by Greg Sestero
Tommy looked over at the bag, suddenly uncomfortable. “I do marketing—you know, retail stuff.” He stopped himself. “My God! You are such nosy person!”
I found it hard to believe that this guy could do marketing for Fangoria magazine, much less fashion. The Street Fashions USA locations listed on the bag were Haight Street, Beach Street, and Sutter Street. But the bags were cheaply printed; the Levi’s logo didn’t appear to have its standard, trademarked look.
“You don’t seem like a retail guy to me,” I said.
Tommy took this with a good-humored shrug. “You don’t know me yet. I have many skills.”
“So why acting?”
Tommy’s hands retreated into his pockets and I sensed him fight some small, quick battle over how much to tell me. “Well, you see, since I was little kid, it’s always been my big dream to be actor, for long time. I try Los Angeles, et cetera, but it didn’t come out right. Then I have business here, so I stop the acting. But then, to make long story short, I had accident. I was driving and got hit by guy who runs the red light.”
He’d said this so quietly, and soberly, that I didn’t dare say anything.
“It was pretty bad,” he went on. “Like wake-up call, you could say. I was in hospital for many weeks. After that, I decide to go back to my acting dream.”
He picked up his playbook and we continued rehearsing. After a few read-throughs, Tommy asked if I wanted to grab dinner. I suggested a Chinese place called Hunan on Sansome Street. While waiting for our food, Tommy once again began to tell me that I could succeed as an actor if I wanted it enough. “You can be star, but you have to be more powerful. When you are aggressive in scene, this is worth one million dollars.”
“What about you?” I asked, not trusting the thickness of what he was laying on me.
Tommy didn’t answer that question. Instead he started playing with his chopsticks, which he’d learned to use, he said, when he was living in Hong Kong. But I brought him back to the question: “What about you, Tommy? Tell me.”
Tommy set his chopsticks aside. “For me,” he said, “I always wanted to have my own planet. Call it Tommy’s Planet. Build a giant building there, you see, like . . . Empire Tower. Some casino thing. My planet will be bigger than everything.”
I found myself unexpectedly charmed by this burst of subdued bravado. It wasn’t obnoxious. It was sort of endearing. I felt like I’d just asked a child what he wanted to be when he grew up. And a child had answered me, honestly, with no adult filter telling him what was and wasn’t possible.
“Your own planet,” I said. I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t. In fact, I had goose bumps. This man sitting in front of me had no detectable talent, did everything wrong, wasn’t comfortable saying how old he was or where he was from, and seemed to take an hour to learn what most people picked up in five seconds. Still, for that moment I believed him. I believed he could have his own planet.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up. “I see this big thing and big light and big events with stores and hotel and movie. All these things all together. It will be spectacular.” He reached for his glass of hot water but hesitated before lifting it to his mouth. Tommy peered at me from beneath his large protruding brow. “And you can live in my planet, if you decide. Maybe I let you stay for little while.”
What did I think of living on Tommy’s planet? I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was that Tommy had something I’d never seen in anyone else: a blind and unhinged and totally unfounded ambition. He was so out of touch, so lacking in self-awareness, yet also weirdly captivating. That night there was this aura around Tommy—an aura of the possible. Stick with him, I thought, and something would happen, even if I had no idea what that something might be. Maybe that was it: Tommy made me listen to the right voices in my head. This big, childish vision of his—what was it if not every actor’s secret dream?
My own planet was increasingly icy and lonely and minor. And while I did not rule out the possibility that Tommy’s Planet was a civilization-ending comet headed my way, what if it wasn’t?
“Here,” Tommy said. “I have present for you.” He handed me a red-white-and-blue pen, the casing of which bore the Street Fashions USA logo. He gave it to me as though it were a sacred scepter, as though I’d passed some test. When I looked more closely at the pen, I saw something else: a tiny globe with the words TOMMY’S PLANET printed across it.
“My planet will be bigger than everything.”
five
“People Are Very Strange These Days”
You don’t yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck.
—Joe Gillis, Sunset Boulevard
Sandy walked over to Kyle, Tommy, and me with an alarmed look on his face. “Tommy,” he said, “what the hell’s going on? I just learned we haven’t been rolling film on Don.”
