The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made - Hardcover

Sestero, Greg; Bissell, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1451661193 ISBN 13: 9781451661194

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2013

Synopsis

From the actor who lived through it all and an award-winning narrative nonfiction writer: the inspiring and laugh-out-loud funny story of a mysteriously wealthy social misfit who got past every road block in the Hollywood system to achieve success on his own terms—the making of The Room, “the Citizen Kane of bad movies” (Entertainment Weekly).

The hilarious and inspiring story of how a mysterious misfit got past every roadblock in the Hollywood system to achieve success on his own terms: a $6 million cinematic catastrophe called The Room.

Nineteen-year-old Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at an acting school in San Francisco. Wiseau’s scenes were rivetingly wrong, yet Sestero, hypnotized by such uninhibited acting, thought, “I have to do a scene with this guy.” That impulse changed both of their lives. Wiseau seemed never to have read the rule book on interpersonal relationships (or the instruc­tions on a bottle of black hair dye), yet he generously offered to put the aspiring actor up in his LA apart­ment. Sestero’s nascent acting career first sizzled, then fizzled, resulting in Wiseau’s last-second offer to Sestero of costarring with him in The Room, a movie Wiseau wrote and planned to finance, produce, and direct—in the parking lot of a Hollywood equipment-rental shop.

Wiseau spent $6 million of his own money on his film, but despite the efforts of the disbelieving (and frequently fired) crew and embarrassed (and fre­quently fired) actors, the movie made no sense. Nevertheless Wiseau rented a Hollywood billboard featuring his alarming headshot and staged a red carpet premiere. The Room made $1800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. One reviewer said that watching The Room was like “getting stabbed in the head.”

The Disaster Artist is Greg Sestero’s laugh-out-loud funny account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and friendship to make “the Citizen Kane of bad movies” (Entertainment Weekly), which is now an international phenomenon, with Wiseau himself beloved as an oddball celebrity. Written with award-winning journalist Tom Bissell, The Disaster Artist is an inspiring tour de force that reads like a page-turning novel, an open-hearted portrait of an enigmatic man who will improbably capture your heart.

About this title

From the Author:

Greg Sestero is a French-American actor, producer, and writer. He costarred in the cult phenomenon The Room.

Tom Bissell is the author of several books and a winner of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He writes frequently for Harper’s and The New Yorker.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Disaster Artist one

“Oh, Hi, Mark”

Betty Schaefer:

I’d always heard you had some talent.

Joe Gillis:

That was last year. This year I’m trying to earn a living.

—Sunset Boulevard

Tommy Wiseau has always been an eccentric dresser, but on a late-summer night in 2002 he was turning the heads of every model, weirdo, transvestite, and face-lift artist in and around Hollywood’s Palm Restaurant. People couldn’t stop looking at him; I couldn’t stop looking at him. Even today, a decade later, I still can’t unsee Tommy’s outfit: nighttime sunglasses, a dark blazer as loose and baggy as rain gear, sand-colored cargo pants with pockets filled to capacity (was he smuggling potatoes?), a white tank top, clunky Frankenstein combat boots, and two belts. Yes, two belts. The first belt was at home in its loops; the second draped down in back to cup Tommy’s backside, which was, he always claimed, the point: “It keeps my ass up. Plus it feels good.” And then there was Tommy himself: short and muscular; his face as lumpy and white as an abandoned draft of a sculpture; his enormous snow-shovel jaw; his long, thick, impossibly black hair, seemingly dyed in Magic Marker ink—and currently sopping wet. Moments before we walked in, Tommy had dumped a bottle of Arrowhead water over his head to keep “this poofy stuff” from afflicting his considerable curls. He had also refused to let the Palm’s valet park his silver SL500 Mercedes-Benz, worried the guy would fart in his seat.

