Corey

Elevator prank.

Louis CK is moving up in the world, as evidenced by his recent turn in Oscar favorite American Hustle. He plays an FBI desk jockey constant abused by Bradley Cooper’s upstart agent, and is constantly trying to finish a story about ice fishing with his father and brother as a kid. It’s meant to be […]

Everybody is doing their bit in this image from The Inbetweeners 2. Maybe Will looks a little more confident than normal, and Jay a touch less gormless. Call it character development.

This pic was accompanied by the caption:

G’bye Australia, you’ve been great to us. It’s fair to say you’re genuinely a credit to our much maligned convict relocation policy.

There’s more work to be done in the UK before the film releases here in August.

New Image From The Inbetweeners 2 As Cast And Crew Finish Work In Australia

Log out

Zelda tear-off flyer.

thedissolve:

The Spanish-language title for I, Frankenstein is both accurate and awesome.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier by Oli Riches

joe-stone:

As a present for a friend’s birthday I illustrated and produced a custom copy of the board game Guess Who using the characters from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie Pulp Fiction.

I drew each character in the style of the original game, making careful note of facial features like nose size, mouth size and eye colour to ensure that it actually functioned as a working version of Guess Who as well as referencing the film. The finishing touch was making a new wrapping for the box that looked like Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase.

More pictures of it can be seen on my portfolio by clicking here.

The New Yorker

Man with a plan

A quiz by UsvsTh3m figures out how well you are prepared for the apocalypse. With just a little knowledge and hubris, I managed to live to the age of 105 (if the apocalypse happens soon). I don't think they take your current age into consideration. Gerard at the Presurfer lasted an entire six months, because he's a city boy. How long will you survive?

Redditor erikhoof posted a set of portraits made when he was about ten years old. It was a brave move, as they are liable to become memes that will last forever.

Only time will tell which will become the most popular: the movie posters, the anti-bullying image macros, or the Nazi salute remixes (which aren't posted here, but you can find them in the comments). Continue reading to see some of the best so far.

This one came from a second thread in which the pictures were named "Androgynous Karate Kid."

And this is Erik today. Many didn't even realize that the kid in the pictures was a boy until they saw this one.

Ever wonder what Alaska, California or Iowa means? Well, Like Cool can help you better understand what your state name means, along with any of the other states...well, that is assuming you don't live in one of the states that's colored grey as the historical record on those names is a little fuzzy.

Even the grey ones still have some explanations though, it's just that the stories behind those meanings aren't as clear. So, what do you think of your state's name now that you know the story?

You might think you know all there is to know about the 1999 movie Fight Club, but even so, you will find trivia to blow your mind in this list. I still haven't seen the movie, and it was at least ten years old before I ever knew there was a twist in it. Now I see there are easter eggs in almost every scene, stuff that you have to look for. And after reading this list you'll have an excuse to go watch it again because you have to check out and see if these things are real. Some content NSFW.   

If you wanted to create a shrine to American childhood in the 1980s, these lamps should light it. Etsy seller Marty McFly (possibly not his real name) made theselamps by gluing together and painting Star Wars toys.

The top one, for example, is made from the Ewok Village Playset, a classic and cherished toy that came out with Return of the Jedi. The bottom lamp is made from pretty much everything else.

-via Nerd Approved

etsy.com/shop/CarvedCrayons


etsy.com/shop/CarvedCrayons


etsy.com/shop/CarvedCrayons


etsy.com/shop/CarvedCrayons


etsy.com/shop/CarvedCrayons


etsy.com/shop/CarvedCrayons


etsy.com/shop/CarvedCrayons

Carved Crayons

Source

A good method of determining the realism of a film isn’t by body count so much as it is the weight a writer puts on each death. For example, if the death is preceded by any of the following one-liners, it probably wasn’t valued very much.

That isn’t to say these are bad films by any stretch, just films that you wouldn’t want to be caught dead dying in, lest your final breaths be a gentle laugh at the lunacy uttered by your attacker.

8. “You think this is the real Quaid? It is.” – Total Recall

You could write a book based on bad Schwarzenegger murder lines, but I chose this one because of how incredibly flaccid it is in terms of being neither clever nor “so bad it’s funny.” It just, kind of, is.

