Gawker this week has a piece on an encounter with The Room‘s mysterious auteur, Tommy Wiseau, and like all things Tommy Wiseau-related, it’s a study in extended absurdism (see also: our Frotcast with a former Wiseau employee). I’d urge Room enthusiasts to read the whole thing, since there’s really no way to sum up any Wiseau encounter in a brief manner. But if the piece has anything approaching a money shot, it’s this paragraph near the end, where Wiseau explains to Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak why The Room “eliminated crime in America.”
“Screening The Room midnight eliminated crime in America,” he said, unknowingly drawing blood from me. “Look at how many young people—you been young, I mean we still young, whatever—go in the street, you know, walking on the street, nothing to do, go see The Room, have fun. Let’s assume you don’t see The Room, you don’t have The Room, you walk on the street, grab the rock, and by accident you hit somebody, you know? Accident happen, get ’em arrested, go to jail, whatever. Instead, you see The Room. So high probability crime, high probability…you know what I’m saying?” [Gawker]
You see, when you’re young and it’s late at night, you essentially have two potential futures: one where you throw spoons at novelty vanity project for good clean fun, and another where you accidentally hit someone with a rock and go to jail for stone-related manslaughter. It makes perfect sense.
Earlier in the piece, Juzwiak attempts to understand the appeal of the room as it compares to the Rocky Horror Picture Show by talking to a kid who seems like the ringleader of The Room screening, only to later realize that the kid was talking to is actually the son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. So say what you will, The Room is keeping a certain element off the streets at night. If only we could get Jaden Smith into it, I think we’d be in a better place as a society.
Haha, what a story, Rich.