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A review by wintrovia
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell
4.0
This is the story about the making of The Room, commonly described as one of the worst films ever made. Or the best worst film ever made. Or “The Citizen Kane of bad movies”, which is an interesting mixture of compliment and insult. It’s written by Greg Sestero, who co-starred and produced the film alongside Tommy Wiseau, the director, writer, star and financial backer of the project.
Tommy is a fascinating character and the book does a great job of capturing a true eccentric at both his worst and best. The story of how the film was made is probably more interesting than the film itself, as the production was constantly troubled by the quirky whims of Tommy.
I love reading stories about how films are made, particularly when it all goes a bit wrong and this film went very wrong and it’s entertaining to find out just how badly things go as Tommy tries to create his masterpiece.
Whether this book is a completely accurate account of the events around the film and the relationship between Greg and Tommy Wiseau is something only the two of them will know for sure. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could remember such vast amounts of dialogue ten years after something happened, so it’s more likely the book captures some of the spirit of what happened but uses artistic license to fill in the specifics.
Tommy Wiseau himself claims the book is about 40 to 50 percent accurate. Even if that the case, if you take 60 percent of his worst moments out of the book there would still be plenty of embarrassing stories and ridiculous situations left over.
I found myself warming to Tommy increasingly as the book goes along. The timeline jumps back and forth between the production of the film and the early days of Greg and Tommy’s unlikely friendship, in the years building up to the film project starting.
Tommy is a manipulative and unreasonable man for much of the time but he also has many positive qualities and it’s hard not to find his puppy-like devotion to telling his story charming and almost inspirational. If someone so inept can make a film surrounded by people that don’t think he can then surely anyone could.
I felt that the book probably didn’t do enough to highlight how much Tommy Wiseau achieved in making The Room. It might have been a stinker, but it was nearly all his own work. Very few people have the vision and ambition to follow through on such a plan. I suppose you can’t get too carried away with it, as it’s just dreadful but it’s become a kind of cult hit because of how terrible it is.
My feelings about Greg, the author of the book and Tommy’s co-star, weren’t quite as easy to work out. He puts himself in the middle of the story and while he’s self-deprecating at times, he doesn’t seem to fully acknowledge the role he played in making The Room the piece of crap it turned out to be.
It’s clear from the book that Greg was a trusted friend of Tommy’s, possibly his only friend, and Greg didn’t seem to do a lot to help Tommy to improve his project. Looking at the facts of their relationship it seems to me that Greg did pretty well out of it, almost to the point where you could accuse him of taking advantage of someone that was clearly not very stable.
I also felt that Greg used this book as an opportunity to write his own memoir of being a failed actor, despite a lot of his personal journey not really adding anything to the story. There are long passages about his early experiences modeling, getting signed up to an agent and going to auditions that are really not needed and could have been cut from the story without any harm being done.
But apart from some minor grumbles about Greg, I think this is an excellent book. It’s written solidly and there are moments that made me genuinely laugh out loud, which is a cliche but incredibly rare, even in the funniest book, but I enjoyed hearing about Tommy’s exploits so much that I couldn’t help but laugh at the most extreme moments.
Tommy is a fascinating character and the book does a great job of capturing a true eccentric at both his worst and best. The story of how the film was made is probably more interesting than the film itself, as the production was constantly troubled by the quirky whims of Tommy.
I love reading stories about how films are made, particularly when it all goes a bit wrong and this film went very wrong and it’s entertaining to find out just how badly things go as Tommy tries to create his masterpiece.
Whether this book is a completely accurate account of the events around the film and the relationship between Greg and Tommy Wiseau is something only the two of them will know for sure. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could remember such vast amounts of dialogue ten years after something happened, so it’s more likely the book captures some of the spirit of what happened but uses artistic license to fill in the specifics.
Tommy Wiseau himself claims the book is about 40 to 50 percent accurate. Even if that the case, if you take 60 percent of his worst moments out of the book there would still be plenty of embarrassing stories and ridiculous situations left over.
I found myself warming to Tommy increasingly as the book goes along. The timeline jumps back and forth between the production of the film and the early days of Greg and Tommy’s unlikely friendship, in the years building up to the film project starting.
Tommy is a manipulative and unreasonable man for much of the time but he also has many positive qualities and it’s hard not to find his puppy-like devotion to telling his story charming and almost inspirational. If someone so inept can make a film surrounded by people that don’t think he can then surely anyone could.
I felt that the book probably didn’t do enough to highlight how much Tommy Wiseau achieved in making The Room. It might have been a stinker, but it was nearly all his own work. Very few people have the vision and ambition to follow through on such a plan. I suppose you can’t get too carried away with it, as it’s just dreadful but it’s become a kind of cult hit because of how terrible it is.
My feelings about Greg, the author of the book and Tommy’s co-star, weren’t quite as easy to work out. He puts himself in the middle of the story and while he’s self-deprecating at times, he doesn’t seem to fully acknowledge the role he played in making The Room the piece of crap it turned out to be.
It’s clear from the book that Greg was a trusted friend of Tommy’s, possibly his only friend, and Greg didn’t seem to do a lot to help Tommy to improve his project. Looking at the facts of their relationship it seems to me that Greg did pretty well out of it, almost to the point where you could accuse him of taking advantage of someone that was clearly not very stable.
I also felt that Greg used this book as an opportunity to write his own memoir of being a failed actor, despite a lot of his personal journey not really adding anything to the story. There are long passages about his early experiences modeling, getting signed up to an agent and going to auditions that are really not needed and could have been cut from the story without any harm being done.
But apart from some minor grumbles about Greg, I think this is an excellent book. It’s written solidly and there are moments that made me genuinely laugh out loud, which is a cliche but incredibly rare, even in the funniest book, but I enjoyed hearing about Tommy’s exploits so much that I couldn’t help but laugh at the most extreme moments.