How Did This Get Made? - Matinee Monday: The Room

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

We’re very fortunate to have two experts this week joining us to discuss The Room. First off, we have Steve Heisler from The AV Club who has made it his journalistic duty to learn everything he can about this disaster. Also joining us is Mark (Oh, hi Mark!), aka Greg Sestero who also worked behind-the-scenes as a producer. Tuxedo football, outdoor green screens, unnecessary double casting, Mark knows how it all came to be and he’s here to share it all with us. Enjoy! (Originally released 11/15/2011)  For more Matinee Monday content, visit Paul's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/PaulScheer Go to www.hdtgm.com for tour dates, merch, and more.Follow Paul on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/paulscheer/HDTGM Discord: discord.gg/hdtgmPaul’s Discord: https://discord.gg/paulscheerCheck out Paul and Rob Huebel live on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/friendzone) every Thursday 8-10pm ESTSubscribe to The Deep Dive with Jessica St. Clair and June Diane Raphael here: listen.earwolf.com/deepdiveSubscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: listen.earwolf.com/unspooledCheck out The Jane Club over at www.janeclub.comCheck out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hdtgmWhere to find Jason, June & Paul:@PaulScheer on Instagram & Twitter@Junediane on IG and @MsJuneDiane on TwitterJason is not on Twitter

Hello, people of Earth, and welcome to How Did This Get Made, the show where we try to make sense of the movies that make no sense. I am joined, as always, by my two co-hosts, Jason Manzuchus. How are you, Paul? Very good. And June, Diane, and Rafeel. How are you? Hey, babe.

Today... Really? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. We're doing a... Hey, babe. Hey, babe. Hey, babe.

We have an awesome show. This is one of our most requested films by you, the audience. It is, of course, the room. And we have two amazing guests here today to talk about the room. Our first guest, you may know him from his articles on the AV Club and on Vulture. Please welcome Steve Heisler. Hello. Hello.

Welcome. Now, you consider yourself kind of like a room aficionado, right? Yes. I was introduced to the film a couple years ago, and suddenly I was very, very obsessed with it. I've interviewed Tommy. I've interviewed other people that are associated with the film. I've been to screenings, and I've hosted screenings, and met Tommy in person.

And the more I learn about it, the more I'm kind of obsessed with the mythology behind it. Well, I am very excited to have you here. And we have an amazing guest here today as well, one of the actors from the film, Greg Cistero. That's... I'm pronouncing your name right. Yeah, yeah, that's correct.

And you play Mark in the film. Yeah, that's right. Kind of the foil to Tommy Wiseau's character, essentially. That's right. So we're very excited to have you here. This is awesome. I've seen the film so many times, and I've seen it in theaters, I've seen it by myself. And every time you see it, it really holds up as being thoroughly entertaining.

I watched it for the first time, and the number of times that I had to rewind something to be like, wait, what just fucking happened was more than any movie we've ever done before. It took me twice as long to watch this movie because I was like, hang on now, what is going on? Well, the sex scenes don't help either. Oh my god. I wrote it. Because you jerk off too.

And you're like, oh man, I haven't been paying attention enough, I've been jerking off too much. Because this is the sexiest scene I've ever seen. Those sex scenes, for the first 24, I wrote it down, there are sex scenes almost in the first 26 minutes, three sex scenes, and they're long. Yeah, I always say if you can survive those sex scenes, then you can have fun watching the movie because they are pretty painful to watch. And some, and one of the sex scenes, they reuse clips from the first sex scene it seems

like. Yeah, the second. Recycled sex scenes. And it's cut so much faster too. And so it's just like half the speed. It's just a different song. That's what I was like. That's one of the ones where I was like, wait a minute, isn't this the same scene where

he's thrusting his butt like that? Why do I have to see this part where he's like thrusting his butt again? The sex scenes are like a very bad baby face video because that, like, that slow jam. So you're just seeing a baby face video. Yeah, I think baby face would be quite a fun video. They are, yeah, they're very long. I wrote down that one of the sex scenes is eight minutes long. Tommy Wiseau is so loving.

Oh, sorry. It's at eight minutes and it's four minutes long. Sorry, four minutes. But four minutes is a long time. Four minutes is a long time. Especially at the point in which it basically has a four minute sex scene, only eight minutes in. Like that third of that time has been split into one third of it is a sex scene.

I remember reading the variety review of the film when it first came out and the review was basically like, I watched people walk out after the first sex scene and then I left. That was the end of the review of the film. Well, to me, I didn't know what the room was. I lived in Hollywood and I would always drive down one of the streets here and they had a big billboard for it. And I thought it was like a vampire movie. I didn't know that it's kind of this, I guess, psychological drama, I mean, or is it a relationship?

How would... Or a try. It tries to be that. Yeah. It's a love triangle movie. But it basically, Tommy Wiseau plays his character, what's the character called? Johnny. Johnny.

Yes, of course. We're all like Johnny. We know. He is about to get married and all of a sudden his wife decides she's not in love with him and starts looking up with your character, Greg, Mark, who is Tommy Wiseau's best friend in the film. Yeah. And you all live, I believe, in the same apartment building.

Yeah. But we only see one apartment. Right. And a roof top. And a roof top. But we establish the hell out of it. But we only stay there. Yeah.

Yeah. The movie takes place in San Francisco, but you very rarely leave the house. Like maybe three times in the entire movie. Like super late in the movie, too, I feel like. It's not until really late that I feel like you guys are in that coffee shop and I'm like, what the hell is that? That's the first scene where Tommy goes to the flower shop. Oh, right.

