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1.07k reviews for:
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made
Greg Sestero
4.29 AVERAGE
1.07k reviews for:
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made
Greg Sestero
4.29 AVERAGE
Din sutele de cărți citite, doar trei mi-au înmuiat inima de gheață, aproape până la lacrimi: Crimă și pedeapsă, Povestea fără sfârșit și The Disaster Artist.
Yep, it's THAT fucking good!
E povestea adevărată a lui Tommy Wiseau, un tip atât de ciudat încât dacă s-ar dovedi că-i venit de pe altă planetă... honestly, probabil n-ar surprinde pe nimeni. Şi e despre unicul lui prieten, Greg, împreuna cu care a făcut cel mai prost film ever (o capodoperă involuntară): The Room, o peliculă care m-a fascinat din secunda 1 (și pe care o revăd de cel puțin de două ori pe an, pentru că e absolut incredibilă).
Povestea e ilară la început, dar încetul cu încetul îți frânge inima când îți dai seama ce înseamnă să fii în locul omului ăluia.
Faceți-vă o favoare, de fapt două: vedeți filmul şi citiți cartea.
Yep, it's THAT fucking good!
E povestea adevărată a lui Tommy Wiseau, un tip atât de ciudat încât dacă s-ar dovedi că-i venit de pe altă planetă... honestly, probabil n-ar surprinde pe nimeni. Şi e despre unicul lui prieten, Greg, împreuna cu care a făcut cel mai prost film ever (o capodoperă involuntară): The Room, o peliculă care m-a fascinat din secunda 1 (și pe care o revăd de cel puțin de două ori pe an, pentru că e absolut incredibilă).
Povestea e ilară la început, dar încetul cu încetul îți frânge inima când îți dai seama ce înseamnă să fii în locul omului ăluia.
Faceți-vă o favoare, de fapt două: vedeți filmul şi citiți cartea.
Tommy Wiseau is, quite possibly, the most enigmatic person in Hollywood. No...the world. His feature film debut, The Room is one of the most gloriously bad films ever made. Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell's The Disaster Artist is an amazing book that sheds some light on the man who is Tommy Wiseau. It offers a wonderful, insider's look at the making of The Room, as well as paints an intimate portrait of the complicated relationship between Sestero and Wiseau. The writing is superb, and you really feel like you know Sestero and Wiseau by the time the book is over. You feel like they're your best friends, and you can't wait to spend more time with them. As soon as I finished this book, I popped in my blu-ray of The Room, watching it again with my newfound knowledge. The Disaster Artist is an incredible book that breathes new life into a film that needs all the help it can get. This book was also turned into an amazing film directed by and starring James Franco as Tommy Wiseau.
dark
emotional
funny
fast-paced
I tried to imagine Tommy’s mind from the inside out. I saw burning forests, blind valleys, volcanoes in the desert, city streets that plunged into the ocean, barricades everywhere, and all of it lit in the deep-cherry light of emergency.
Let me be the witness: this book is thoroughly readable and enjoyable for someone who really does not care about the terrible indie film turned cult classic, The Room.
That said, would I have found this somewhere closer to a flawless, essential read and fully engaging from cover to cover if I cared at all about The Room? Yeah, probably.
Instead, it is a fascinating, witty, and often deeply troubling. There are some serious structural issues: 1) the flip back and forth between the beginning of the friendship and the production of the film only really makes sense at the beginning, and 2) the only reason I can fathom that he randomly started weaving in his best understanding of Tommy Wiseau's personal history was that he was hopeful that Wiseau wouldn't read that far.
I met Tommy in the midst of the most aggressively, desperately lonesome months of my life. I needed a friend as much as he did. Maybe even more.
Regardless, each element of the book, regardless of its ordering, is clever, quick-paced, and insightful. These elements result in a both absurdly humorous and exceedingly painful look into two very lonely men, neither of whom really had any business being involved in filmmaking, whose ongoing toxic relationship is the basis of one of the most well-loved awful movies of all time.
The one thing Tommy’s script wasn’t about, despite its characters’ claims? Love.
I had a sobering, sad, and powerful realization: Our friendship was the most human experience Tommy had had in the last five years.
I know that's not going to be a popular interpretation of the book. For many, this book revealed Greg Sestero as a heroic character, who was roped into a time-bomb of a project because of his unfailing friendship and loyalty to Wiseau.
Which, yes, in some ways that is what the book does. But the rest of the time, it is, probably unwittingly to the author, revealing Sestero's deep similarities to Wiseau, in his isolation and desperation for recognition and willingness to follow any course, no matter how ridiculous and warned against by steadier minds, to achieve his own vision of a fulfilling life. If Wiseau is addled, Sestero is too.
The rest of us were toying with chemistry sets and he was lighting the lab on fire.
As I say, this is fascinating and both frustrating and deeply interesting to read. The interspersed behind-the-scenes look at Wiseau attempting to run a film set only heighten the punch of the tragic and toxic dynamic.
That said...