At this point I’d known Tommy for almost half a decade. Tommy and I looked more like Marvel Comics nemeses than people who could be friends. I was a tall, sandy-blond Northern California kid. Tommy, meanwhile, appeared to have been grown somewhere dark and moist. I knew exactly where Tommy and I fit in among the Palm’s mixture of Hollywood sharks, minnows, and tourists. I was twenty-four years old—a minnow, like Tommy. That meant we had at least thirty minutes to wait for a table. Upon entering the restaurant, I could see various diners consulting their mental Rolodexes, trying to place Tommy. Gene Simmons after three months in the Gobi Desert? The Hunchback of Notre Dame following corrective surgery? An escaped Muppet? The drummer from Ratt?

“I don’t wait in the line,” Tommy said, speaking to me over his shoulder. He marched up to the Palm’s hostess. I kept my distance, as I always did at times like this, and waited for the inevitable moment in which Tommy spoke and the person to whom he was speaking tried to make geographical sense of his pronunciation, which sounded like an Eastern European accent that had been hit by a Parisian bus. The hostess asked Tommy if he had a reservation.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “We have table reservation.”

“And what’s the name?” she said, slightly sarcastically, but only slightly, because who knew whether Ratt was on the verge of releasing a Greatest Hits album? Her job required carefully hedging one’s fame-related bets.

“Ron,” Tommy said.

She checked her list. “Sorry,” she said, tapping her pencil on the page. “There’s no Ron here.”

“Oh, sorry,” Tommy said. “It’s Robert.”

She looked down. “There’s no Robert here, either.”

Tommy laughed. “Wait, I remember now. Try John.”

The hostess found the name John near the bottom of her list.

“John,” she said. “Party of four?”

“Yes, yes,” Tommy said, summoning me over to bring him one party member closer to accuracy.

I don’t know who “John, party of four” actually was, but the hostess snagged a wine menu and began walking us to our table.

I followed Tommy and the hostess through the Palm’s dim interior and looked at the dozens of movie-star caricatures that lined its walls. There was Jack Nicholson, Bette Davis, O. J. Simpson—which made me wonder: What, exactly, did you have to do to get banished from the wall of the Palm? I noticed some starry faces sitting at the tables, too. Well, maybe not starry, but midsize astral phenomena: sports broadcaster Al Michaels, colleague to my beloved John Madden; Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Josie Maran; the cohost on our local ABC News. There were also lots of faces unknown to me but obviously connected. These mostly middle-aged men and women talked show business at conversational levels, and real show business sotto voce. The waiters were all older, beefy guys who smelled of expensive aftershave and had big, white, manicured nails; they were such smooth operators, they almost managed to convince you it didn’t matter that you weren’t famous. The air in the Palm was very expensive. Everything, other than the food, tasted like money.

“Excuse me,” Tommy said indignantly, after the hostess showed us to our table. “Excuse me but no. I don’t sit here. I want booth.” Tommy always insisted on a booth.

“Sir, our booths are reserved.”

But Tommy was nothing if not unrelenting. I think the hostess figured she had two options: Give Tommy a booth or call animal control to tranq him. Through a combination of lying, grandstanding, and bullying, Tommy and I were now seated in a booth in the nicest section of the Palm. As soon as Tommy sat down he flagged someone down and said he was “starving” and ready to order.

“I don’t work here,” the person said.

Whenever Tommy is in a restaurant, he always orders a glass of hot water. I’ve never seen a waiter or waitress do anything but balk at the request.

Here’s how the Palm’s waiter handled it: “I’m sorry. Did you say a glass of—?”

Tommy: “Hot water. Yes. This is what I am saying.”

“A lemon maybe or—?”

“Look, why you give me hard time? Do I speak Chinese? This is simple request, my God. Are you tipsy or something? And more bread with raisin stuff.”

We were at the Palm to celebrate. The following morning, official production would begin on The Room, a film Tommy had conceived, written, produced, cast, and was now directing and set to star in. If you’d known Tommy as long as I had, the beginning of The Room’s production was a miracle of biblical significance. I’d worked on the film with him, on and off, since its inception. My most recent and intense job on the film was working as Tommy’s line producer. When we began, I had no idea what a line producer was. Neither did Tommy. Basically, I was doing anything that needed to be done. I scheduled all auditions, meetings, and rehearsals; ran the casting sessions; helped find equipment; and, most challenging, made sure Tommy didn’t sabotage his own film. In a sense I was his outside-world translator, since no one knew him better than I did. I was also in charge of writing the checks that were flying out the door of Wiseau-Films like doves in search of dry land. For all this, Tommy was paying me a decent wage, plus “perks,” which was what Tommy called food. With Tommy’s vanity project about to begin, my plan was to walk into my eight-dollars-an-hour retail job at French Connection the next day and quit. I hoped never again to fold something I wasn’t going to wear myself.

