The Neighbors | Through the Shattered Lens

“America is the best country in the world.” — Tommy Wiseau

Tommy Wiseau in The Room

Recently, I had the chance to speak with Tommy Wiseau, the director of the cult hit, The Room and the man behind the online series, The Neighbors.

In a perfect world, everyone would get to spend 30 minutes talking to Tommy Wiseau. For someone who has watched The Room over a hundred times, it was at first overwhelming to hear that famous accent and that equally famous chuckle over the telephone. Once you start talking to Tommy, it is hard not to get caught up in his energy and his enthusiasm.

During our conversation, Tommy frequently returned to the theme that, as he put it, “America is the best country in the world.” Both The Room and Tommy Wiseau are American success stories. Along with writing and directing The Room, Wiseau also starred as Johnny, a banker who lives with and loves his “future wife” Lisa (Juliette Danielle). What he does not know is that Lisa is having an affair with Johnny’s best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero). Meanwhile, Johnny’s ward, Denny, is stalked by a drug dealer, Lisa’s friend tries to find enough privacy to make out with her boyfriend, a guy that nobody has seen before suddenly shows up towards the end of the film and somehow knows about everything that has been going on, Mark nearly tosses a man off a rooftop, and Johnny and his friends spend a lot of time playing football while wearing tuxedos.

Juliette Danielle, Tommy Wiseau, and Greg Sestero in The Room

When The Room was first released in 2003, it played in two theaters and it easily could have gone the way of many other forgotten independent films. However, through word of mouth, people started to discover The Room and now, in the tradition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Room has become a midnight movie success. Fans come to showings dressed like their favorite characters, repeat the film’s dialogue, talk back to the characters, and throw plastic spoons at the screen. (Go to a showing and you will understand.) Co-star Greg Sestero has written a book, The Disaster Artist, about the making of The Room. (When I asked Wiseau how accurate he felt the book was, he replied, “40%, no more than that.” He also told me that, despite what some people in the media may be claiming, reports that he was no longer talking to Greg Sestero were totally incorrect.) I was first introduced to The Room by Lisa Marie (not to be mistaken for Lisa, Johnny’s future wife) and we have both lost track of how many midnight showing we have attended at the Inwood Theater.

As The Room has become better known, so has Tommy Wiseau. When I asked him if he found all of the fame to be overwhelming, Wiseau told me, “Not overwhelming. Because it’s fun. You have to believe in what you want to create.”

Wiseau has another reason to be excited, because the guys from Rifftrax will soon be bringing The Room to a whole new audience. Rifftrax will be hosting a showing and live commentary at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 17th and then Rifftrax Live: The Room will screen in 700 theaters across the United States and Canada on May 6th and May 12th.

The Rifftrax guys are Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy. They are probably best known for their previous work on Mystery Science Theater 3000. In many ways, MST 3K is as much of an American success story as The Room. If you grew up in the 90s, it is likely that MST 3K shaped the way that you viewed everything from culture to politics to entertainment to whether or not it was okay to talk during a movie. Rifftrax presenting The Room feels like the perfect marriage of two phenomenons of American pop culture.

Joe Don Baker in happier times

There are a few famous stories of actors and filmmakers who did not appreciate having their films screened by the MST 3K guys. On the DVD for MST 3K‘s take on Time Chasers, Mike Nelson mentions that the film’s producers had a party to view the show and that some of them did not take the ribbing as well as others. The internet is full of rumors that actor Joe Don Baker is still angry over what was said about his performances in Mitchell and Fatal Justice.

However, Tommy Wiseau is encouraging everyone to see Rifftrax Live: The Room. When I asked him how he felt about Rifftrax, he replied, “They’re very nice people.” He went on to explain that he’s very excited and enthusiastic about the Rifftrax presentation of The Room and he’s looking forward to a whole new audience discovering the film.