Tommy was looking down, his eyes hidden by his white Gilligan sun hat. He said nothing.
Sandy sighed. “Tommy, make a decision. If you want Greg in this picture, do the decent thing and let the other kid go.”
Tommy crossed his arms but, again, said nothing.
“Is it a talent thing?” Sandy asked, still assuming that Tommy worked off a comprehensible decision-making matrix. “Are you doing this to watch both of them on tape and see who you like better? Is this some sort of . . . postcasting tryout?”
Tommy: no response.
Sandy was getting desperate now. “Jesus, Tommy. Pick one.”
Tommy grew visibly uncomfortable when Sandy raised his voice. He was all for creating drama, typically, but only drama that he could control. “I want this guy out,” Tommy said, looking up at Sandy. “We stick with Greg at this time. And I want what’s-her-name, blondie girl—Michelle—she’s gone, too.” Tommy had been rehearsing with Brianna for weeks, but, like Don, who was really Dan, he still didn’t know her name.
Sandy stared at Tommy in disbelief. “Tommy, we don’t have another Michelle—and we’ve already shot those alley scenes inside with Brianna.”
“Don’t worry,” Tommy said. “We get another one.”
The cast and crew, though they couldn’t hear Tommy and Sandy, were all carefully monitoring their conversation. Tommy pulled me aside, lowered his voice even more, and said, “Stay quiet. We don’t want legal issue.” With that, he headed straight for Don and Brianna, who were standing at the other side of the lot. Don started shaking his head. “What is this about, Tommy?” he asked.
“Don’t worry,” Tommy said, stopping. “We pay you. Come back tomorrow and I give you check.”
Don: “Greg’s not even an actor.”
Tommy: “This is what producers want.” Then he looked at Brianna and, with a lazy hand flip, said, “You have to leave, also. I’m sorry but the producers don’t want you in the movie at this time. Come back tomorrow and we pay you check.”
As Tommy walked back toward the rest of us, Kyle said, “Tommy, I hope you’re aware that Greg doesn’t have a contract. And he can’t film until he has one.”
Tommy glanced over at Kyle. “Please mind your own business, smart guy. This is not your issue. You want to be actor, act like one.”
Kyle bit his tongue, put his hands up, and went off, I think, to go scream a bit before filming his and my next few scenes on the Rooftop set, which still wasn’t completely built. After a few takes, a frustrated Tommy announced that we’d resume filming the next morning. When Tommy left the set that night he insisted on bringing his HD camera home with him. When I asked why, Tommy said, “Thieves.”
• • •
By the time I delivered Tommy to the set the next day, the crew had completed construction of the Rooftop; the lighting was all set up and the dolly tracks were laid. Breakfast had already been eaten, several games of chess had been played atop the bed of Sandy’s pickup truck, and multiple cigarette breaks had been savored. Tommy, as always, had demanded that everyone—cast, crew, everyone—arrive on set at 8:00 a.m. He graced the set with his presence a little after
noon, just as half the cast and crew were beginning lunch. The one person who figured out Tommy’s modus operandi early on was Amy, the makeup artist, who after the second day of production started showing up three hours late and was never once busted for it.
Tommy was sporting his white Gilligan hat, red-lensed Oakleys, a black tank top, and sand-colored cargo pants. He was, I knew from the car ride over, a man with a mission today. Tommy was carrying several dozen eight-by-ten printouts, which he began papering all over the set. These printouts read: ACTORS DO NOT INTERACT WITH CREW. The words had been rendered in three different colors, four different fonts, and five different type sizes. Then Tommy began to set up little postcard piles in high-traffic areas around the set. These read: THE ROOM: THE PLAY, THE MOVIE, THE DRAMA, IT’S COMING! Finally, Tommy handed out business cards to every member of the cast and crew. Some said: TOMMY WISEAU: THE ACTOR. Others said: TOMMY WISEAU: THE DIRECTOR. Others said: TOMMY WISEAU: THE PRODUCER. And one said: “He Can Do Your Project (or Be Part of It) Well, with Passion and Dedication.” The last was generally accepted among The Room’s cast and crew as the most extraordinary document anyone had ever seen.
The Actor.
