

Wiseau selected actors from thousands of head shots,[9] although most of the cast had never been in a feature film prior to The Room. Sestero had limited film experience and agreed to work as part of the production crew only as a favor to Wiseau, whom he had been friends with for some time before production began. Sestero then agreed to play the character "Mark" after Wiseau fired the original actor on the first day of filming. Sestero was uncomfortable filming his sex scenes and was allowed to keep his jeans on while shooting them.[20]

According to Greg Ellery, Juliette Danielle had "just gotten off the bus from Texas" when the shooting began, and "the cast watched in horror" as Wiseau jumped on Danielle, immediately beginning to film their "love scene".[17] Sestero disputed this, stating that the sex scenes were among the last filmed.[21] Wiseau said that Danielle was originally one of three or four understudies for the Lisa character and was selected after the original actress left the production.[14] According to Sestero, the original actress was "Latina" and came from an unidentified South American country;[22] according to Danielle, the actress was closer to Wiseau's age with a "random" accent. Danielle had been cast as Michelle but was given the Lisa role when the original actress was dismissed because her "personality... didn't seem to fit" the character.[23] Danielle corroborates that multiple actors were dismissed from the production prior to filming, including another actress hired to play Michelle.[23]

Even though Kyle Vogt (who played Peter) told the production team that he had only a limited amount of time for the project, not all of his scenes were filmed by the time his schedule ran out. Despite the fact that Peter was to play a pivotal role in the climax, Vogt left the production; his lines in the last half of the film were given to Ellery, whose character is never introduced, explained, or addressed by name.[20][17][24]

Writing

The original script was significantly longer than the one used and featured a series of lengthy monologues; it was edited on-set by the cast and script supervisor Sandy Schklair, who found much of the dialogue incomprehensible. An anonymous cast member told Entertainment Weekly that the script contained "stuff that was just unsayable. I know it's hard to imagine there was stuff that was worse. But there was."[6][25] Sestero mentions that Wiseau was adamant characters say their lines as written, but that several cast members slipped in ad libs that made the final cut.[20]

Much of the dialogue is repetitive, especially Johnny's. His speech contains several catchphrases: he begins almost every conversation with "Oh, hi!" or "Oh, hi [name of character]!". To dismissively end conversations, many characters use the phrase "Don't worry about it", and almost every male character discusses Lisa's physical attractiveness (including an unnamed character whose only line is "Lisa looks hot tonight"). Lisa often stops discussions about Johnny by saying "I don't want to talk about it."

In The Disaster Artist, Sestero recalls that Wiseau planned a subplot in which Johnny was revealed to be a vampire because of Wiseau's fascination with them.[26] Sestero recounts how Wiseau tasked the crew with devising a way for Johnny's Mercedes-Benz to fly across the San Francisco skyline, revealing Johnny's vampiric nature.[27]

Filming

Principal photography lasted four months. Shooting took place mainly on the Birns & Sawyer soundstage in Los Angeles, with some second unit shooting in San Francisco, California. The many rooftop sequences were shot on the soundstage, and exteriors of San Francisco were greenscreened in.[6] A behind-the-scenes feature shows that some of the roof scenes were shot in August 2002. The film employed over 400 people, and Wiseau is credited as an actor, writer, producer, director, and executive producer. Other executive producer credits include Chloe Lietzke and Drew Caffrey. According to Sestero, Lietzke was Wiseau's ESL tutor and had no involvement in the film, and Caffrey, who had been an entrepreneurial mentor to Wiseau, died in 1999.[28] Wiseau had several problems with his behind-the-camera team, and claims to have replaced the entire crew four times.[6][29] He also assigned multiple (and often disparate) responsibilities to several crew members, a process Sestero described as "sandwich[ing] two roles into one" that frequently resulted in shooting delays: aside from playing the role of Mark, Sestero worked as the film's line producer, helped with casting, and assisted Wiseau; Schklair also served as a de facto first assistant director, and Birns & Sawyer sales representative Peter Anway acted as another assistant to Wiseau.[30][24] Wiseau frequently forgot his lines or missed cues, and required numerous retakes and direction from Schklair and a stagehand named Byron; much of his dialogue had to be dubbed in post-production.[31]

Soundtrack

The score was written by Mladen Milicevic, a music professor at Loyola Marymount University. Milicevic later provided the score for Wiseau's 2004 documentary Homeless in America and Room Full of Spoons, a 2016 documentary on The Room.[32][33]

The soundtrack features four R&B slow jams which play during four of the film's five love scenes; Michelle and Mike's oral sex scene uses only instrumental music. The songs are "I Will" by Jarah Gibson, "Crazy" by Clint Gamboa, "Baby You and Me" by Gamboa with Bell Johnson, and "You're My Rose" by Kitra Williams & Reflection. "You're My Rose" is also reprised during the end credits. The soundtrack was released by Wiseau's TPW Records in 2003.[34]

Directorial credit dispute

In a 2011 Entertainment Weekly article, Schklair announced that he desired credit for directing The Room. Schklair told EW that Wiseau became too engrossed with his acting duties to direct the film properly and asked him to "tell the actors what to do, and yell 'Action' and 'Cut' and tell the cameraman what shots to get." The script supervisor also said that Wiseau asked Schklair to "direct [his] movie" but refused to give up the director title. This story is corroborated by one of the film's actors (who requested anonymity) and by Sestero in The Disaster Artist. Sestero describes Schklair taking charge of numerous sequences in which Wiseau found himself unable to remember lines or adequately interact with the rest of the cast, but jokes that claiming directorial credit was like "claiming to have been the Hindenburg's principal aeronautics engineer", and also notes that Schklair left the production before the end of principal photography in favor of the short film Jumbo Girl due to that project being shot by Janusz Kamiński.[35][36] Wiseau has dismissed Schklair's comments, saying, "Well, this is so laughable that...you know what? I don't know, probably only in America it can happen, this kind of stuff"; he similarly implied that Schklair's abandoning of the film during filming was justification for not receiving such a credit.[11]