At first glance you’d wonder why they would even fall for it. After all, it’s not like there’s any harm in shooting a hologram just in case. But then again, we know nothing of the lives of these Martian henchmen, and in great stress one can make dumb snap decisions. It would be almost worse to imagine these guys falling to the floor, their last moments being the same feeling you get when you lock your keys in your car.

7. “I didn’t forget everything. I remember how to kill you, asshole.” – Unknown

…He said, right before wildly jabbing the guy with glass after a weird struggle. For those of you who haven’t seen this film, Liam Neeson wasn’t fighting Lord Voldemort or anything. It was just some guy. You can kill those things so many different ways it’s ridiculous.

And while it might have been a (really awkward) nod to his character’s memory loss, the fact that it still takes a struggle to actually kill the guy makes me suspect that Neeson did, in fact, forget how to murder this wimpy looking dude.

6. “No more Mr. Knife Guy.” – Wild Wild West

Not terrible as a pun until you realize that it’s a reference that shouldn’t technically exist yet. Will Smith just coined it while kicking a man out of a giant walking spider. But what’s even weirder is that he didn’t coin the original “nice guy” phrase, but a pun on a phrase that – once again – didn’t historically exist until around the 1960s.

And yes, I do realize that they also didn’t have giant steam powered spiders back in the days of the old west – but that’s almost more forgivable considering that the culture of this film seems consistently dated except for everything Will Smith says and does. It’s almost as if he’s actually Agent J from Men In Black, accidentally sent back in time with that device from the third film. That makes as much sense as anything, actually.

5. “Do you know what happens to a toad when it’s struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.” – X-Men

Storm, holy shit. It’s called a one-liner because it’s short and to the point. At that rate, you could have bored him to death quicker than the electrocution. Also, it’s just bad manners to ask someone a question when you know damn well that their tongue is occupied. Shit, Storm – he was TONGUE-TIED! Couldn’t you have gone with a pun about that?

Obviously just because someone can summon lightning like a Greek God doesn’t mean they automatically have a zinger for every situation, but Storm knows that down the line she’ll be electrocuting dudes. Couldn’t she have prepped a little better, or does she say that line for everything and fills in the blank where “toad” went? I don’t know what’s worse.

4. “It’s you. You’re the rocket man.” – The Rock

Here’s another rule of the action one-liner: if you have to set it up with a really long explanation, it’s not a one-liner. I feel like Cage’s character had envisioned a scenario where Candyman was going to know who Elton John was and couldn’t back out after finding out the opposite.

In the end, who was this reference even for? The man impaled on a fence? He didn’t even get the reference when it was said to him. That means that no one will know what happened unless Cage tells people afterward, and by that point, who would believe him?

3. “Yes officer, as a matter of fact there is a problem. Apparently there are too many bullets in this gun.” – The Last Boy Scout

Everyone needs to love Shane Black, but boy… this line is just… just a nightmare. It is said by a henchman to a snooping cop right before shooting him and framing a knocked-out Bruce Willis in the back seat – giving the cop ample time to realize that he might be near-dispatched. Then again, who would think that such a bumbling line was supposed to be a cool way to off someone? The officer’s dying thought was probably, “wait, what did he just say to me?”

Also, can you really have too many bullets in a gun? It’s just so awkward. One imagines that as they drove off with Bruce Willis’s unconscious body it got strangely silent in the car – the ghost of the guy’s awkward pre-murder phrase echoing in everyone’s heads.

2. Just About Everything Mr. Freeze Says – Batman & Robin

This is a rare combination where not only is he delivering torturous fates worth than death in the form of slow hypothermic encasing, but he does it using god-awful puns. Just imagine, for a second, that the last thing you ever hear on God’s green Earth is some meatastic Austrian telling you to “chill.”

That’s how your life ends, by a big blue robot guy who somehow managed to hire ice-skating thugs and needs diamonds to survive. Meanwhile, there’s a lady who kisses dudes to death – but no, you got the ice clown and his dictionary of winter knock-knock jokes. For quantity, Schwarzenegger is unrivaled, but there’s still a one-liner that reigns moronically supreme. And you may have guessed it.

