If you thought Tommy Wiseau was bizarre on film, you should meet him in person.
It’s not his untamed jet-black hair, the fact that he always wears two belts, or that he’s sporting black sunglasses in the pitch dark theatre. It’s that his laugh is actually the same, nervous, forced chuckle he uses in his infamous movie, The Room.
Wiseau and his co-star Greg Sestero were at The Mayfair Theatre for a three-night, six-screening showing of the cult film.
It’s the second time the duo are back in Ottawa, and this time the crowds have swelled to several hundred per showing.
The film has skyrocketed in popularity over the last few years as the worst movie ever made.
Wiseau is definitely milking it for all its worth—he and Sestero have shown up armed with boxes full of The Room posters, t-shirts featuring Wiseau’s face (“How’s Your Sex Life?”) and even tight men’s briefs with his name written all over them.
After a short question period the screening begins, and somehow Wiseau and I end up in a back room of the theatre. He tells me I have a nice smile.
“Too much politics!” he exclaims over my concern of finding a better spot.
I ask Wiseau what he thinks of Ottawa.
“I like your buildings. I like your big rivers! It is pretty nice. And snow.”
In case you haven’t seen it, The Room, a movie Wiseau wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, revolves around Tommy, who is in love with a semi-attractive woman named Lisa. However, Lisa doesn’t love him, and she makes up a lie that he hit her. Then Lisa has an affair with his best friend Mark (played by Sestero). Things don’t end well.
The movie features a lot of unfinished plot lines, some very lengthy sex scenes set to slow jams, and a non-stop reel of emotion from Tommy, who likes to tell Lisa how beautiful she is, and then tell her that she is tearing him apart.
The appeal of the film is that it’s become a participatory piece. As the movie plays, the crowd in the theatre cheers, whistles, and shouts along with every odd, awkward aspect of the film. The film is so weird that it’s not something you want to watch alone anyway.
Many people here are seeing the movie for the second, third, or 20th time.
I ask Wiseau why he thinks people love his film so much.
“You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself. But please don’t hurt yourself. Enjoy The Room,” he responds.
“Hopefully you enjoy,” Tommy tells me. “If you don’t enjoy you have to watch a hundred times. Eventually, you say ‘hey, I like it.’ I don’t know. Whatever.”
He tells me Canada was the first country to embrace The Room.
“Now we are worldwide,” he says.
Ottawa has been home to the most showings of The Room in Canada, according to Mayfair programmer and co-owner Lee Demarbre.
It has been played at least once every month for five years.
“The first screening only had about 40 people, but it kept building,” Demarbre says. “Now I can’t ever imagine The Room not playing here.”
Demarbre says he can always count on the film drawing crowds, even without a special visit from Wiseau.
“It’s our only guarantee of the month . . . I [always know] it’s going to be a hit. I sleep easy every weekend when I see The Room on the schedule for a Saturday night,” he says.
Demarbre attributes a large part of the movie’s popularity in Ottawa to Carleton students.
“For an entire generation of university students . . . I think The Room is going to be a big part of their memory of going to Carleton and being in Ottawa, because these kids come over and over again,” he said.
“[The Room] is like magic in a bottle,” Demarbre says. “I don’t know how they did it. I don’t think they really know how they did it.”