Holy shit. That's one of my favorite scenes. That scene, I started writing down every line of dialogue and especially my favorite is she goes, you're my favorite customer. She says I didn't recognize her. And the best part of the best part about that is like the more you watch it, the more you see these little things. But like she's looking directly at him and then shifts over and then says, oh, I didn't

know it was you. It was you. She's looking at him when he comes in. Well, I had that scene just so people who've never seen the movie can kind of get a sense of what this movie is like. Here. Tickle this. Hi.

Can I help you? Yeah. Can I have a dozen red roses, please? Oh, hi, Johnny. I didn't know it was you. Here you go. That's me. How much is it?

It'll be $18. Here you go. Keep the change. Hi, doggy. You're my favorite customer. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye-bye.

Guys. This is an internally competitive dialogue that you can see it faster. It really is. Now, I mean, there seems to be a lot of dubbing in the movie. I mean, like a lot of ADR, like people went in and recorded voices over again. Like, did you do a lot of ADR? I started to believe his whole life was dubbed. There was, yeah, there was a ton, a ton of ADR.

Does he not like his voice? Is that part of it? Or is he just not clear? I think he wants to sound as Johnny as possible, Johnny Americana. So I think he really tried to make sure each line was said, you know. I also assume that they were, like, rewriting some of the lines, too. I'm not really sure if that's true, but it seemed like perhaps the kind of movie that it is, the kind of session that he has, that he would hear something and be like, no, no,

no, I have something better, even after it was already filmed. Although a lot of the time it seemed like he was just redubbing what he had said. Oh, yeah. But his mouth was working with the lines, yeah. I also seem to think at points, I was like, maybe they didn't have sound in the scene. Maybe they could not capture sound. Yeah, well, the sound booth was quite a story in itself. Really?

Yeah, there was some interesting happenings on the first couple days. I think the sound person maybe was his first sound job. Oh my God. Well, now, I mean, the famous thing about this movie is that two cameras were put side by side together. Like, he didn't know if high depth was the future or 35 millimeter, so they were taped together. That's at least the lore of what happened.

So every scene is slightly off center because you're accommodating for two cameras being taped together. There are also times when it cuts to the other camera and it's blurry and then it cuts back to the first camera. Yeah. Now, Greg, you were the line producer on this movie as well? Yeah. I mean, I did a bunch of stuff.

At the time, I didn't even know what a line producer was, but I was credited as such. Yeah. So you did... Yeah, basically, I did a lot of the casting, a lot of the production stuff, basically anything that kind of needed to be done I was doing. So in one moment, I'd be ordering pizzas for the casting crew and the next moment, they're like, oh, you're in the main year and you're in the scene. I was like, yeah, I don't know my dialogue, but all right, let's do it.

And I know you have a book coming out, which will be coming out one day. Later next year. Okay. I can't wait to read this book, but can you talk about how you met up with Tommy or how... I originally met Tommy in San Francisco in an acting class of all places and I watched him perform a Shakespearean sonnet and I think everyone in the class was horrified, but I thought to myself, wow, this guy is something. And I want to find out more about who he is, so I approached him, I said, hey, do you want

to be scene partners? And he looked at me like I was absolutely insane. He looked at you like you're insane. And I didn't know if he thought it was a cool thing or, you know, he was annoyed that I asked him, he's like, yeah, write your thing down here, okay. So I was kind of waiting on edge to see what would happen and he ended up being just this complete alien character that... He really does have this weird thing about him.

If you've not seen this movie, the first thing I want to talk about too about, you know you're in for a treat when there are three different logos all for the same production company that starts the movie. I was... I wrote the same thing. It's like he couldn't decide which production company logo he wanted, so he said, we'll do all three right back to back. First it's like a flying W and then it's kind of like a universal logo.

It's like the world with Wiseau and then it's like just another one, which is even less than those, just a world rotating showing like a shadow and then it's like Wiseau films. But they all say the same thing, like back and forth to all Wiseau films. So it's like a Wiseau films production of a Wiseau films presentation of a Wiseau film. And I don't know if you mentioned this already, but like he is the writer, director, producer and star. Yes. So he is ridiculously ambitious with this project as is evident even just in the opening

credits. And he... And before this, not a director, not that we know of, I mean, now Steve, you probably know a little bit more about this. But people always say like, first of all, the movie I heard took six months to shoot. Is that... I'm not sure how long it took, but I do know that, well, from what I've heard from people that I've spoken to, like they were told it was like two weeks or something.

And that's actually like the mythology behind the character Peter, who plays the psychologist in the film. Who's one of my favorite lines of his is just, people are people. It's a very psychological thing to say. But so he's like the other friend that comes in later and he's the psychologist and he disappears halfway through the film. And I was told by somebody who works in the film that like he was told it was a two week long project and then it kept dragging on and he just had other work that he had to

do. So he had to leave. But my favorite part of that movie is his scene when... So obviously there's a scene in which for really no reason they get into tuxes and they play football. Right? Where were we going? But...

I was like, oh, this must be his wedding. Nope. Nope, it's not. Nope. Yeah. Oh, it's for the wedding. It's a wedding photos, I think. I think they even fooled the crew on that one.

They're like, what's the point of that? So Peter, so they're all playing football and like they throw the football to Peter and he falls down and he goes, that's it, I'm done. And they walk away. And in the movie he means like I'm done with playing football. But I like to think that that was that they captured him quitting the film and that was the best cut. And they just used that.