As a result, we end up in a detailed account of a really quite upsettingly abusive friendship, which, yes, is recognized as such but, dangerously, is never abandoned. This is real, but this is a problem. We are meant to come out of this book thinking about an emotional and financial abuser "yes, he has flaws, but he's ultimately a good person with big dreams." Bleed your friends and crew dry and you, too, can have a steadfast, loyal friend who will help you roll your lack of artistic talent into a cult cash cow for the rest of your life. It's damaging and it's something for which the book needs to be called out.
SpoilerAlso, as a result of Sestero's questionable positive view of Wiseau, we end up, in the middle of what is supposed to be a comedic recount, brushing over Sestero making it quite clear that Wiseau's abuse of sex scenes was traumatic not only for Juliette Danielle but for several crew members. It doesn't exactly make me think highly of the many Hollywood heavyweights who I know have read this book and still speak of Wiseau jovially. (sexual violence trigger warning)
Tommy, even the Tommy I thought I knew, was a stranger to me.
Problematic as it is, I can say with confidence that this one is a must-read for the The Room aficionado in your life. If that's not you, it's a very good book that you can take or leave. Just proceed with caution in taking.
‘Nobody is going to see this movie anyway.’
Let me be the witness: this book is thoroughly readable and enjoyable for someone who really does not care about the terrible indie film turned cult classic, The Room.
That said, would I have found this somewhere closer to a flawless, essential read and fully engaging from cover to cover if I cared at all about The Room? Yeah, probably.
Instead, it is a fascinating, witty, and often deeply troubling. There are some serious structural issues: 1) the flip back and forth between the beginning of the friendship and the production of the film only really makes sense at the beginning, and 2) the only reason I can fathom that he randomly started weaving in his best understanding of Tommy Wiseau's personal history was that he was hopeful that Wiseau wouldn't read that far.
I met Tommy in the midst of the most aggressively, desperately lonesome months of my life. I needed a friend as much as he did. Maybe even more.
Regardless, each element of the book, regardless of its ordering, is clever, quick-paced, and insightful. These elements result in a both absurdly humorous and exceedingly painful look into two very lonely men, neither of whom really had any business being involved in filmmaking, whose ongoing toxic relationship is the basis of one of the most well-loved awful movies of all time.
The one thing Tommy’s script wasn’t about, despite its characters’ claims? Love.
I had a sobering, sad, and powerful realization: Our friendship was the most human experience Tommy had had in the last five years.
I know that's not going to be a popular interpretation of the book. For many, this book revealed Greg Sestero as a heroic character, who was roped into a time-bomb of a project because of his unfailing friendship and loyalty to Wiseau.
Which, yes, in some ways that is what the book does. But the rest of the time, it is, probably unwittingly to the author, revealing Sestero's deep similarities to Wiseau, in his isolation and desperation for recognition and willingness to follow any course, no matter how ridiculous and warned against by steadier minds, to achieve his own vision of a fulfilling life. If Wiseau is addled, Sestero is too.
The rest of us were toying with chemistry sets and he was lighting the lab on fire.
As I say, this is fascinating and both frustrating and deeply interesting to read. The interspersed behind-the-scenes look at Wiseau attempting to run a film set only heighten the punch of the tragic and toxic dynamic.
That said...
As a result, we end up in a detailed account of a really quite upsettingly abusive friendship, which, yes, is recognized as such but, dangerously, is never abandoned. This is real, but this is a problem. We are meant to come out of this book thinking about an emotional and financial abuser "yes, he has flaws, but he's ultimately a good person with big dreams." Bleed your friends and crew dry and you, too, can have a steadfast, loyal friend who will help you roll your lack of artistic talent into a cult cash cow for the rest of your life. It's damaging and it's something for which the book needs to be called out.
SpoilerAlso, as a result of Sestero's questionable positive view of Wiseau, we end up, in the middle of what is supposed to be a comedic recount, brushing over Sestero making it quite clear that Wiseau's abuse of sex scenes was traumatic not only for Juliette Danielle but for several crew members. It doesn't exactly make me think highly of the many Hollywood heavyweights who I know have read this book and still speak of Wiseau jovially. (sexual violence trigger warning)
Tommy, even the Tommy I thought I knew, was a stranger to me.
Problematic as it is, I can say with confidence that this one is a must-read for the The Room aficionado in your life. If that's not you, it's a very good book that you can take or leave. Just proceed with caution in taking.
‘Nobody is going to see this movie anyway.’
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This one took longer to finish than I thought, and it’s not like the writing is bad. In fact, it’s surprisingly good and Sestero and Bissell make a formidable team. What I like most about the book is not only Sestero’s humility (something that could have easily been eroded by The Room’s cult status), but how he shows you can look at Tommy Wiseau and see a talentless bastard, a pitiable creature, and a vivacious dreamer, and all these descriptions can be true. I’m not sure if The Disaster Artist is really about anything, but it makes for a fascinating character study and a fun behind-the-scenes look for people who love The Room (I’m not that into The Room so there wasn’t that level of connection for me).
Reading this book has made the movie even more enjoyable!
Absolutely loved this. Only makes you enjoy "The Room" more