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If you’ve ever seen The Room (I delayed my own viewing for years – don’t make my mistake, it’s everything it’s cracked up to be), the biggest question on your mind is most likely: who is this Tommy Wiseau and where did he come from? Wiseau reportedly spent $6 million of his own money making the best/worst classic, and not only does no one really know where he made so much that he could afford this, they don’t know Tommy’s country of origin (a Redditor recently claimed Poland, which is entirely plausible). He has an Eastern European accent and seems to speak French, but claims to be from Louisiana. He says things like “As an American…” and his self-written critic blurbs for The Room raved “the new Tennessee Williams is a ragin’ cajun!”
I recently finished Greg Sestero’s wonderful book about the making of The Room and his relationship with Wiseau, The Disaster Artist. 300 or so pages later, I was still full of questions. As it happens, one of my friends from the SF comedy scene, Aaron Barrett, a comedian and rock drummer who moved to San Francisco in 1991, worked for Tommy Wiseau for 11 years (!!!!), making him one of the few people on Earth to have known Tommy Wiseau nearly as long as Greg Sestero. After taking away Bret’s The Room virginity, we invited Aaron Barrett into the Frotquarters to see if he can help fill in any of the gaps in Tommy Wiseau’s mysterious biography, and alternately torture him with bad “YOU ARE TEARING ME APART!” impressions. Enjoy.
LISTEN. ENJOY. TELL FRIENDS. REPEAT.
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Here’s a clip of the Shakespeare commercial Tommy reportedly bankrolled so that he could get his SAG card.