Even if anyone plays football in this movie, someone falls down on the ground. No, so many men fall down with no reason for no cause. And we're talking about, we're saying football, that's a very loose term. It's kind of, it's catch within maybe three feet of each other and then it's like somebody just gets the ball too hard and then falls. And there's also, but there is also a basketball. I just want to say there is also a basketball in the movie. Well, well, now, Greg, how long...

With no hoop. With no hoop. With no hoop. On a roof. Is that kid, is that kid's name Danny or Denny? Denny. Denny. Denny is just holding the basketball on the roof of the building with nothing to play.

Can we, we can actually hear what Tommy talks about, why he chose the football here. I think people should realize that playing football without any gear and a special big, huge field, it's fun. So you can play football in tuxedos, you can play football three feet apart. But the idea is to have fun. So I would recommend to anyone to try it. So that's a great explanation. When asked why people were playing football in tuxedos, that was the answer.

Here's the thing, since that three feet tuxedo-clad football has exploded. It's taken off. He does it at the screenings. He'll get out there on the street and get people in a big circle and they'll toss the football and he'll like run the drills. Like at what point Johnny and Mark go to the park and they like run football drills. And he'll do that at the live screenings with fans. It's amazing.

Now, Greg, how long did you work on the movie for, like from your start to finish? God, I was there for too long. I ended up working on the casting process, which in itself took two months. Wow. Now, I heard that, like I read some stuff online that there was a lot of replacement of casts, like Mike and Michelle, like they were- I love them. Totally recast midway through.

I love them. That's true. Mike's whole story. Yeah. Mike and Michelle are essentially just two ancillary characters that are kind of, they like having sex. I feel like Mike is kind of the comic relief in the movie. He has the best receiving a blowjob face I've ever seen in any movies.

Oh my God, it's wonderful. Mike's performance is worthy of- Oh yeah. I mean, that sex scene alone and then the scene in which he just tells Johnny about how he got lost his underwear. Tommy told me at one point that he had cast two people for each role. And so there were two Lisa's and there were two Michelle's and I'm not 100%. I mean, that's just what Tommy told me.

So there had to have been double casting at some point. Yeah. He believed in having backups for every character. Did you have a backup? I wasn't originally even going to be in the film. You were the backup. I was essentially the backup. That's a long story behind the backup, but yeah.

So he wanted two characters, almost like you would do a play. For a play, yeah. Like an understudy. Again, it's kind of like the logos for the movie. He couldn't decide whether this was going to be a movie or a play. Okay. So he decided to kind of mix them together. Wow.

So now, were there people that were just on call that never worked or were they- Did they have scenes that were shot? They were on call, but I think by the end he ended up making his final decision. That's even the day of filming. Really? Yeah. Now- I like to think that there would have been a shadow movie made.

You know how you said there were like two cameras? Yeah, yeah. That each camera was capturing different actors doing the same lines. I like to see- And only Tommy is the common denominator. I'd love to see a movie just about all the mom's friends that she references. Oh my God. I'm obsessed with those women.

I want to see a movie about the mom. I was obsessed with the mom. I was obsessed with the mom. Well, the mom has one of the best scenes. She's talking about her friend who is having trouble with a house and it kind of segues into something different here. We'll pull up this clip right- Just to get a taste of what the mom scene is like.

Oh, that jerk Harold. He wants me to give him a share of my house. That house belongs to me. He has no right. I'm not giving him a penny. Who does he think he is? He's your brother. He is always bugging me about my house.

15 years ago, we agreed that house belongs to me. Now, the value of the house is going up and he's seeing dollar signs. Everything goes wrong at once. Nobody wants to help me and I'm dying. You're not dying, mom. I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer. That is really very annoying.

And then it's never referenced again. And then she probably has to go. He has to go a lot. Well, there's a lot of things that are set up. The breast cancer is set up, the wide denny, this 14-year-old kid who's kind of going on 40. He's also a drug addict, too. He's also a drug addict.

He also likes to watch. Yeah, that was creepy. That line was one of the early lines in the movie where I was like, wait, what? He's like, I just like to watch. And I was like, whoa. Suddenly he comes over to Tommy's house and he jumps in the bed with Tommy and his girlfriend right when they're about to have sex and then they get into a little pillow fight and they go, get out of here.

Three is a crowd. Get out of here, Denny. We need to have a four-minute sex scene. I mean, you had done, you had worked on bigger movies at this point. You worked on Patch Adams and you had done, so I mean, and that obviously is independent, but it had some money. And it's not like, according to stuff I've read, people say it costs $6 million or something like that.

Or, you know, the Keith Fennell one. $6 million? No way. $6 million. $6 million. Wait. Hang on. What?

Yeah. As the line producer, where did that money go? Not in the film. From what I understand, there was this woman who was Tommy's ESL teacher who provided him with the money. She was this rich, older woman who's in the credits, apparently. Her name is Chloe or something, I think. Yes, Chloe Productions.

It was also a Chloe production. Yeah. And so he would get on the phone and call and ask for more money every once in a while. I'm not sure where $6 million worth of that money could have gone, but... She had a very profitable ESL training center. Yeah. Wow. So, like...

$6 million. And I'm assuming you guys paid quite a lot of money just for the green screen. Yeah. I mean, that... Rather than going on a roof, they green screen the roof. Yeah. So, the roof is essentially the roof... Well, it was shot in a parking lot, so we shot a rooftop on a parking lot.

Wait, so you were outside with green screen then? Yeah. That wasn't even inside. What? Sorry. It just keeps going. We could talk about the dysfunction all day long. Why not just shoot the rooftop you were on?