While everyone marveled at Tommy’s chutzpah, the man himself sat down and started doing curls with rusted dumbbells. In the last few months he’d gotten extremely and upsettingly ripped, and now looked like a man who’d spent several months starving to death on a desert island with a Soloflex as his only company.
I took a look at the finished Rooftop set, which seemed funny surrounded by parked cars. Almost everyone involved with The Room had asked Tommy why he was building a fake rooftop in the middle of a studio’s parking lot rather than filming on a real rooftop or, I don’t know, using the actual studio space whose parking lot he was filming in. Tommy brushed all these questions away with the mistaken postulation that “We do no different than big studios.”
The Rooftop set.
Filming The Room’s Rooftop scenes in the parking lot of Birns & Sawyer created many problems, the most persistent being light. Due to Tommy’s lateness, he almost always missed out on filming in mellow morning light. From noon to 5:00 p.m., when Tommy liked to film, you get a wide range of light conditions, most of which are hostile to camera lenses. This should explain why, in the finished film, the Rooftop scenes all look like they’re taking place in different climates and countries, depending on the angle and the shot. Shooting outside made every Rooftop scene a protracted battle against fading and changing light, necessitating the constant, busy draping of the Rooftop with blockers, curtains, and gauzy white screens during the day, and, after sunset, illuminating the Rooftop with a battery of supernovally intense lights, making it look like a little fluorescent igloo.
The makeup chair was Tommy’s favorite place to learn his lines and he always insisted I stay near him when he was running them. Between sips of Red Bull, Tommy recited the first line of the first scene he wanted to shoot that day: “Oh, hi, Mark.” He did the line with different spins and emphases (“Oh, hi, Mark,” “Oh, hi, Mark,” “Oh, hi, Mark,” “OhhiMark”) until he was sure he had it. Amy, the makeup artist, was working on Tommy throughout this process, dabbing at his face while he gestured. Tommy, satisfied with his “Oh, hi, Mark” delivery, moved on to a moment later in the scene, which involved Johnny and Denny. He read the line woodenly: “You can love someone deep inside your heart. There’s nothing wrong with it.” Then he turned to me and asked, “How is my voice today? I know I do something wrong. I’m losing my mind. Can you correct me?”
“You’re doing fine,” I assured him.
“Oh, hi, Mark”: From left, Amy Von Brock, Safowa Bright, Philip Haldiman, and I watch Tommy rehearse.
Sandy wandered over to find out what Tommy wanted to shoot first. “We are shooting roof scene with Johnny and Mark,” Tommy said. “Don’t worry. We ready in five minutes.” Sandy lumbered off, certain that Tommy’s “five minutes” meant more like an hour and a half.
The Room’s costume designer, Safowa, had ducked out for a moment to run some wardrobe errands because Tommy was so late. Of course, the moment Tommy learned that Safowa was no longer around, he decided he was ready to get dressed for his scene. He began to panic. “We need her now, not tomorrow!” he said. “I don’t hire her not to be here! I’m not doing her job.”
Amy told Tommy that Safowa would be back any second, but Tommy, unsatisfied, headed directly to wardrobe and dressed himself. He probably could not have picked a worse outfit had he been blindfolded: an ill-fitting navy blue sport coat over his favorite black tank top and sand-colored cargo pants, the pockets of which were stuffed with lotion bottles, antiwrinkling gel, purple scrunchies, hair clips, and cash. He looked like an aging metrosexual commando.
Safowa returned from her errand, took one look at Tommy, and nearly fainted. I believe the word she used to describe his outfit was “unfilmable.”
Tommy, of course, refused to change. “I keep my stuff, sweetie. You are late. Please don’t do this again.”
“Tommy,” Safowa said, “you can’t just pick things off the rack at random and start shooting.” Sensing she wasn’t going to win this argument, she turned to grab her camera. “I need to get a Polaroid of your outfit for continuity.”
“Continuity,” Tommy said, stopping her, “is in your forehead.”
“Would you at least empty your pockets?” Safowa asked. “Can we agree to that?”
“I cannot,” Tommy said. Safowa briefly looked like she was about to punch him. Tommy, noticing this, put his hand on her shoulder. “You are very sweet, and I push you little bit. But don’t hate me yet.” From Safowa’s expression it was clear that Tommy’s request was several seconds too late.