1. “Garbage day!” – Silent Night, Deadly Night Pt. 2

I have never seen this movie, nor do I know anything about it besides it being a horror film that includes a spree killing. That’s my failing, clearly, because this is just about the best line ever spoken before popping a cap. In a way, it’s brilliant. After all, is there really a point to saying something witty to a guy you’re about to kill? You might as well instead spout out the first thing that you notice.

“Red shirt!” BLAM. “Walking your dog!” BLAM. “Being a squirrel!” BLAM. Screw it. You’re a crazy person so there’s no need to prove otherwise.

Read More Movie Lists

This week MMAjunkie recognizes MMA’s greatest achievements from the past year. We’re honoring fighters in six categories as part of MMAjunkie’s 2013 MMA Awards. MMAjunkie writers and radio hosts provided a list of finalists, and MMAjunkie readers voted for the winners this past week. Today, we close out the awards and reveal MMAjunkie’s Fighter of the Year.

Monday, Jan. 6: Comeback Fighter of the Year – Robbie Lawler
Tuesday, Jan. 7: Breakthrough Fighter of the Year – Travis Browne
Wednesday, Jan. 8: Submission of the Year – Anthony Pettis def. Benson Henderson
Thursday, Jan. 9: Knockout of the Year – Chris Weidman def. Anderson Silva
Friday, Jan 10: Fight of the Year – Jon Jones def. Alexander Gustafsson
Today: Fighter of the Year – Chris Weidman

* * * *

Fighter of the Year

Final voting: Chris Weidman (37%), Vitor Belfort (24%), Demetrious Johnson (14%), Urijah Faber (9%), Cain Velasquez (8%), Travis Browne (5%), write-in Georges St-Pierre (1%), write-in Ronda Rousey (1%), write-in Jon Jones (1%)

It probably tells us something that Chris Weidman won the vote for MMAjunkie’s 2013 Fighter of the Year despite a) not competing at all for the first half of the year, and b) only fighting one person in the second half.

I guess it helps that the one person he did fight (and defeat twice) in that six-month span just happened to be UFC middleweight great Anderson Silva, a legend of the sport who will likely be remembered as one of, if not the best, fighter in MMA history. So yeah, pretty good year for Weidman.

It didn’t start off so great, though. After cementing his status as a serious contender with a second-round KO of Mark Munoz in July of 2012, Weidman ended that year injured. His Long Island home had been torn up by Hurricane Sandy. His big future plans had been put on hold. After withdrawing from a planned bout against Tim Boetsch at UFC 155, he underwent shoulder surgery in late November 2012 and began his 2013 still in recovery mode, with then-middleweight champ Silva seemingly more interested in cross-divisional super-fights than title defenses.

In other words, even the undefeated Weidman had a few reasons to be bummed out as the year kicked off. He couldn’t have known that by the time it was over, he’d have two stoppage victories over an MMA great, or that each would add some unique weirdness all its own to his career highlight reel.

The first one at UFC 162 was just good clean fun. Silva clowned around as Weidman closed in, and pretty soon the champ was asleep on the mat. Score one for Weidman, though naturally we had to see it again just to be sure we weren’t imaging things. The second one at UFC 168 wasn’t so fun. It ended with Silva screaming in agony on the mat, and the crowd at MGM Grand Garden Arena groaning along with him once they saw his broken leg dangling uselessly beneath him after Weidman checked a second-round leg kick.

It wasn’t the way anyone wanted to see the fight end, but, in its own way, it was decisive. Those two wins together cemented Weidman as the legitimate UFC middleweight champ, the successor to the man who had reigned atop the division for so long.

For that feat, Weidman deserves the distinction of 2013’s Fighter of the Year in our eyes. He may have spent less than 13 minutes in the cage against only one opponent, but you can’t say he didn’t make the most of it.

Runner-up: Vitor Belfort

In terms of sheer physical dominance, it’s hard to beat the year Belfort had. He fought three top opponents – Michael Bisping, Luke Rockhold, and Dan Henderson – and knocked them all out with devastating displays of power, speed and skill.

