The Room is a film so amazing in its terribleness that even after watching it, it's difficult to believe that it actually exists. Apparently, the movie is so unbelievable, that test audiences for The Disaster Artist legitimately didn't believe it. According to screenwriter Scott Neustadter, who co-write the script for the new James Franco film about Tommy Wiseau and the making of The Room, many people who saw an early cut of the film thought it was so outrageous it couldn't possibly actually be true. Neustadler says...
It's funny, because when we were testing this movie initially with an audience of people, the one thing that they said at the end, which we couldn't believe, was that they didn't think any of this was true. Even though it says, 'Based on a True Story,' they just thought it was another Franco/Rogen [project], making something up and a funny character they were doing. The side-by-sides -- some people still watch this movie and cannot believe, until the side-by-sides, that there is footage out there like what we shot. So that's something that I think we, in telling the story, were cognizant of. Truth is stranger than fiction. Let's lean in on more of what actually went down. And there are enough mysteries that go unanswered that we kept in the soufflé also.
As Scott Neustadter tells Slashfilm, truth is stranger than fiction, and in the case of Tommy Wiseau, it's hard to argue. The man who wrote, produced, directed, and starred in The Room is a fairly remarkable figure. Everything from his look to his accent certainly could come across as somebody playing a character, The fact that everybody else in The Disaster Artist comes across as something approximating normal humans makes Wiseau seem all the more out of place, like he is a character designed to be funny. If you've seen The Room, then you know it's all too real, but if you haven't, how could you believe any of it to be true?
Movies based on true events often need to embellish or alter the reality in order to create the best possible movie. It appears that the screenwriting team behind The Disaster Artist, which also included Michael H. Weber, tried to do this as little as possible, believing that the real story offered plenty to the overall story to keep the audience engaged.
While The Room is viewed by many to be the worst film ever made, the movie about the worst film ever made is viewed very differently. It's been nominated for numerous awards, including most recently for the Golden Globes. If The Disaster Artist becomes a major awards darling, it will only make the reality of The Room more clear for a larger audience. Then everybody will know this all really happened.