“So,” Tommy said, taking off his sunglasses. His eyes were red with veiny lightning. “We are in production. How do you feel?” He started to wrangle his hair into a scrunchie-secured ponytail.

“It’s great,” I said.

Tommy was looking at me directly, which didn’t happen that often. He was sensitive about his left eyelid, which drooped noticeably, and he rarely held anyone’s gaze. When he did talk to someone he’d try to hold his face to the left, which he thought was his best angle.

“Are you nervous little bit?” Tommy asked.

“For what?”

“For big day tomorrow.”

“Should I be nervous?”

He shrugged. As we ate, we talked a little more, and things in the Palm started to wind down. Nine p.m. is, however, Tommy’s noon, so as the Palm became emptier and more sedate, Tommy grew more and more energetic. I had to get home for a number of reasons, not the least of which was my girlfriend, Amber. She wasn’t a fan of Tommy’s and hated it when I wasn’t with her on her nights off.

Tommy leaned forward. He’d never touched his hot water. “What you think now about The Room?”

I’d told Tommy what I thought about The Room several times, which was that the script didn’t make any sense. Characters’ motivations changed from scene to scene, important plot points were raised and then dropped, and all of the dialogue sounded exactly the same, which is to say, it sounded exactly like Tommy’s unique understanding of the English language. But nothing I said would ever change his view of The Room, so what did it matter? I thought the film offered a fascinating glimpse into Tommy’s life. But I couldn’t imagine anyone anywhere would be able to decipher it, let alone pay money to see it.

“You know what I think about The Room,” I said. “Why are you asking me this now?”

“Because tomorrow is very important day. It will go to the history. Touchdown. No one can take away. Our top-of-mountain day! We begin to shoot.” He smiled and leaned back. “I can’t believe this, if you really think about it.”

“Yeah. Congratulations. You deserve it.”

Tommy looked at me, his face slack. “This ‘yeah’ is not convincing. You are not happy?”

I was happy. I was also, at that moment, distracted. I’d accidentally caught eyes with a young brunette across the restaurant, which I think she mistakenly took as an invitation. She and her blond friend were checking out our table. And now, suddenly, they were coming over. Dressed up, both of them. Heels, both of them. Young, both of them. The blond woman looked like an agent’s assistant maybe meeting her slightly racier, less securely employed friend for a night of whatever they felt like they could get away with. They had sparkly eyes and hello-there smiles and were holding half-drunk glasses of wine, which were clearly not their first drinks of the evening.

They motioned for Tommy and me to scoot in so they could join us. “Just wanted to come over and say hey,” the brunette said. “Thought you were cute.”

We awkwardly shook hands, introduced ourselves. Greg. Tommy. Miranda. Sam. Our booth smelled like it had been hit with a precision strike of apples-and-vanilla perfume.

Conversation, haltingly, began. Yeah, the food was great. Oh, that’s so funny! My bare arm was touched once, twice. Tommy was glowering, backing away into some small, irritated corner of his mind. He stayed there for a bit, before, out of nowhere, he asked the girls, “So what do you do besides drink?”

They exchanged a quick, decisive look. I could almost see the mischief in their eyes flicker out at the same time. “Excuse me?” Miranda said.

Tommy sighed. “I ask what do you do? Any job or anything? What do you offer besides the vodka?”

Miranda looked into her wineglass questioningly, and then over at me. There was nothing I could say. Miranda and Sam stood up. Yes. Well. It was nice meeting you, Greg. Yeah, thanks. You, too. We’ll see you around. Sure. Take care, then. Absolutely.