Okay, this is blowing my mind. I figured you guys were just in a random, like, studio. Just think, every decision that you could have made that would have made sense, we went the entire... The other way. Yeah. Different directions. Like, if you want to be generous.

I think, in a way, it made sense to Tommy to do it that way. And that's kind of the nature of my obsession with the film, which is that, like, he very deliberately did these things, and his logic is something that I would never have come to. But it's his logic. And that's the... This is the movie that he wanted to make. You went full force at something, you know, not listening to anybody else, but just his

internal vision. And... He's an auteur guy. Like, some of the lines were autobiographical. Like, when he gives that monologue about how he couldn't cash a check because it was out of state. Yeah, he goes into his long monologue. And that all felt really authentic.

That actually feels... Like, it really does feel like he went into a full thing. Like, he was... He moved here and a girl paid for his first date and stuff like that. I mean... Yeah, he has a whole backstory. What's that Chloe he's talking about? Yeah.

Oh, no. I'm sure that at one point, there was probably a Lisa in his life that did something to him because the whole movie... It feels like a... It feels like this is autobiographical. Yeah, because the whole movie is all about how good of a person he is. And he goes out of his way to talk about how good of a person he is. Usually it's through the mom talking to Lisa about why she shouldn't dump him.

He's like, he provides for you, he gives you a car, he has a good job and all this stuff. And he makes women out to be these manipulative people. At one point, you guys are talking on the rooftop, I think. And it's basically... It's... I can't remember... Greg, if it's you or Johnny, if it's his or Tommy, rather, that says that basically women are either too smart, flat-out stupid or evil.

That was me. That's the line. And I was like, that is the thesis statement of this movie. That's yeah. That's actually a really good point. Because there was no justification as to why Lisa thought he was a terrible person and did terrible things. She just made up her mind.

She just made up her mind. She just got over him. Yeah. After a long sex scene. Yeah. And basically, they have a long sex scene, he falls asleep, and then I feel like that was the trigger moment. She's like, you fell asleep after sex?

I hate you. You're right. That is the moment. Oh, really? Yes, because she rolled over and she wanted to talk to him. And then she looks back and she rolls back over. Yeah. And then the next morning, she's calling his best friend, you, to have sex with him,

or her. And it's like... But it is. It's like everything you know about Johnny is he's taking in this kid, he's paying for his schooling, he's got a good job. He's giving money to Lisa to survive, Lisa's mother. Yeah. He's got a red dress.

But it feels like he dated this girl, she chewed on him, and he was like, why? He thought he did everything perfect, and so it's everybody else's fault, there's nothing to do with him. It's so amazing to me. Now, did you ever have the feeling in this movie, like, did you ever go like, I kind of want to walk off where you, at a certain point, just going like, I'm kind of in for this ride. I literally, I mean, it was so much fun.

Just to go every day and say, how are they going to just destroy this scene? I thought to myself, it was, I've never had more fun making a movie. I was obsessed in this movie with the entrances and exits. Oh my God. Scenes. Which are very much like a play. Yeah. It is.

I mean, it feels like you're watching a play because it does take place in one kind of release. No, but sometimes people just come in, walk in, have a conversation, and just walk out. Yeah, the mom comes all the way over to have a conversation about something that could have easily been on the phone, and then it's like, oh, I got to go and just leave. He shepherds everybody through it. Anybody who enters, he goes, oh, hi, Lisa, or oh, hi, Denny, or oh, hi, Mark. It's like, he has to like, like facilitate everybody's arrival so that we know which

character has just walked in. It's up to him to be like, oh, hi. My favorite thing is Denny comes over and he goes, hi, is Johnny home. She's like, no, he's not home. He's like, I want to hang out with him. Well, he'll be home in a second. No, I got to go. I was like, well, why?

And then there was no information given. It was like, oh, this character just appeared. He had something to say, but we're not going to hear what he had to say. He'll be back later. It's like, literally, yeah, come over for four seconds and then leave. And that, I guess, helps that everybody lives in the same apartment building. Did you ever improvise or like work with him online or anything like that, or is it like, you just followed, you were along?

Yeah, I did some fun little improvising stuff that I threw in that I wasn't supposed to, but Tommy was furious about. And then, yeah, he wanted me to like watch the monitor and make sure, you know, how was his performance? Yeah. I'd always give him kind of a thumbs up. Yeah. And he'd look at me and shake his head and say, you just say that.

Oh my God. Oh my God. He wasn't even buying my thumbs up. So I was doing my best. Now, like, how many takes per scene, like per set up? Some scenes would take all day, you know, day and a half to shoot. I'm not joking. I mean, it was amazing.

Is it about being like a perfectionist? No, no, it was just actually just getting a scene down that wasn't stopped because, you know. Would he be calling cut a lot to stop his own rhythm because he didn't feel like it was good? Well, when he was in the scene, he had, you know, help, okay, right, yeah, cut the scene. But yeah, it was just actually just being able to get the lines down fluidly or as fluidly as you can get them and, you know, in a blocking scene.

Would he be rewriting? No. No. Once the script was locked, it was locked. It stayed, stayed just the way it is. You do not change. And did you get a script at a certain point where, for me, it feels like you just got pages at a time, but did you get...

Yeah, well, I was one of the lucky few that got to see the whole script. Wow. Well, I mean... It's like a Woody Allen movie, right? It's like a Woody Allen movie. Yeah, but no one else saw, no one else got to see a full script. So I think a lot of people wondered, is there even a, is there even a full script? Yeah.

