Tommy Wiseau’s ‘The Room’ is a bizarre cult film about an ‘underdog.’ Of course, Philly is a fan

On June 27, 2003, a peculiar film called The Room premiered in Los Angeles. The bizarre melodrama about a strange man named Johnny (director Tommy Wiseau), whose fiancé Lisa (Juliette Danielle) cheated on him with his best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), was marked by inexplicable filmmaking choices, numerous unresolved subplots, horrible green screen work, and uneven acting.

Wiseau’s film didn’t make much of a splash for the next five years. But, according to Entertainment Weekly, word began spreading, first through Michael Rousselet, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, and the film became a cult midnight movie, with an elaborate system of rituals and callouts similar to that of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Philadelphia was an early fan. The first known public screening of the film in Philly took place in May 2009 at the Space 1026 gallery on North Broad Street. Trey Shields, now Philadelphia Film Society’s programming manager and senior festival programmer, remembers being there.

The Trocadero Theater hosted a pair of Room screenings in 2012 and soon the old Ritz at the Bourse in Old City followed suit. The Bourse soon became the go-to venue for monthly showings, occasionally with Wiseau in attendance. It was always worth a chuckle that The Room would show across the street from a store called Lisa’s Flowers and Gifts.

Once the pandemic receded and the Bourse reopened under Film Society auspices, the monthly screenings moved to the Ritz Five, with Wiseau returning in April 2022. He even officiated a marriage proposal between two fans.

Eric Bresler, the manager and director of programming at PhilaMOCA in the city’s Eraserhood neighborhood, first heard about The Room from that Entertainment Weekly article. Over the ensuing years, Bresler’s venue has hosted numerous screenings of The Room, often with Sestero and other cast members. In 2018, Sestero and a group of local actors conducted a staged reading of the “original” script of the film, which was somehow even more unhinged than the version that was produced.

Why doesn’t Wiseau show up at the PhilaMOCA showings, you ask? In 2016, Bresler said, representatives of Wiseau filed a cease-and-desist when PhilaMOCA scheduled a U.S. premiere of Room Full of Spoons, a Canadian documentary which reportedly uncovered details about Wiseau’s past, a notoriously sore subject for the filmmaker. PhilaMOCA did not screen the film. In 2020, a Canadian court ordered Wiseau to pay damages to the makers of the documentary for blocking the film’s release.

“Philly has a really healthy cult genre film scene,” Bresler said. “We’re always interested in kind of more off-kilter, less mainstream stuff.”

“I think it appeals to Philly crowds because we like to celebrate the oddballs who make valiant attempts only to watch the world burn,” said Shields. “[The Room] is a classic underdog story of a guy not knowing how to make a movie… that translates to a cinematic communal experience of watching a car crash with its wild script, perverted neighbors/adopted son storylines, copious amount of sex scenes to smooth R&B jam knockoffs, and tragic hero of unknown origins at the center of it all.”

(The “smooth R&B jam knockoffs” were performed by singer Kitra Williams, a graduate of Cheyney University in Chester County.)

The Room got a new wave of attention with the 2017 release of The Disaster Artist, an adaptation of Sestero’s memoir, that told the story of the movie’s production. Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter wrote the film’s screenplay, which was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

“That [Wiseau’s] personal little film would still be celebrated 20 years later is a testament to his singular vision and his ‘don’t take no for an answer’ attitude, which feels very Philadelphia in every way,” said Neustadter, a Margate native and Penn grad.

A diehard fan of the Sixers and Eagles, Weber seemed to agree. “Philadelphia has always loved an underdog story and in the world of moviemaking, there’s no bigger underdog than Tommy Wiseau,” he said to The Inquirer.

Now, with The Room about to reach its 20th anniversary, it will show at three local venues in June.

PhilaMOCA is once again hosting Sestero on June 8 for a 20th-anniversary showing and Q&A. The event, Bresler said, will also feature a preview of The Room Remake, a green screen-based re-do of the film starring Bob Odenkirk in the Wiseau role.

The Ritz Five will host its monthly late-night presentation of The Room at 10 p.m. on June 17.

On June 27, a Fathom Events one-night-only showing will celebrate the anniversary, with Cinemark University City Penn 6 the only city theater confirmed as a participant. The Fathom showing will offer a “new introduction” by Wiseau.