Tommy Wiseau and football in The Room

Wiseau is also hoping that people will continue to discover The Neighbors, his online series that is currently available on Hulu. When I asked him what had inspired The Neighbors, he replied that it was based on a true life. In regard to one character who is obsessed with a chicken, Wiseau explained, “My aunt used to have a chicken.” He went on to explain that, like the characters in The Neighbors, “We are all human, we are all multicultural.”

We also talked about Wiseau’s first film, the documentary Homeless in America. Tommy Wiseau really impressed me with the obvious passion that he felt for the topic. “I wanted to know about what was happening,” he explained as to why he had made the documentary, adding that not all of the homeless are mentally ill and they not all of them are criminals. “You cannot eliminate the homeless,” he said. Homeless in America can be ordered from Amazon.

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane

When asked what movies he would recommend that aspiring filmmakers should watch, Wiseau immediately said, “Citizen Kane.” “Citizen Kane isn’t cookie cutter from Hollywood,” he explained. “If Hollywood had made The Room, it would be a totally different story.” Tommy also suggested watching Giant and “Clint Eastwood movies.”

As for the future, James Franco is currently working on an adaptation of Sestero’s The Disaster Artist but Wiseau can not talk about the production. However, he did say about Franco, “He likes James Dean, I like James Dean.” Wiseau is looking forward to more filmmaking. He’s currently working on a new film called Foreclosure and, in June, there will be four more episodes of The Neighbors on Hulu.

And, of course, Rifftrax Live: The Room will be in 700 theaters on May 6th and May 12th.

I asked Wiseau if there was anything he would like to say to his fans.

“Yes,” he said, “You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don’t hurt each other.”

Those are words to live by.

Want to find out more about The Room and buy some Tommy Wiseau merchandise? Click here!

Want to find out more about the showing of The Room at Tribeca and how to purchase tickets? Click here!

Want to find out more about how to purchase tickets for the May 6th and May 12th showings of Rifftrax Live: The Room? Click here!

Want to watch Tommy Wiseau’s The Neighbors? Click here!

Want to order Tommy Wiseau’s documentary, Homeless in America? Click here!

(Thank you, Tommy Wiseau, for taking the time to talk to us!)

The cast of The Neighbors. Yes, that is Tommy Wiseau in a blonde wig…

Earlier tonight, I went onto Hulu and I watched the first episode of The Neighbors, which is the latest project from cult movie icon Tommy Wiseau.

Before I even start watching, I knew that The Neighbors would be bad. That’s really the only reason that anyone would choose to watch The Neighbors, just to see how bad it could possibly be. After all, Tommy Wiseau is best known as the director of The Room, a film that has become famous for being one of the worst ever made. And, as I’ve made clear on this site in the past, I absolutely love The Room. I own a copy. My boyfriend and I have attended countless midnight showings of The Room, where we’ve shouted out all the lines and we’ve thrown plastic spoons at the screen with joyous abandon. When Clint Jun Gamboa showed up on American Idol, I wanted him to win just because he composed three of the songs that appear on The Room soundtrack. I consider The Disaster Artist to be one of the best film books ever written. I’ve even been lucky enough to interact with Room co-star Greg Sestero on twitter. The Room is a bad film that you can’t help but love and I think that a lot of people — like me — assumed that The Neighbors would be a bad sitcom that you could not help but love.

Uhmm yeah … about that.

Having now watched the first episode of The Neighbors (entitled “Meet the Neighbors”), I can definitely say that sitting through it was perhaps the most unpleasant 31 minutes of my life so far.

The Neighbors is about an apartment complex. (Every few minutes, we see the exact same establishing shot of the building while some rudimentary but catchy EDM plays in the background.) The tenants are an eccentric bunch but, fortunately, they’re all watched over by property managers Charlie (Tommy Wiseau) and Bebe (Gretel Roenfeldt). Remember how, in The Room, everyone was always asking Johnny for his advice? Well, the same seems to apply for Charlie here. For the most part, the first episode of The Neighbors consisted of characters stepping into Charlie’s office and telling him about their problems. Charlie gives advice that is, of course, delivered in that famously impenetrable Wiseau accent. Characters leave the office. “What a day!” Charlie says.

