The Disaster Artist

Starred review from September 1, 2013
Reading this downright thrilling book is a lot like watching Tim Burton's Ed Wood: it's sometimes infuriating, often excruciating, usually very funny, and occasionally horribly uncomfortable, but it's also impossible to look away from. The Room, a 2003 film written, directed, and starring the inscrutable Tommy Wiseau, was massively and enthusiastically lambasted by critics, proclaimed by some as the worst movie ever made (an insult, some movie fans might say, to Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space). Sestero, who starred in The Room, teams up with magazine journalist Bissell (who previously wrote about the movie in Harper's) to walk us through the unpredictable, confusing, andit must be admittedwildly incompetent production of Wiseau's vanity project. This is a making-of book like no other, the day-to-day story about the filming of a movie that everyone involved with it, except its creator, knew was awful. But it's also the story of a very interesting friendship between Sestero and Wiseau (who knew each other for several years before The Room), and the story of an enigmatic and incredibly self-absorbed man who, in making his film, seemed to be trying to exorcise a troubled past and build an entirely new version of himself. Wiseau, for all his eccentricities, comes off as a sympathetic fellow, someone we, like Sestero, can't help rooting for. The Room has become a cult fave, and this book goes a long way toward explaining how and why.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

July 28, 2014
Actor Sestero's rich memoir recounts the making of The Room, a film starring the authors that is widely considered one of the worst ever made. The actor describes how he became involved with the film and Tommy Wiseau, its eccentric producer, writer, and director. This behind-the-scenes chronicle makes a great paratext to go along with the film and helps explain how it came to acquire cult classic status. Sestero provides animated and enthusiastic narration. His voice often denotes a bemusing smile as he shares anecdotes about Wiseau. It sounds as if he is smiling throughout the production. He projects strongly and deliberately, making sure every word is properly enunciated. Sestero's imitation of Wiseau's voice can feel odd; the writer/director's accent comes across as a mixture of Russian and French, but Sestero perfectly captures the tone and style of Wiseau's eccentric personality. A Simon & Schuster hardcover.

August 15, 2013
Funny, engaging first-person account of the making of The Room (2003), "the Citizen Kane of bad movies." French-American actor Sestero collaborates with acclaimed author Bissell (Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation, 2012, etc.), producing a deft, energetic narrative as concerned with the romantic American obsession with celebrity as with his trying involvement with The Room and its notorious producer/director/writer/star, Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau dominates his bewildering, unintentionally hilarious film, so Sestero's focus on trying to understand his friend's baffling background and motivations gives the story of their relationship surprising depth, even though Wiseau comes off as creepy, self-centered and socially inept (though often bighearted and generous toward the youthful Sestero, possibly his only friend). The narrative follows two strands, one beginning with their 1998 meeting in an acting class where Wiseau presented "beautifully, chaotically wrong performances," and the other covering The Room's production, for which Sestero served as both line producer and (at the last minute) as a replacement actor in a key role. Fans of the film will be pleased to learn that making it was an equally punishing and surreal experience, as the manipulative, confusing Wiseau's relations with the cast were "disastrously intemperate." Yet, Wiseau spent so much of his own money that a major Hollywood equipment supplier felt compelled to aid him through the production, even as crew members routinely quit in dismay. Sestero now seems mystified by his willingness to spend time on "Tommy's Planet," having wrongly assumed that Wiseau's vanity project would never reach completion. However, he argues that for all Wiseau's flaws, their friendship provided his abashed younger self with needed inspiration: "He was simply magically uninhibited." Sestero critiques the movie as Tommy's "dream life in line with what he thought an American would want." This may explain why his objectively terrible film nonetheless struck a chord, although the narrative does not explore its cult afterlife, ending abruptly at the film's premiere. An improbably resonant tale of warped creativity and friendship.

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