The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made Author: Visit Amazon's Greg Sestero Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1451661193 | Format: PDF
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made Description
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Reading this downright thrilling book is a lot like watching Tim Burton’s Ed Wood: it’s sometimes infuriating, often excruciating, usually very funny, and occasionally horribly uncomfortable, but it’s also impossible to look away from. The Room, a 2003 film written, directed, and starring the inscrutable Tommy Wiseau, was massively and enthusiastically lambasted by critics, proclaimed by some as the worst movie ever made (an insult, some movie fans might say, to Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space). Sestero, who starred in The Room, teams up with magazine journalist Bissell (who previously wrote about the movie in Harper’s) to walk us through the unpredictable, confusing, and—it must be admitted—wildly incompetent production of Wiseau’s vanity project. This is a making-of book like no other, the day-to-day story about the filming of a movie that everyone involved with it, except its creator, knew was awful. But it’s also the story of a very interesting friendship between Sestero and Wiseau (who knew each other for several years before The Room), and the story of an enigmatic and incredibly self-absorbed man who, in making his film, seemed to be trying to exorcise a troubled past and build an entirely new version of himself. Wiseau, for all his eccentricities, comes off as a sympathetic fellow, someone we, like Sestero, can’t help rooting for. The Room has become a cult fave, and this book goes a long way toward explaining how and why. --David Pitt
From Bookforum
The Disaster Artist is co-written (or probably, judging by its wit and literacy,
written) by journalist Tom Bissell, and with its allusions to
Ripley and
Sunset Boulevard, it understands the story it wants to tell. Tommy is a middle-aged man of some means and cloudy provenance, desperately lonely, waiting for the world to take notice. Greg is the beautiful young man who notices. —Louis Bayard
See all Editorial Reviews
- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (October 1, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1451661193
- ISBN-13: 978-1451661194
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
You're probably interested in this book for the same reasons I was: You love/hate The Room, you want to read some funny behind-the-scenes stories about its making, and you're hoping to have some mysteries about the movie and its oddball director/writer/producer cleared up. Rest assured, you will get all that, and more, from reading this excellent book by Greg Sestero ("Mark"), and writer Tom Bissell. The Disaster Artist is part memoir of a struggling young actor, part "making of" of a cult classic, and part chronicle of the rise and fall of a bizarre friendship.
Fans of The Room tend to have a lot of questions. Why is the dialogue so odd? How old was Denny supposed to be? What happened to Peter? Who was Steven? Why the football? Why a rooftop? Why the pictures of spoons? What's with that flower shop scene? Who is Tommy Wiseau, really, and where did he get the money to film this thing?
Sestero does his best to answer these questions, though many things about Wiseau's past will probably forever remain a mystery. I don't wish to spoil the book for anyone, but I feel I must answer The Big Question in order to write a proper review and let the potential reader know what they are in for. Is Tommy Wiseau "in on the joke," so to speak? That is to say, is The Room intentionally funny?
The answer is no.
I've read a lot of funny books over the years, but I can't recall another that made me laugh out loud so often, or so hard, as The Disaster Artist. Sestero's insights into the making of "the Citizen Kane of bad movies" had me in childish fits of giggles, as did the glimpses into "Tommy's Planet." Wiseau, you see, always wanted a planet of his own.
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