Or is this just kind of pages of dialogue or... Did you sort of become the person that all the other cast members would ask all their questions to? Yeah, I became like the, you know, the Tommy Whisperer, kind of like what, you know... You were like the dance captain. Yeah, I was like kind of the voice of the audience that people needed some sort of normal information. Yeah, because you seemed...

Yeah, because I imagine everyone was probably, I mean, because you've been working with them for a long time, you, everyone would be confused coming on, you know, like what is going on here. So you obviously probably had to put out a lot of fires. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it. I got to see a lot of my initial reactions and all these other people that were meeting him for the first time. So it's got to...

Your character always seems so surprised that Lisa was coming on to you. Yeah, well... And one of the things that you say in the movie is like, why did you do this to me? Yeah. You know, after the first sex scene, it's like he's the one who is the victim. Well, it's interesting, I mean, I'm sure you guys picked this up, but I think all the characters kind of sound the same. Yeah.

Mark is the victim saying, why did you do this to me? Johnny's my best friend, like poor me. Yeah. Like, God, I got really... I got pulled into this. I have no partner. You know, Claudette's kind of the victim that no one wants to pay for her house and, you know...

So... Everyone's a victim. Clara's the victim of not having Denny's money. Yeah, everybody's kind of not getting anything that they want, and they're perfect, but... Michelle and Mark got... Not Mark. Who's Michelle's...? Michelle and Mike.

Right? Mike got interrupted. Yeah. The only not victim is that fucking bitch, Lisa. No, Lisa is a victim. She's so hot, though. She's so hot. Yeah.

No one can get... No one can get... No one understands why she's so furious with this guy who has a great job in computers. Oh my God. Yeah, but he also works at a bank. He also works at a bank, I thought. Yeah, she works at a bank. She works in...

She wanted to get into computers, but he told her it was too competitive. Oh, that... That line... Wait a minute. I wrote that line down. Like, now I care. You're right. The computer business is too competitive.

Could you imagine of walking into a bank and seeing Johnny as your teller, I think? What do you want? I'm just realizing, on the poster for the room, Tommy Wiseau's hair is much shorter, isn't it? It's just pulled back. Oh, it's just pulled back. I mean, you're basically marketing a drama, an American drama, and you put a picture of yourself that looks like you're about to kill somebody after a 60-hour meth bender.

Yeah, absolutely. That's what I said. Like, when I saw that looking down on the street, the billboard, I was like, it looks like... Is it a vampire? What is this thing? It's like... It wasn't a tagline.

Like, do you really understand life or something like that? Can you really trust anyone? Can you really trust anyone? Can you really trust anyone? Yeah. No, and the answer, arguably, is no. No, absolutely not. That movie retitled meth bender.

So it's like, meth bender. If that had been titled meth bender, everybody would have gone to see it instantly. I got... Dude, have you seen that poster for meth bender? Bro, we got to go see that. The last. And then if you showed this movie, people would be like, dude, that wasn't about a meth bender at all.

Well, good. Now, Greg, when did you know... Like, so you finished the movie. When do you know that it became this other thing? Did it solely perk up or did it like... Well, there was a premiere for it, and it went, as according is probably what you guys expected. Yeah.

This is San Francisco. No, it was here in LA. Okay. It was at the Fairfax Blemley Theater. Fairfax and Beverly. Fairfax and Beverly. Okay, right, right. Very fancy.

Yeah, yeah. The one that's closed. The one that's closed now. I think it closed it. I think we had some bums in attendance. Oh, my gosh. No, but it was... Yeah, everyone laughed.

And I saw some comedy in it. I peaked. I walked out in the first five minutes because I couldn't stand to watch a sex scene that I was in with a packed house. A spiral staircase. Yeah. So I hung on... Also an uncomfortable place to have a sexy, honest spiral staircase.

Especially when the door could open at any time and you would be very visible to anybody. And so close to the bed. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we just take a few steps up? Their passion took hold. Yeah. They could not make it.

So, yeah, I peaked back in and people were laughing through the entire thing. And I thought, okay, that was it. You know, he showed his movie, it's done, it's over, now it's going to turn into his home video. So some college kids discovered it. And they kind of spread it throughout kind of the LA college scene. And I showed up some months later at a screening on Wilshire and it was packed. Wow.

People were going nuts. They were obsessed. They were saying the lines. Yeah. They wanted to get the DVD. They were just, you know, so for a year or so it went like that. There was a year anniversary screening at the Sunset Five and it was like on three screens. So it was, you know, it was building slowly.

And then there was an article that came out in 2008, an Entertainment Weekly that really just, it was a six-page article, I just talked about all this, you know, all these celebrities that love it and they owe us parties of it. And from then on it just completely blew up. And it's okay. And Tommy has some amazing quotes in that Entertainment Weekly article. He said that he got $6 million because he sold leather jackets to Korea. I tried that.

I made about $20. I heard at one point he was selling yo-yos in San Francisco. Like in the 70s or something. I don't know if the yo-yo business took off and, uh... Wow. Now, I guess my question is, to you, Greg, like, has he come back and be like, we want to do a sequel? Or is he like, because I know the guy who did Troll 2, like he's like, oh, people like

this movie, I want to get together to cast and do it again. Or is he just kind of disconnected from everybody involved? Yeah. I mean, he wants to make other movies. I came up with some pretty funny ideas for a sequel and talked to him about it and he seemed into it, but that, getting that, having that made is a totally different story. But I think, yeah, he wants to do other projects. I would love to see a Tommy, a Johnny ghost, like kind of like a ghost dad kind of thing.

