The guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 are going back into The Room, and it’s going to be the funniest thing you’ll see all year. Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett are taking on Tommy Wiseau’s famous feature again for RiffTrax Live: The Room, which will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 17, before being performed a second time for a live broadcast to movie theaters across the United States and Canada on May 6 and May 12.
For those of you who don’t know what RiffTrax is, it’s just like MST3K—Mike, Kevin, and Bill take any movie (even the good ones!) and make it better by providing side-splitting commentary. You’re pretty much guaranteed to cry with laughter, and possibly do a spit-take or two.
For those of you who don’t know what The Room is, the film’s star, writer, director, and producer, Tommy Wiseau, answered a few questions for the EW Community—and he’s totally okay with the skewering of his movie.
“Long story short, they sent me a proposal and I approved the proposal,” Wiseau told us. “I’m pro-freedom, so I said why not, let people have fun.”
The Room has been a popular title for discussion since its original release in 2003. The gist of it is that banker Johnny (Wiseau) wants a happy life with his fiancée Lisa (Juliette Danielle), but Lisa is cheating on him with his best friend Mark (Greg Sestero). Meanwhile, other characters around the trio have their own problems. It’s a simple premise for what EW‘s own Clark Collis referred to as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.”
The Room has become one of the most cult-classic flicks ever made, continuing to sell out regular screenings, spawning an unofficial video game on Newgrounds, and having been parodied by Patton Oswalt and Jon Hamm on Oswalt’s 2009 DVD My Weakness Is Strong. Sestero’s memoir about the production, The Disaster Artist, is being adapted into its own movie, produced by Seth Rogen and starring James Franco. This is one of those films everyone has at least heard of. If you haven’t seen it, now is the perfect time.
This marks the second occasion that the RiffTrax team has played off The Room, after having previously riffed it in 2009, and you can bet the second time around will be even better than the first. Previous RiffTrax Live shows have lampooned Starship Troopers, Anaconda, the Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla, and a 1959 Mexican holiday film called Santa Claus. They also once did a take on the unrelated classroom short “Setting Up a Room,” which is basically 27 minutes of teachers putting blocks on shelves. There’s nothing that these guys can’t make entertaining.
The hysterical team tours the country performing RiffTrax Live in accompaniment to films like Sharknado and Birdemic. On May 6th, RiffTrax will present The Room live from Nashville and beamed to hundreds of movie theaters coast to coast (with an encore on May 12th)! For tickets and locations:
http://www.fathomevents.com/event/return-of-rifftrax-live-the-room/buy
Other live RiffTrax events coming this year include:
SHARKNADO 2 - July 9th
MIAMI CONNECTION - October 1st
SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY - December 3rd
TOMMY WISEAU PIECE FROM DECIDER.COM
Tommy Wiseau became a legend as the enigmatic writer, director, and star of what’s critically considered to be the worst movie of all time: The Room.
Wiseau’s film, released twelve years ago this June, chronicles the melodrama surrounding Johnny (played by Wiseau) who believes his “future wife” (Wiseau prefers not to use “fiancée”) Lisa is cheating on him. Little does he know, she’s actually been seeing his best friend Mark (Greg Sestero) behind his back. Though The Room was written, acted, and marketed as a romance tragedy, Wiseau’s film went on to become one of the world’s most cherished comedies — still screening twelve years later in arthouse cinemas where fans come strapped with plastic spoons ready to throw at the screen (this tradition is in reference to the dozens of inexplicable spoon imagery in the film). To honor the film’s influence, the crew at RiffTrax (made up of alumni from Mystery Science Theater 3000), will be hosting a live commentary of The Room at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival on Friday, April 17 at the School of Visual Arts Theater in Chelsea. The film will then be screened across 700 theaters in the United States and Canada on May 6, with an encore on May 12. Yes, Wiseau is just as excited as we are: “At first I was very skeptical,” he told me. “But I think it’s something different where people can enjoy themselves. I always say, you can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don’t hurt each other. I don’t mind people making fun of the movie, as long as they are sincere.”
Wiseau, whose mysterious persona has become just as legendary as his film, is the subject of Sestero’s best-selling account, The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, which is currently being adapted to the big screen by James Franco and Seth Rogen. When asked how it feels to have a movie being made about his debut feature over a decade later, Wiseau set the record straight about Sestero’s book. “I don’t support Greg Sestero’s book one hundred percent,” he says, “but Greg did a good job and people really embraced it. Some media that says we’re not talking is complete nonsense.”
Sestero, who stood in as Wiseau’s best friend on- and off-screen delivered a poignant retelling of the most bizarre production in history and whether Wiseau agrees or not, offered a sincere peak into the life of the one and only enigma: Tommy Wiseau, who not only made a huge impact on Sestero’s career, but also challenged the criteria of what a “good” movie entails. “I’m pretty excited. James Franco is a very good actor so we’ll see how it turns out,” Wiseau added, “I’m American and I’m proud of it. The past two or three years I’ve been very open about who I am and what I do. I love entertainment.” Yet Wiseau isn’t just sitting around waiting for his film to be honored (and teased) at TFF 2015. As highlighted in his recent Reddit AMA, Wiseau’s aptly named production company Wiseau Films has created a online-only series The Neighbors, now available to stream on Hulu. The series follows an apartment building manager, Charlie (played by Wiseau) and the daily shenanigans he gets into with his tenants, especially Ricky Rick (also played by Wiseau), who’s the “gangster” (sporting a blonde wig and an oversized varsity letterman jacket) of the group. When asked what the inspiration was behind playing both main characters, Wiseau was eager to discuss the art of acting. “It was my little ego,” he says. “I want to show people that I have range. Ricky Rick is full of gangster stuff — a happy-go-lucky guy — and Charlie is totally different. I want to show that I can act.” Wiseau assures four more episodes of The Neighbors are coming to the platform this summer, and there are plenty of surprises in store that he can’t yet reveal — so we’ll all have something to look forward to after Game of Thrones.
As for what’s next for Wiseau: he has another film on the horizon called Foreclosure. Though it sounds a bit sinister, this time around Wiseau is welcoming the notion of comedy. Foreclosure will follow Richard (played by Wiseau), who has his home foreclosed on, but turns around and inexplicably takes over the bank. “So you have a little drama, you have a little comedy,” Wiseau says. “What inspired me is the people who have actually been foreclosed on… All these bureaucratic processes. I don’t think it’s right.” Wiseau didn’t disclose a date for his upcoming feature, but I think it’s safe to say we’ll be keeping it on our radar.
The trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCj8sPCWfUw