After they left, I looked at Tommy and shook my head. “Girls are crazy,” he said.

The waiter arrived and asked to see Tommy’s identification. This wasn’t unusual. Our bill was huge, and Tommy was paying with his credit card, which wasn’t reading. Tommy, however, refused to show the waiter identification, eventually announcing, “I have a right under law of California!” Then the waiter made it clear to Tommy that the Los Angeles Police Department was only a phone call away. Tommy got angry and allowed the waiter to glimpse his driver’s license beneath a murky plastic lining in his wallet. The waiter said he was sorry, but Tommy had to remove the identification. “Very disrespectful!” Tommy said. “I’m sorry but you are completely off the wall.” The waiter, finally, acceded.

Tommy stormed out. I lingered behind, apologizing to every member of the staff I saw. I’d become accustomed to this; it was how I paid for our dinners.

Outside the Palm, we waited for the valet to drive Tommy’s Benz around. (He had apparently forgotten about the dangers of valet farting.) I dreaded the look on the valet’s face when Tommy tipped him. On a hundred-dollar dinner tab, Tommy would often tip five dollars. Sometimes the recipients of Tommy’s tips would come back to him, with an air of wounded dignity, and ask, “Have I done something wrong?” And Tommy would say, “Be happy with what you have.” Tommy must have been feeling a little guilty about what went down inside the Palm, because the valet didn’t seem scandalized by the tip Tommy gave him.

We headed east on Santa Monica. Traffic was light, but Tommy was nevertheless driving at his standard speed of twenty miles below the legal limit. I wondered, sometimes, what drivers on the freeways of Greater Los Angeles thought when they passed Tommy. Expecting to see some centenarian crypt keeper behind the wheel, they instead saw a Cro-Magnon profile, wild black hair, and Blade Runner sunglasses.

Coincidentally, at the first stoplight, Miranda and Sam from the Palm pulled up beside us. I looked over and smile-waved. They, of course, burst out laughing. Tommy powered down the passenger window and said, as loud as he could, “Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha! Ha! Ha!” Horrified, they pulled away from the stoplight as though from a terrible accident. I sank into my seat. This was another way in which I passed the time in Tommy’s company: trying to disappear.

Tommy looked over at me and said, “You look great, by the way. Like Spartacus.”

Tommy loved movies, though I wasn’t sure he’d seen anything made after 1965. I think he thought I looked like Spartacus because for the first time in my life I was wearing a beard. While working on the casting of The Room, which took months longer than it should have, I had let the beard—along with my relationship—just sort of go. Though Amber hated it, I’d grown to like the beard. There was something invigoratingly Viking about it.

“Spartacus?” I said. At that point, I had never seen Spartacus, but I gathered Tommy’s observation was accurate. A few years later I finally watched it. Spartacus does not have a beard.

The car began to roll forward again. “So listen now,” Tommy said. “This is very important. You have to do The Room.”

“I am doing The Room.”

“This is not what I mean. I mean you must act in The Room. Perform. You have to play Mark.”

We’d been over this. Many, many times. Tommy claimed that he’d written the part of Mark—who in the script betrays his best friend, Johnny (Tommy’s character), by sleeping with Johnny’s future wife, Lisa—for me. I was never sure how to take this.

In the four years that I’d known Tommy, he’d come to my aid on numerous occasions. If it weren’t for Tommy, I never would have moved to Los Angeles. Now he was making a film—a film that meant the world to him. So I was happy to help him. But act in it? That was an entirely different level of obligation. I knew what good films looked like. The Room was not going to be a good film. It was probably going to require divine intervention just for Tommy to finish the thing.

This was to say nothing of the fact that the role of Mark had already been cast.

“What do you think about this?” Tommy asked.

“I think,” I said, “that Don is already playing Mark.” The actor’s name was Dan, but Tommy always called him Don, so I had to call him that, too.

Tommy was quiet for a block. Gobs of oncoming headlight filled the car and withdrew. We were now traveling ten miles below Tommy’s standard twenty miles below the speed limit, all while he veered int...

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1451661193
• ISBN 13: 9781451661194
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288