The scene Tommy wanted to shoot was my first with him that didn’t involve other cast members. We started with the master shots of the conversation Johnny and Mark have after Johnny spontaneously storms onto the Rooftop, denying that he’s hit his future wife, Lisa. The ensuing conversation concerns women, mostly, and the possibility that they are evil. When Johnny tells Mark that Lisa is “loyal” to him—remember, Mark is banging Lisa pretty regularly by this point in the film—Mark says, “Yeah, man. You never know. People are very strange these days,” which is one of the most majestically odd lines in the whole film. Mark then tells Johnny a story about a woman friend of his who enjoyed the company of “a dozen guys.” Unfortunately, one of these surly gentlemen discovered his lover’s promiscuity. “He beat her up so bad,” Mark tells Johnny, “she ended up in a hospital.” To which Johnny responds: “What a story, Mark!”
For reasons neither I nor anyone else could gather, every time I got to the part in Mark’s story about the woman being beaten up, Tommy would laugh warmly before delivering his line. It was unsettling. It was disturbing. Take after take, Tommy/Johnny would react to the story of this imaginary woman’s hospitalization with fond and accepting laughter.
After a few takes Sandy took Tommy aside and, as though speaking to a child, told him that this beaten-up-woman business was not funny, not at all; it was, in fact, a very sad line; and maybe Tommy should shoot for a response that was more, shall we say, emotionally involved. Sandy went so far as to demonstrate for Tommy what Johnny’s “concerned body language” should look like. It was as though Tommy had never bothered to contemplate what the line he wrote actually meant.
Tommy laughed again during the next take. Sandy stepped away from his monitor, looked at the ground, and said, “Okay. Not funny, Tommy! No laugh there! Remember, be concerned!” Sandy’s eyes were bleak with false enthusiasm and his voice sounded like a cable getting ready to snap. We’d been shooting this idiotic conversation for more than an hour.
Tommy and I did the exchange again. This time Tommy didn’t laugh. Instead, he said his line—“What a story, Mark”—with absolutely no emotion at all. This effect was, improbably, even weirder than the takes he had laughed in. Sandy gave up and we moved on.
Then it was time to do
the coverage shots of our individual closeups. In an attempt to loosen Tommy up a bit, I changed the line that had been provoking his laughter. Instead of “He beat her up so bad, she ended up in a hospital,” I ad-libbed, “He beat her up so bad, she ended up in a hospital on Guerrero Street.”
Of course, there is no hospital on Guerrero Street, but Tommy’s San Francisco condo was located there. I knew full well that anything having to do with Tommy’s personal life was a matter of national security, but the reference was so obscure that I couldn’t imagine him being worried about it. No one involved in The Room even knew that Tommy had lived in San Francisco, let alone that he had a condo there. This was going to be a ridiculous scene no matter what, and I guess I was trying to remind Tommy to approach it more playfully. Attempting to mine Tommy’s scenes for authentic or plausible emotion was never going to work. You couldn’t make these scenes realistic, I figured, so why not have fun?
Tommy laughed again, more ghoulishly than before.
When the cameras stopped, Tommy dragooned me into a quiet place, away from the crew. “Are you insane completely?” he said. His eyes were all dancing panic. “You must be crazy in the head! Now we can’t erase this information from thirty-five-millimeter film!”
I tried to calm him down. “Tommy, it’s a street name. Nobody knows what I was referring to.”
Tommy gave me a hard, cold look. “I’m not happy about your statement.” He was even less happy when the only usable audio from all of the coverage happened to be in the take where I ad-libbed the Guerrero Street line, which was why it wound up in The Room at all.
We filmed the first part of Tommy’s and my scene—Johnny making his dramatic entrance onto the Rooftop—last. To shoot him doing this, the crew had to rearrange the Rooftop walls and push into place the tiny, tin-roofed outhouse that was doubling as the Rooftop’s access door.
Since the outhouse was so small, there was no room inside to create the illusion of continued movement. This meant that anyone being filmed exiting it had to stand perfectly still while waiting until action was called. Coming out of that thing, you stumbled into your scene.