So why did he come in second? Depends who you ask. Maybe it’s due to lingering questions about his controversial use of testosterone-replacement therapy. Maybe readers felt that Weidman’s two wins over Silva trump Belfort’s three wins over three different contenders.

Whatever the reason, you can’t say Belfort didn’t have a great year, even if we might not all agree on what it means or how much credit he deserves for it. And if he doesn’t like coming in second to Weidman, there’s good news on the horizon. If the UFC has its way, he’ll soon get a chance to avenge this loss at the polls with a win in the cage.

Filed under: Featured, News, UFC Tagged: Cain Velasquez, Chris Weidman, Demetrious Johnson, Georges St-Pierre, Jon Jones, Ronda Rousey, Travis Browne, Urijah Faber, Vitor Belfort

cracked:

They’re as authentic as their controversy.

14 Images That Powerful People Don’t Want You to See

Less than 24 hours after the official Coachella lineup affirmed the OutKast reunion we’ve been hearing about in one form or another since last fall, another fest has announced OutKast as headliners. This time, as Rolling Stone reports, it’s New York’s traditionally soggy Governors Ball, which last year boasted Kanye West, Guns N’ Roses, and Kings Of Leon as its headliners. The rest of the 2014 lineup is still under wraps, but we do know that the fest goes down June 6-8 at Randall’s Island Park. Find ticket info here.

Have you ever wondered how many lives your favorite action hero would need to survive a movie? We’ve teamed up with an actual doctor and took up time he could be using to save lives to bring you the answer. In this edition, we examine just exactly how dead Marv and Harry from Home Alone should be after facing off with Kevin McCallister. In reality, the Wet Bandits would be dead many times over and Kevin would be shipped to a psychiatric ward until he breaks free a la Michael Myers to continue his spree of Christmas murders.

The post Honest Action: ‘Home Alone’ appeared first on Screen Junkies.

Regional tees

U can buy a tacos snapback HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In entertainment, an awful lot happens behind closed doors, from canceling TV shows to organizing music festival lineups. While the public sees the end product on TVs, movie screens, or radio dials, they don’t see what it took to get there. In Expert Witness, The A.V. Club talks to industry insiders about the actual business of entertainment in hopes of shedding some light on how the pop-culture sausage gets made. 

Since its launch in 2001, The Amazing Race has been widely considered the Cadillac of American reality shows. The globetrotting game has won an armload of Primetime Emmys, including nine for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program. The show, currently in its 23rd season, has even birthed international versions, including The Amazing Race Asia, The Amazing Race Norge, and HaMerotz LaMillion, the latter from Israel. Considering the show’s grand scale, it should come as no surprise that, behind the scenes, the production is a well-oiled ...

Probably the best thing about Kickstarter is that it’s given weird people a platform to support the artistic endeavors of other weird people who never would have had the chance to make their weird art under the iron fists of the economic models of the past. No longer do questionable eccentrics have to pitch their strange visions to uptight men in suits whose only concern is to maximize profit. Now they can just be like, “Hey, fellow freaks, check out this completely dumb thing I thought of that would make the world a sillier place if it existed. Why don’t you all give me a couple of bucks and then we can enjoy it together?”

The latest project to catch everyone’s attention [via The Verge] for being too weird to live and too rare to die is a film called Kung Fury that a guy named David Sandberg has been trying to cobble together using his background in visual effects, a whole lot of gumption, a good chunk of money out of his own pocket, and a little help from his friends. So far his efforts have resulted in an absolutely bonkers 80s-inspired kung-fu movie teaser that involves time travel, Nazis, dinosaurs, and vikings, and it turns out that with a little bit more help from you, the guy can turn the already insane teaser that he’s created into a full-fledged 30 minute short that will tell a complete story and make the world a slightly more juvenile place to live in. Click through to watch the impressive-looking work he’s done so far.

