The Disaster Artist: The Bristol Connection

Think Ed Wood meets Florence Foster Jenkins and you’ll have some idea of what to expect from James Franco’s Oscar-tipped The Disaster Artist: a warm, affectionate and very funny comedy about the creation of “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”. After seeing this, audiences will be clamouring to catch up with Tommy Wiseau’s extraordinary love triangle drama The Room and learn more about its eccentric, oddly accented director. But Bristolian cineastes need no introduction, as Mr. Wiseau and his co-star Greg Sestero enjoy a special connection to the city, where their regularly screened disasterpiece always sells out and remains the most popular movie ever shown by the Bristol Bad Film Club. Indeed, this was the film that inspired BBFC supremo Ti Singh to set up the Club back in 2013.

He vividly remembers the first time he encountered The Room. “In many ways it was life-changing, because I became obsessed with it for a good couple of months. After I saw it, I went out and tracked down every article and book I could find on the film because I had so many questions. I didn’t understand how Tommy had managed to make this film. I didn’t understand what he was trying to do with it…”

Four years ago, he attended a London screening of the film with all the Rocky Horror-style audience participation it inspires (spoon throwing, counting, etc) and persuaded Tommy and Greg to record video messages for the BBFC’s inaugural event. Thus began a firm friendship that saw Tommy visit Bristol for sell-out screenings twice this year. In addition, Greg did a solo event at the Bierkeller based on his book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, which Franco adapted for his movie, and joined Tommy in September for the unveiling of their new collaboration, Best F(r)iends. Now Ti is about to embark on a nationwide tour with Greg, conducting Q&As after screenings of The Disaster Artist.

All of which must give him some kind of insight into the enigma that is Tommy Wiseau. “Tommy is a showman. When he’s meeting his fans, he’s everything they expect him to be. He’s gregarious. He’s crazy. He doesn’t really answer any questions, which some people can find frustrating when he does a Q&A. Because he just won’t answer anything. If people have serious questions, he just turns it into a bit of a circus.”

Like, who are you? Where do you come from? How old are you? “Exactly. He’ll just deflect. But one-on-one, he’s a very nice, generous guy. He’s obviously aware of the reputation of the film and everything that’s been written about it. But he has retroactively re-marketed The Room. When he made it, this was his On the Waterfront moment. He saw himself as Brando and this was his story of the American working man. When the reviews tore it to pieces and it flopped at the box office but became a success through these cult midnight screenings that grew and grew out of LA, he sold it as a black comedy because he knew this was where the money was going to come from in the future. And I don’t blame him for doing that.”

But how comfortable is Tommy with this really? He envisioned The Room as his great artistic statement, but now people turn up in droves to laugh at it. That must hurt. “It’s really hard to know,” sighs Ti. “You can tell it’s not something he’s 100% comfortable with because he doesn’t stay and watch it with audiences. He’ll always say before a screening: ‘You can laugh, you can cry, but please just don’t hurt each other.’ So he sees the film as bringing people together – if not for the reasons he originally intended.”

Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero and Ti Singh on stage at the Redgrave Theatre, Clifton, September 2017

Woe betide anyone who falls out with him, however. Filmmaker Rick Harper initially collaborated with Tommy, whom he has described as “the most interesting person after Michael Jackson”, on a documentary entitled Room Full of Spoons. But they disagreed over its direction, largely because it probed too far into Tommy’s mysterious past. Tommy eventually slapped an injunction on the documentary, preventing it from being shown on the grounds that it invaded his privacy and made fun of The Room. This was lifted just a few weeks ago by a Canadian judge who ruled dryly: “Although Mr. Wiseau complained in his affidavit that the documentary mocks, derides and disparages him and The Room, he did not disclose that The Room‘s fame rests on its apparently abysmal quality as a movie . . . People flock to see The Room because it is so bad. People see the movie for the very purpose of mocking it; a phenomenon that has won the movie its cult status.”

Even more bizarrely, Tommy has also been plagued by allegations that he didn’t actually direct The Room. “It’s a strange thing to claim,” notes Ti. “It’s like claiming that you were driving the Titanic when it hit the iceberg. So he’s put videos online saying ‘Shame on you!’ to these people who are trying to take credit for his artistic accomplishments.”

Dave Franco as Greg Sestero and James Franco as Tommy Wiseau in The Disaster Artist

He has, however, reportedly embraced The Disaster Artist, and it’s even been suggested that Tommy and Greg could show up at next year’s Oscar ceremony. “That’s insane when you think about it,” says Ti. “I think he realises that The Disaster Artist will introduce The Room to a whole new bunch of people.”

So when will we see the film – and Tommy – in Bristol again? “He’s very keen to screen The Room again in Bristol. He wants to come back next February. But he was here in February and September this year, and I’m kind of worried that it’s too soon and we might have Tommy over-exposure…”

The Disaster Artist opens in selected cinemas on December 1 and more widely on December 8. Greg Sestero will be in conversation with Ti Singh after a screening of the film at the Watershed on December 21. This has already sold out, but a second date has just been added on December 20. Go here for tickets. Bristol Bad Film Club’s Christmas screening is Jack Frost at Bristol Improv Theatre on December 4. This has also sold out. But if you’re quick, you can still get tickets for their January screening: the preposterous, self-styled Pulp Fiction meets Saturday Night Fever flick Dance or Die.

Read more: Celebrating Cinematic Crap