With a 100-minute run time, actor, writ- er, director and producer Tommy Wiseau managed to do the impossible. He made the best worst movie ever. “The Room,” his magnum opus, features uncomfortably long sex scenes, god-awful green screen work, horrendous acting, aimless plot holes and constant dubbing.
So, why am I writing about it? Well, because it connected with people, but not in the way Wiseau intended.
“The Room” cultivated a cult of movie- goers who love “so-bad-it’s-good” movies, and those films bond audiences more than mainstream movies through a collective “what did I just watch?” agreement.
In its initial 2003 box office run, “The Room” grossed $1,900 on a $6 million budget. How Wiseau got $6 million to self-fund the movie is a mystery, genuinely. No one truly knows how Wiseau made his money.
“The Room,” with its 3.6/10 rating on IMDb, garnered a cult following among many Los Angeles actors including Kristen Bell and Seth Rogen, which expanded around the country and world. That catapulted Wiseau and “The Room” into fame, or rather infamy.
There have been hundreds of midnight screenings of “The Room,” millions of dollars made — a little under $5.2 million per IMDb — and a book and movie made about
Wiseau and the creation of the film called “The Disaster Artist.”
“The Room” is definitely not the only “so-bad-it’s-good” film to be made, and it’s not the only “so-bad-it’s-good” film out of Los Angeles. Cut to the “Birdemic” trilogy.
Vietnamese director James Nguyen wanted to create a riveting drama/horror movie when he made the first installment of the trilogy, “Birdemic: Shock and Terror.” Since this film is in this article, it did not accomplish that.
Akin to “The Room,” the acting and editing are terrible, but Birdemic also has another aspect that does nothing but cause “Shock and Terror:” CGI. With an estimated budget of $10,000, the CGI birds look horribly fake, which makes this movie even more fun to watch.
Birdemic also has amassed a cult following, definitely not to the level of “The Room”, but still it’s impressive for a movie with a 1.7/10 rating on IMDb.
However, with my criticisms and pok- ing fun at “The Room” and the “Birdemic” trilogy, I do hold respect for Wiseau and Nguyen. They tried something new. They chased their dreams.
They both are from outside the U.S. and worked to earn a sliver of the fabled Hollywood glory. Instead, they made terrible movies that have dedicated fans and for better or worse — are memorable.
Not many other movies can say that they resonated with an audience to the extent that “The Room” and the “Birdemic” trilogy have.
And fundamentally, our judgments and criticisms of these movies don’t hold much weight. What does, is that someone went for it. A bonus is that the new creation brought people together.
Anton Ego — the harshest critic in the Pixar film “Ratatouille” — put it succinctly. “The bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the aver- age piece of junk is probably more mean- ingful than our criticism designating it so… The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”
If you want to connect with your friends deeper while watching a movie, give either film a watch. The new needs friends, after all.