Like make him alive, but he's walking through people's lives. Or is his conviction in making this movie that if somebody were to watch it, they would think he's an American actor? Oh, I'm sure. You because there are a lot of lines in the movie. That blows my mind. There are a lot of lines in the movie. There are a lot of them where it felt to me like he was, he's just sort of working out

his fascination with like American sayings and things. Totally. Like when. Don't worry about it. And X, Y, Z examine your zipper and you're like, what is X, Y, Z? There's a great line where they go, we're going to go see a movie tonight. What are we going to go see? And it's like, don't worry about it.

You plan too much. Just take like, well, that's not a, that's not what we're not talking about. A six year plan. We're talking about like, what are we going to go see today? You're not, we're not planning your four on one. But that also, I guess, makes sense for the way that he kind of, he did this movie in a way too. I mean.

Big question. Why is it called The Room? Oh yeah. Well, here's Tommy's explanation. Take a listen. Why did you call it The Room? Because the title has a special meaning to me. And at the time I thought about a special place, a private place, a place where you can be

safe and it's not a room, but it's their room. I thought and I think that a lot of people were relate to it. So The Room is a place where you can go, you can have a good time, you have a bad time and a safe place. Wow. Nothing safe about ending up dead on your living floor. Well that, yeah, that he, Johnny kills himself at the end after. Spoiler alert.

Yeah. Yeah. After vigorously, is he, I don't know if he's, is he masturbating? He's like rubbing the dress on his crotch or something. Yeah. In the script it says that he was pleasuring himself. Wow. Yeah.

Because he buys Lisa a dress in the beginning, she, that's, you know, opens up this first sex scene that we see. And then at the end, after she's, you know, revealed that she's cheating on him, he smells the dress and he's rubbing himself on a pleasuring himself and then shoots himself in the head. I think that's a pretty interesting turnaround. I think that's the only time that's probably ever been done on film for good reason. I think Dylan McDermott came close in that American Horror Story show where he is masturbating and crying at the same time.

Oh, classic, classic McDermott. But yeah, no, I mean, the movie basically is like feel sorry for Johnny. You know, it's like you have, like, because he is the victim. He is the victim all the way to the end and then, well, it's like, it's, again, that rooftop scene of you guys where he's basically like, I'm so happy to have you as my best friend and I love Lisa so much. And it's like, oh boy, that's so in the seeds of your own destruction. It's boy, it's like how the trailer goes, a perfect world, a perfect life, everything's

supposed to be perfect. Yeah. You know, and he's perfect, but it's everything that crumbles around him. His body's perfect. Yeah. And he humps perfectly. I mean, he really does. He really get that.

That ass is in there. That is like the second sex scene that uses the footage from the first sex scene. It literally blew my mind. That was the moment where I freaked out. What about when he walks out naked? Oh my God. Oh my God. Amazing.

I came. Weird. Too much information. So how do you guys feel about the fact that this, like, do you see this as a comedy? Because there's a lot of debate about whether or not this is, like, he builds it now as a dark comedy. Well, he builds it as a dark comedy. But the question is, like, did he know beforehand?

No, of course not. He could not. I think he might have. No possible way. I don't know. You think so, really? I think that there's... If the comedy isn't coming from the situations being darkly comedic, I don't think...

Well, there's one moment. There's one moment. There are jokes. There are jokes in it. I just think it's, like, so ridiculous that there had to have been part of him that recognized that it's just so over the top that it might be perceived as comedy. But it's dark. But, like, when he's having that romantic dinner with Lisa and they're eating pizza

and drinking, like, that's, like, one of the most ridiculous and sane things I've ever seen. Like, that was... I'm not allowed at that. You have nice legs, Lisa. Yeah. Did you catch that? So funny.

But, like, I don't think he would know that that would be that funny at all. Like, there's no way. Yeah, what do you... Yeah, I mean, obviously... I think there's some, like, cutesy little stuff where Denny comes in and, like, jokes around, you know, so there's some scenes that were supposed to be maybe light-hearted. But I think at the end of the day, this was, you know, this is Tennessee... What was Denny addicted to?

Yeah, it was, like, it was, like, it was like a Tennessee Williams play, right? I mean, that's what he was going for. It was... Yeah, it was to be, you know, the street-courning desire of the 21st century. And it is. Mission accomplished. And the most beautiful one. Did you guys...

Did it take you... I'm guessing, like, 10 days to shoot the fight sequence? Did you have a stunt choreographer? Pretty close. Yeah. You're in the ballpark. Really? Yeah.

Because I was like, that is epic. And I was, like, the way you talk about how long it would take to shoot things, I'm, like, I bet that scene took forever. Yeah, that was... Just a full day of, like, jostling. Just shoulder jostling. Yeah. Now, the one thing that I found that was really interesting was they never used the term

fiancé. They always say future husband and future wife. They've never, like, they've never say fiancé, which is a nice, like, bizarre, just like, oh, that's a very common thing for us to say. Yeah. But, and now you've talked to a lot of people involved in the movie. I mean, anything that you've uncovered that you... Well, I've spoken to Tommy, I've spoken to Greg before.

I was hosting a screening in Chicago that Tommy was at and I wrote this whole article about my experience with him. And then after that article came out, it's at the AV Club, somebody who used to work on the film contacted me under, like, the shroud of anonymity and was like, I used to work for him and, like, I'll tell you some stories about him. And so I called him up and he was telling me about how he sold yo-yos in San Francisco and how, you know, he's from France and he came over and he was from Poland and he took a French name and he came here and how he did find a dark comedy at the beginning.