Normally a short that tried to cram as much nostalgia garbage as possible into its runtime and that shot entirely on green screen wouldn’t be the sort of Kickstarter film project that would catch my eye and make me think it was worth contributing to, but Kung Fury has a couple of things going for it that seem to separate it from the pack. Ever since these so-bad-it’s-good throwback to B-cinema movies have become popular (think Grindhouse, Snakes on a Plane, etc…) it’s slowly become clear that watching a movie that’s purposely trying to be bad or purposely trying to be low budget-looking just isn’t the same as watching a movie that inadvertently turned out bad and couldn’t help but be low budget-looking. There’s a charm that comes from actual effort that just can’t be replicated, and while all of these B-movie tributes usually have a moment or two that make you laugh or cheer, ultimately they don’t become favorites that you constantly re-watch and have a great time with like legitimate, failed but sincere cinema does (think The Room, Troll 2, or Miami Connection).

Kung Fury seems like it has a leg up on the competition in one respect though. While it’s clearly making an effort to be as over the top and outlandish a tribute to 80s genre crap as it can possibly be, at no point during this trailer is it winking at the audience. There’s never an effect that looks intentionally bad, or a moment where a performance purposefully shoots for camp. No, instead there is an absolute conviction in its assertion that a man getting out of his car while it ramps through the air in order to stand on its roof and fire a gun is awesome. And here real concern is projected when it’s revealed that a glitch in the time travel system has caused the story’s hero to hack too much time, sending him back to the Viking age instead of Nazi-era Germany.

Something should be said about those visual effects too. When you hear that a project like this was shot entirely in front of green screen, you expect it to look like absolute garbage. What Sandberg has been able to create here actually looks fairly impressive though, especially considering the minuscule budget he was working with. Considering that all of the money he’s looking to raise through Kickstarter would go to hiring a full effects team and giving them the time and resources necessary to buckle down and do some real work finishing this thing, there’s no telling how impressive Kung Fury could eventually look. Even if cheesy genre action isn’t your thing, you might want to think about contributing to this project just because it could help launch the career of the next great visual effects guy—which is a thing that Hollywood sorely needs, considering how many effects-heavy studio films we get that still look like crap.

What exactly is Sandberg’s campaign looking for as far as funding goes? $200,000, and seeing as most of the shooting has been completed already, almost all of that would go towards completing the film’s digital backdrops and whatnot. The Kickstarter page for the project explains, “Apart from creating all the environments digitally, there’s a lot of CG animated characters such as dinosaurs and robots that requires talented people and lots of time. To hire these artists we need to be able to pay them a decent salary. Money will also go to hire an exceptional artist to create the artwork for the movie poster. It will have that classic, illustrated 80s style that you rarely see anymore.”

Also, if you happen to be an artistic type who’s looking to get your break in the industry, it’s possible that you could be among the team Sandberg hires to get this thing completed. The Kickstarter page goes on to explain that, “We’re open to all the help we can get, so if you’re a 3D artist, 3D animator, visual effects artist, compositor, or if you feel like contribute to this movie in any way not mentioned here, please contact us at: laserunicorns@gmail.com”

The $200,000 isn’t the end of the Kung Fury story though. The Kickstarter campaign is ticking along well, and with 28 days left for it to receive its funding, it doesn’t seem like there’s any question that it’s going to reach the finish line (as a matter of fact, it could get there in the next few hours). There is a secondary goal in place though, where if they’re somehow able to raise $1,000,000 they’ve got an established producer who will talk to a potential distributor about expanding the project out to becoming a full-length feature film. Do you really like what you saw in the trailer above? Have a couple hundred grand lying around collecting dust? Then maybe you’d like to do your part to help make a real life stupid movie about dinosaurs and gunfights happen. It would be better than just handing it all over to your bookie again like you did the last time your cash hoard started to pile up.

This past summer marked the 10^th anniversary of The Room’s opening at two theaters in Los Angeles. Since its cult reception began with a couple of college students during the last week of the film’s initial 2003 exhibition, The Room accelerated into a bona fide cultural phenomenon complete with Rocky Horror-like rituals, public script readings, a video game, and countless experiences of uncanny disbelief from everyone who has enjoyed the enviable experience of viewing this film for the very first time.