(It’s interesting that, in both The Neighbors and The Room, Wiseau played a wise man who keeps his childish friends from making terrible mistakes. Based on his performances and the portrait of him that emerges in Greg Sestero’s book, The Disaster Artist, I imagine that’s the way that Wiseau prefers to view himself in real life.)

The other main storyline deals with CiCi (Pamela Bailey), a woman who owns a chicken. When she can’t find her chicken, she wanders around the apartment complex, screaming at people and demanding that they return her chicken. Eventually, she finds her chicken.

Yay.

There are other things going on, of course. There’s a guy who is thinking about hanging himself but then he’s paid a visit by Philadelphia (Karly Kim), who has big plastic boobs, looks straight at the camera whenever she has to deliver her lines, and who spends the entire episode wearing a pink bikini. And then there’s Troy (Andrew Buckley) who smokes weed and sells gun and yells a lot. When we first meet Troy, he’s angry because he’s found a big note on his door that reads, “BRING $850 TODAY OR BE EVICTED.” And then there’s Tim (Raul Phoenix) who always has a basketball with him and who is always borrowing money from Tommy so that he can pay back Bebe or from Bebe so that he can pay back Tommy. There’s a handyman named Ed (Jonathan Freed) and a pizza boy named Joe (Brian Kong) who rents an apartment of his own. Joe is Asian but his last name is Spielberg because that’s what passes for the height of hilarity in The Neighbors. Both Joe and Ed also wear Tommy Wiseau-brand underwear.

There was one character that I did like. Lula (Cheyenne Van Zutphen) is the girlfriend of drug dealer Ricky Rick (played, in a blonde wig, by Tommy Wiseau). Lula has the power to literally hypnotize people with her charm. That’s a great power to have and, at one point, she uses it to get a free gun from Troy. When Troy comes out of his charmed state, he yells and yells while the camera zooms in on his sweaty face.

There’s also a tenant who is upset because his pregnant wife has figured out that he’s gay. His name is Don and when he first steps into the office, Charlie says, “Oh hai, Don,” and you’re briefly reminded of how much more fun The Room was compared to this. Don and his wife have a huge fight in the manager’s office while Charlie and Bebe try to maintain the peace. It all adds up to a lot of yelling.

And that, to be honest, is why The Neighbors was such an unpleasant viewing experience. Everyone in this show yells nonstop. They yell when they argue. They yell when they say hello. They yell when they tell jokes. They yell when they say goodbye. After spending just a few minutes of listening to them, I had a massive headache. Imagine if the “WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY!?” scene from The Room had gone on for 32 minutes and you have a pretty good idea of what it was like to watch The Neighbors.

One reason why The Room is so beloved is because, as bad as it is, it’s also a legitimate movie. The Room is blessed with such a mix of sincerity and ineptness that the film becomes both terrible and endearing. You marvel at how bad the film is while also respecting Wiseau for staying true to his own eccentric vision. The Neighbors, on the other hand, has all of the ineptness of The Room but none of the sincerity. The Room is fascinating because it’s so clearly the product of Wiseau’s own eccentric world view. The Neighbors, meanwhile, is the product of Wiseau’s newfound fame. The Room was made by a director who wanted to make a statement. The Neighbors, on the other hand, was made by a director who knows that people will watch anything that has his name slapped onto it, regardess of what it may be.

The Room is a guilty pleasure. The Neighbors is just guilty. (One side effect of thinking about Tommy Wiseau is that you soon find yourself writing like him as well.)

That said, I’m still probably going to watch the other three episodes of The Neighbors. The first episode was so bad that the show itself has nowhere to go but up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEV1H0_jmwk