So, like, there were darkly comedic elements, but I just don't think he understood clearly what a dark comedy was. It's hard to write a comedy in not your own language or if he's using an ESL, you know, I mean... And dark comedy is such a specific genre that you have to have an understanding of. But also, he... Yeah. Apparently, like, part of the reason why he was doing this film was, I mean, clearly

there's this woman that wronged him and he wanted revenge on her to show her this, but he wanted to be perceived as, like, a sex symbol, it seems like. Yeah, right. I mean, he definitely is... He's definitely positioning himself as this, like, as a hero, like, as a Brad Pitt kind of character. Oh, the one thing I'm obsessed with that I heard, by the way, and I don't know if any of you can enlighten me to this, but when they are in the coffee shop, which is odd because

it's sort of like, oh, now we're in this coffee shop, and before the actual scene starts, it's just really just people ordering coffees and cakes, it's, you know, new people, I could swear that someone just ADR'd the sound of a coffee machine, like, someone went, it doesn't sound like... It sounds like a voice did it. It really does. I hope I'm right on that. Well, a lot of the ambient sounds I heard were done by Michael Winslow from the police

academy movies. I mean, and everything in this movie goes between being, like, a fight or a very casual... Fight or very casual. It's like, people get into fights here so kind of quickly. But then, like, your fight sequence, Greg, with Tommy, is like, you fight, you fight, and then he's like, cut it out, let's be okay, and you shake hands again, and then you start fighting again. It's like, amazing.

And there's also one point when Lisa and Johnny are fighting, and then the fight ends, and Johnny's just like, don't worry, I still love you. And it just ends. Like, the emotions range from so over the top to just nothing. It goes to total non sequiturs sometimes, like, fight, fight, fight, and it's like, do you guys like donuts, you know? Dude, should I order a pizza scene? Should I order a pizza scene as one of my favorite scenes?

I already ordered a pizza, you know? You think of everything. No. We think about everything. He keeps pushing her to... Yes, the little details of that are just... You think about everything. You think about everything.

Well, there's a line here where he goes, where it's his birthday party, and he says, like, you invited all of my friends, like, oh, I wish I wrote it down to you. You're thinking. Yeah, good thinking. Yeah, good thinking. Well, who else would you invite to your birthday party? I never would have thought to do that. And are we to understand that Lisa put this birthday party together to simply get you,

Greg, in the room with her after everybody walked outside? Like, what was her? It's a very Lisa thing to do. Oh, she's such a bitch. Because that's really crazy. So sexy. Yeah, Lisa picks the most inappropriate times to have sexual relations with your character. That just seems crazy.

That's such a long way to go. Yeah, never leaving the house is probably one of the biggest times. She's a chuddin', right? Yeah, you think, you know, take her for a walk once in a while. She ordered pizza. Well, she's definitely getting her nails done. She's definitely getting her nails done somewhere. Her nails looked great.

Her nails are, like, featured in every scene. I want to know, are there stuff, is there stuff you shot that is just simply not in the movie? There's a couple scenes. And are there sex scenes? God, no. There are a couple scenes, the Criss-R scene. Which I saw in the DVD, right, where they're playing horse.

Shot in the interior, yeah, which didn't get used because it wasn't dramatic enough. But it's essentially the same exact scene. It is, it is. There's a deleted scene where Criss-R tries to take, or Denny tries to take Criss-R's mind off of the heroin money, or sorry, the mind of the drug money by playing horse with him. But then it's the same scene. It's the same scene, yeah.

He felt the rooftop was a bigger stage than by God it was. And the rooftop was where you guys would go to just think. Yeah. Just hold the football, or just, you know, contemplate. Just do something you're thinking. Yeah. And hard at one point, like, smoke's pot, it's implied. Yeah.

There's, it's, that's actually a really funny part because, you know, in this film, I'm supposed to be, supposed to be a grown man, but I have to go up on the roof and have my little stash of weed, which is hidden under a block and pull it out to go, like, secretly smoke weed. I mean, that's something you'd do if you were probably 12. Yeah, exactly. You're, yeah. You have your own apartment.

You just smoke it in your own apartment or, you know, wherever. Well, it seems like it's also a pretty pivotal moment for Mark when he shapes his beard off. Yeah. I think it was a life, a life changing. Oh. So what was happening for him then? This is like, this is a transforming moment. This is when I become, yeah.

There was no reason in the film for that, but there's backstory to why, why did that. But there's no character. Okay. It's never in the script, actually. And did you guys shoot in chronological order? We shot in set order. Okay. So, you know, living room stuff, bedroom stuff, you know.

Wow. And it took a, I mean, and you were there a while and were there reshoots involved there? Like, no, just the, you know, the, the chrissar, which was done, you know, during the, during the rooftop stuff. And would, did anyone ever bring up to him like we should shoot on a real roof in San Francisco or is that just price prohibitive? Yeah, but he would immediately shoot them down. We do my way.

Okay. Please sit back. I love it. Just to be, the thing that blows my mind about that is to, because I guess the reason to put a green screen roof is to be like, well, we don't have any problems with weather, but then to shoot it outside with green screens, you really are not, you really aren't really saving that much. It's like building a house inside another house.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. And now do you, I mean, you don't have to answer this and, but do you see any of the profits from this? Cause I feel like this is so successful, the DVD, the posters or anything, or is that something that you were like that? Yeah.

I mean, surprisingly, I mean, of all the things I've ever done in my life, the least I ever expected was from this and this has actually given me the most, you know. Oh, that's awesome. So like you actually did have like the contract and stuff like that. Well, yeah, it's, it's paid. Yeah. It's definitely, it's definitely paid off. I mean, I've been able to travel the world from it, you know.