There have been great bad movies before, and there will be more in the future. What separates The Room from the rest is that the context from which it was made seems like something that could only exists as a hypothetical: what if somebody with an enigmatic personality and no evident competence for filmmaking produced – and somehow completed – a feature film from his endless well of unspecified resources?

Other great bad films emerged from conflicts between producers and talent, misguided attempts at earning a cheap dollar, or earnest efforts at a high-concept idea on a shoestring budget. What makes The Room unique is that it is unquestionably the singular vision of its maker, writer/director/producer/actor Tommy Wiseau. For all its obvious and beloved faults, The Room must be recognized as an ideal work of indie filmmaking passion. It is, in total, an uncompromising film characterized by its author’s total intent.

So, accompanied by a large grain of salt, here is some free advice (for fans and filmmakers alike) from the man who’s still being torn apart by Lisa.

Independent Filmmaking Should “Look Hollywood”

 “Whenever an issue came up that Tommy wanted to deflect, he attributed his needs to what ‘the producers’ wanted. This was also a way of creating the illusion that Tommy had confidently navigated Hollywood’s upper echelons. And it worked, initially, at least, no one doubted the existence of any of these producers. Considering how much money Tommy was throwing around, how could they have?”

Producing The Room, which ultimately cost a staggering $6M, must have seemed a more legitimate venture from an outsider’s perspective. The production team had exclusive access to a studio space, used state-of-the-art equipment, and was surrounded by an experienced (though, I assume, non-union) filmmaking crew.

One issue, however, was that Wiseau – the source of all the film’s funding, and whose wealth remains a mystery – would spend extravagantly and carelessly in some areas (such as when he had the set staff completely rebuild a taken-apart set to film an alley scene that had no bearing on the film’s “plot,” or when he chose to buy and construct together both a 35mm camera and an HD camera to shoot the film simultaneously in two formats) while being irresponsibly cheap in others (like failing to pay his crew on time, or refusing to rent a generator to cool the film’s sweltering indoor set, which led to an elderly cast member fainting).

Wiseau’s oscillation between bizarre extravagance and extreme frugality – chronicled in detail in The Disaster Artist, the recently released making-of tell-all by Greg Sestero (“Mark”) and journalist Tom Bissell, quoted above – illuminates several key rules of filmmaking: 1) it helps if you have a whole lot of money, 2) money can buy the certain performance of credibility, and 3) money can also have the opposite effect, shattering the illusion of an above-the-line production in control of its resources.

Understand the Intricate Differences Between Drama and Comedy

#1: They’re different words (or was it “awards”?).

Spy on Your Crew

“At the beginning of production, Tommy had hired a young Czech kid named Markus…to shoot rough footage for a making-of documentary about The Room. Tommy’s orders to Markus were to film everything, all the time…What no one knew—what I didn’t even know at the time—was that Tommy was daily watching all of Markus’s raw footage until the wee hours, which went some way toward explaining why he was always so late in the morning. All this time, Tommy had been spying on his own production.”

As depicted in The Disaster Artist, Wiseau possesses an unceasing paranoia even toward his closest confidants. Sestero even discovered at one point during their years-long friendship that Wiseau was spying on their phone conversations by putting the phone on speaker and recording their dialogue with a tape recorder similar to Johnny’s bizarre makeshift surveillance contraption depicted in The Room.

Exercising such paranoia on a film set certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in the relationship between showrunner and crew (the ever-frustrated crew of The Room, individually and as a group, walked out on production and had to be replaced numerous times as a result of Wiseau’s insistent amateurism), but it did give Wiseau a wild-card advantage when negotiating with his crew. It takes a certain degree of narcissism to direct a film at all, let alone do so while also casting oneself in the lead and being the sole producer of something one wrote. Wiseau’s unreflective, unchecked, aggrandized sense of self is strangely honest, even when he exercised unmitigated deceit during filming.

Watch Citizen Kane

Wiseau is right. It is quite the coincidence that Citizen Kane and The Room are both movies that exist.

