The Disaster Artist

What is it about bad movies that we like so much? While watching The Disaster Artist, which is about the making of supposedly the worst movie ever made, I of course thought of Ed Wood, which was about the worst director ever. Bad films are used for fodder for what's called "riffing," whether it's on MST3K or in your own living room.

But it takes a special bad film to be celebrated. Just another Hollywood clunker won't do. They have to be cheap, and here's the important thing--they have to be made by people who think they are creating greatness.

That's the case of Tommy Wiseau, a mysterious creepy guy who made The Room, which I've never seen but now I don't think I need to. It plays midnight shows and by all accounts is terrible, but the passion involved in its production shows through, and people can't help but love it.

James Franco directs and plays Wiseau in The Disaster Artist, and while it's not as good as Ed Wood it has its pleasures, most of them involving Franco's performance as a genuinely weird guy.

The film also starts Franco's brother, David, who gets to play the thankless role of the bland guy, Greg, who is our entry into the film and Wiseau's world. He is in an acting class in San Francisco and is impressed by Wiseau's completely over the top rendering of the "Stella" scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. Despite Wiseau's inherent weirdness (he has some sort of accent, a kind of Eastern European/brain damage kind), plus a mysterious source of money, and it seems no other friends but Greg. They room together in L.A. and try to become stars. One of the film's faults is that it can't convince me why a normal guy like Greg would ever room with this guy, because I certainly wouldn't.

They both struggle, although Greg's good looks get him an agent. Wiseau has a hilariously vicious encounter with Judd Apatow, who in no uncertain terms tell him he'll never make it. So they decide to make their own money. Wiseau writes a script about a man betrayed by his girl. They hire a crew, including Seth Rogen as script supervisor, who has no idea what he's getting into.

The "making of" part of the film is very funny, but, like Ed Wood, you appreciate the effort Wiseau. Things do get ugly--people quit, and when Greg moves in with his girlfriend, Allison Brie, Wiseau acts like a jealous lover.

I think, although Franco as a director doesn't quite nail it, that the spine of the film is Wiseau's essential loneliness. The cast wonders whether the script is from his own life, and clearly he is coming from a place of deep pain. He is also wounded whenever it is suggested he has the look for villain roles. "I am not villain," he wails.

The film has to rest on James Franco's performance. With Ed Wood, there were hardly any normal people, with terrific performances by Martin Landau and Jeffrey Jones and Bill Murray. But The Disaster Artist is just Franco, and is basically like the "Springtime for Hitler" sequence in The Producers, with comic shots of people looking slack-jawed at what is going on. Rogen, playing his standard part, has a lot of good sarcastic lines, but it's Franco who makes the movie worth seeing. He deserves an Oscar nomination.