Yeah. That must be amazing. Look, where have you gone with this movie? Like I have been to Ireland to Dublin several, several times, I've been to Prague and it's must be like the most fun cause it's like when you're there, I mean, I, I even know like just from being a fan of this, like just to have you here is so exciting. It's like, this is like, you know, it's like you, you go to these crowds of people that you're, it's like a bull, it's like you're a hero.

You're going to go in and get to do this stuff. It's like, it must be exciting to go there and kind of see it that way. Yeah. I guess it's fun to just kind of talk to people about what they saw with it because I know, you know, my first experience with it, it was, it was disbelief. So it's kind of fun to see, you know, normal minds digest this, you know, crazy material. So it's kind of fun to, it's kind of fun to have a conversation about it. And for the, you know, answer some of their questions because they can't really get, you

know, they're not going to get answers from, you know, from Mr. Genius himself. Yeah. Cause he changes his answers and he's all over, I mean, to me, the thing that's so engaging about this movie, and I can't tell you enough, if you've not seen this movie by this DVD, it is well worth it and rewatchable is like, there are so many movies that are, you know, quote unquote bad or, or, but, but this transcends that it's not a bad movie. It's a fascinating movie. It's cause you like, we watched a lot of bad movies like that is what we do.

And this is not, this like instantaneously becomes its own category of what's happening right now. This isn't like an existentialist drama, I think. Cause you are, everything about it is like, I would never have thought to do it like that, you know, and, and, and the relationships, it's, it really is. I think it will better than, I think this will stand the test of time. I think as, as years go on, this is going to be one, it already is screening throughout the country, midnight screenings all over the place.

I think it's, I was seeing it live is a whole different experience and one that if you haven't done, you have to do because I didn't know the thing. Like there is apparently a picture frame of a fork or a spoon and people bring spoons to the screening. And every time that, that you see the picture frame with the spoon in it, people throw spoons at the screen and it's, it's, it's amazing cause first of all, it's on the screen a lot. That picture frame of the spoon, it's, it's amazing. People bring footballs and stuff and they play in the aisle.

When I hosted, when I hosted that screening at the music box in Chicago, I saw Tommy reacting to these people watching the film and like part of me wants to believe that he saw these people liking his film and was just like, you know what, there, some people are here to mock me, but it's, it's fame and I'm just going to kind of take it for what it is. But you can tell that he's sad. Like he would kind of slink off every once in a while and not want to watch the film. He would, he sat in the lobby for a really long time and then these two girls came out

and like wanted to interview him for something and he was just more excited about that than what he could come up with. He's like kind of getting off on the fame than they were, what it's become, but I mean he's, he has created his own mythology, I think he likes to be this kind of, you know, different type of guy. I, I had a theory that maybe when he broke the mirror, that may have been things that, that that may have given him seven years of bad luck. Maybe, maybe, maybe it played the production in a weird way.

Well there's all sorts of really weird stuff. Like I was, I was looking for symbolism in everything. I was like, at the beginning of the movie, Denny eats like an apple and I was like, is this supposed to be like a, like a biblical, like original sin kind of, I kept looking for stuff to be like, try and make sense of it. Like what's he doing? But I think it's just insanity. I mean, the thing I love is that he has a lot of tape recorders.

There's a lot of tape recorders. This is 2003. The tape recorders are kind of gone at this point and there's one great shot where he gets mad and he throws a tape recorder across the wall and it's slow-mo shot, but the tape recorder doesn't break. It just kind of gently bounces off and it falls. It's amazing. There is every shot in this is worthy of dissection and, and, and.

Also you pointed this out, Paul, when he plays back the, what he's recorded. The conversation between your character, it's different, totally different dialogue. Yeah. He's like, I'm just going to play back this scene that we just saw as an audience and it's different. Not this scene. Not this scene, though. But it's, it's really, it's, it's really an amazing movie.

We've had that conversation like four times. So he just pulled, you know, one, the other one that he liked the best audio. Oh man. I almost feel like we have to play the flower shop scene again. Hi. Can I help you? Yeah. Can I have a dozen red roses, please?

Oh, hi, Johnny. I didn't know it was you. Here you go. That's me. How much is it? It'll be $18. Here you go. Keep the change.

Hi, doggy. You're my favorite customer. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye-bye. And now, Greg and Steve, thank you guys so much for coming here and doing this and talking about the movie. Now, anything to plug for both of you guys?

I, all my writing is at SteveHeisler.com. Okay. I occasionally write about the room. I had to be told at one point by an editor that I was no longer allowed to write about the room because I wrote about it too much. And they're great. They're great pieces. And, and of course, Greg, you have your book coming out.

Yeah, it's going to be published next year by Simon and Schuster. The working, the working title right now is locked inside the room, but how is it coming? Is it fun to kind of revisit it all? It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. Did you keep journals or anything during the time you were working on it? I did. And I also, I mean, when you go through an experience like that, it's something you probably can't ever erase from your memory, but I actually have a lot of behind the scenes

footage that was shot. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. So that's really great to make sure to capture all those moments and descriptions so everyone can really enjoy what it was like to be at ground zero. I can have a post-traumatic stress disorder. I'm hanging in there. I can't wait to read it.

And it, it, it will be the first real kind of first person thing about this movie, which is going to be great. So keep your eyes open for that. Thank you, Dustin, as always, for being an amazing engineer and that is all the time we have. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. You are lying.

I never hit you. You are tearing me apart, Lisa.