In Love Scenes, Perfectionism Can Be an Ethical Issue

“[Tommy] made no secret of the fact that he was enjoying his physical contact with Juliette [Danielle], who was obviously suffering between takes. I think half of the guys in the crew had to suppress every chivalrous impulse they had during filming to keep themselves from pulling Tommy off her—especially during the shot in which Johnny appears to be impregnating Lisa’s navel. In the end, Tommy was so pleased with the footage he shot of his love scene that he felt compelled to use it all in his final film, even going so far as to add an additional Johnny-Lisa love scene using recycled footage. Tommy assumed this would go unnoticed by audiences. It did not.”

It’s easy to cast Tommy Wiseau as the oblivious clown with his Dadaist understanding of storytelling, his indiscernible accent, and his one-of-a-kind acting style which consists of either full-throated passion or wooden delivery and nothing else in between. But as a director, producer, and lead actor, he is still in a position of considerable power, and I think Spider-Man’s uncle had something insightful to say about that.

A movie set, whether studio or independent, can be a vulnerable place, especially for inexperienced actors, and especially if those inexperienced actors are filming their first love scene. Wiseau’s approach to the character of Lisa – from long make-out sessions during casting to the above description of the film’s notoriously discomfiting love scene – was, quite frankly, often irresponsible. According to Sistero and Bissell, Wiseau filmed the love scene through endless takes over days on an open, not closed, set. The tenor of this shoot shows up in the finished product: a transparently egocentric set piece resulting in the unintended, cringe-inducing image of a man clearly overpowering a woman.

This is also an example of the perils of shooting a film with, essentially, only one above-the-line crewmember: there was never anybody else of authority to challenge Wiseau or to confide in when the director crossed the line. Any collaborative project necessitates a series of checks and balances up the regime of power. No wonder Sistero says that he walks out or closes his eyes during these scenes in public screenings.

There is a Blurry Line Between Failure and Success

The last few seconds of this trailer sum up Wiseau’s relationship to the public afterlife of the film. Wiseau has unambiguously reiterated time and again in interviews that he always had the intention of making The Room a dark comedy, though various cast and crewmembers have contradicted this claim. But Wiseau seems to possess no ill will towards the fact that The Room, his expensive passion project, has not exactly been received the way that he clearly intended. He seems to have totally embraced the great bad movie status, and not as a way to save face or to (solely) continue exploiting what remains his only feature-length cinematic venture (though Wiseau has since been busy), but because he genuinely seems to enjoy the fact that people love it.

Wiseau is perfectly capable of possessing two obviously contradictory ideas at once, and his psyche is such an ever-changing soup of mixed ideas such that we may never know if he truly sees (or could ever see) The Room the way that we appreciate it.

But that doesn’t really matter. He’s treated his film’s reception exactly how he should: as a recognition that people have watched, responded to, revisited, shared, and loved his work, even if not in the ways he envisioned. That’s much more than could ever be asked for. As NPR observed in a 2006 profile of the film’s cult following, how many other films are crowd-pleasers like this? Failure and success are certainly subjective, contextual, eye-of-the-beholder-y ideas.

What We’ve Learned

The Room was produced through a series of contradictions, the most evident of which is the fact that the film is both a vanity project for the promotion of its helmer, and an earnest (if unintelligible) attempt to address several facets of the human condition. Throughout interviews, production histories, and as evinced in select moments of the film itself, Wiseau is absolutely convicted that he has made a film about human relationships, even as those interviews, production histories, and majority of moments in the film also reveal that The Room was also about one human in particular. It is this contradiction that makes The Room such a delightfully epic work of filmmaking incompetence.

At one moment in the film, Wiseau’s Johnny recites, as if it were part of the natural progression of human conversation, that clichéd platitude about the blindness of love. But one can also be blind to their own aspiration, confidence, or sense of social boundaries. It is this blindness that made for a film, as well as a behind-the-scenes history, whose enduring hilarity is occasionally met with the flicker of discomfiting fear. It’s easy, then, to see The Room’s relationship to filmmaking as something of a cautionary tale. But we can also recognize some virtue in the blindness of Wiseau’s passion without overlooking his transgressions. Perhaps there are some aspects of filmmaking that could benefit from a little less calculation and self-consciousness.