“PS if you have plastic spoons, bring them tomorrow.”
That is what the text on my phone read. My friend had bought us tickets to see a midnight showing of “The Room” on Sept. 26, and we were discussing when to meet up. Somehow, the conversation ended on spoons.
I had never seen “The Room,” nor did I know what it was about. This is probably due to the fact that if you ask a fan to describe the film, their eyes will bulge incredulously at you, as if to indicate that this is a movie and an experience that cannot be described with words.
An experience — that’s the key part. I was really in for something, and my three movie companions made sure not to explain anything beforehand. I was going into “The Room” blind.
The film was screening at midnight in Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre, as it does every month. From the image on the theatre’s website and from its vague yet ominous title, I initially presumed the movie was an awfully made horror flick. Although it is horrifying in other ways, it turns out I was wrong.
“The Room” is a 2003 film directed by and starring the mysterious Tommy Wiseau. Following its release, the film quickly gained a reputation as one of the worst films ever created. The movie depicts a poorly constructed love triangle, as well as other tangentially related (as well as unrelated) half-constructed storylines. The best comparison to this film would probably be a soap opera, except with potentially worse structure and acting.
The line outside the theater at about 11:45 p.m., however, did not indicate anything extraordinary about the film I was going to witness. The crowd buzzed with excitement and was expectedly heavy on college students; nothing seemed too out of place. Yet once the lights dimmed and Program Manager Mark Anastasio came onstage to introduce the film, there was a transformation among the audience.
“You’re all here for a terrible film,” Anastasio said as audience members cheered, shouted and started opening Costco-sized packages of plastic spoons, passing handfuls to both friends and strangers. Some had even managed to smuggle Nerf footballs into the theater. The opening credits mentioned Wiseau a handful of times (he wrote, directed, starred in and produced the film), and the cheering increased every time.
Wiseau, with his strangely vague European accent and long, stringy wig-like hair, plays an overly trusting “nice guy,” whose world gets turned upside down when his bratty fiancée starts an affair with his young best friend. It seems simple and cliché enough, but there is just so much more wrong with the film that it makes this plot no longer simple. I begin to realize halfway through the movie why it cannot be accurately described in plain English.
This film has a 3.5 out of 10 rating on IMBD and a 33 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, yet the theater was packed at midnight on a Friday night. “The Room” is unique in that it is a film where heckling is both allowed and encouraged by all audience members. Throwing is encouraged too, as hundreds of spoons fly towards the screen every 15 minutes (I won’t explain why, so as not to ruin the charm). At one point, a group in the audience ran across the stage to mimic the actors jogging on screen.
The movie is just so bad — not only full of embarrassingly poor acting, but horrible shots and overall glaring inconsistencies, as well. “Who is this character? What does that even mean?” are constant thoughts throughout the hour-and-a-half runtime. The plotlines do not flow in any shape or form and mastermind Wiseau seems to ignore almost all rules and guidelines for filmmaking. Better yet, the film is made with such enthusiasm and sincerity that any hint of it potentially being ironic or satirical is thrown out the window immediately.
It is incredible, however, how the audience all moved, shouted and acted together on the same wavelength, as if they were also actors in the movie, all playing their roles flawlessly. Everybody knew their lines and everybody was on cue.
“WATER!” resonated over and over through the theater during the opening poorly-shot scenes of San Francisco. “GO! GO! GO!” as the camera attempts to pan across the Golden Gate Bridge. The audience yells back at the actors on screen, mocking their horrendously scripted lines and the illogical flaws in continuity. Yet they do it with the same amount of gusto that Wiseau proudly put into his creation.
It was truly a sight to behold. “The Room” was boring, yet dreadfully captivating, cringe-worthy and laughable. The characters were at once creepy, random and hilariously cheesy. The film is full of rituals that the audience has grown to love, mastered to perfection and showcased to newcomers like myself.
“The Room” will be screening again at the Coolidge in November and for some bizarre reason, I know I will be in attendance. And I will definitely come prepared with more spoons.
Such a poorly scripted and performed movie. The spoons and copious amounts of smuggled alcohol make the film all the better.