Greg Sestero Quotes

In the love scene's final shot, Johnny gets out of bed and walks bare-assed to the bathroom. Tommy thought long and hard about his decision to show his ass. "I need to do it," he told me. "I have to show my ass or this movie won't sell.

How you get from an unanticipated football hand-off to potential hospitalization, I have no idea.

Money, you could say, was the elephant in The Room.

It was striking to see my family loving this cinematic abomination as much as they were. The room was filled with laughter from beginning to end - huge, bright, joyful laughter. We finished watching it at 1:00 a.m. Our cheeks hurt, our stomachs ached, and we felt closer to one another than we had in a long time.... Their response to The Room was a powerful indicator of what this film would do on a much larger scale.

Even today, a decade later, I still can't unsee Tommy's outfit: nighttime sunglasses, a dark blazer as loose and baggy as rain gear, sand-colored cargo pants with pockets filled to capacity (was he smuggling potatoes?), a white tank top, clunky Frankenstein combat boots, and two belts. Yes, two belts. The first belt was at home in its loops; the second draped down in back to cup Tommy's backside, which was, he always claimed, the point: "It keeps my ass up. Plus it feels good.

Watching Tommy perform this scene, I wondered what his psychologist or psychiatrist had made of him. I tried to image Tommy's mind from the inside out. I saw burning forests, blind alleys, volcanoes in the desert, city streets that plunged into the ocean, barricades everywhere, and all of it lit in the deep-cherry light of emergency.

I still can't unsee Tommy's outfit: nighttime sunglasses, a dark blazer as loose and baggy as rain gear, sand-colored cargo pants with pockets filled to capacity (was he smuggling potatoes?), a white tank top, clunky Frankenstein combat boots, and two belts. Yes, two belts.

Don't you take the past and just put it in a room in the basement and lock the door and never go in there? That's what I do. And then you meet someone special and all you want to do is toss them the key. Say, "Open up, step inside." But you can't because it's dark. And there are demons. - Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley

He was friendly and funny most of the time - though his work on The Room nearly drove him mad. Years later Sandy would claim to have directed the lion's share of The Room, which is a bit like claiming to have been the Hindenburg's principal aeronautics engineer.

Dan had some questions about Chris-R. We all did. Why the name "Chris-R," for instance? What's with that hyphen? Tommy's explanation: "He is gangster." What about this drug business, which never comes up either before or after Chris-R's only scene in the film? "We have big problem in society with the drugs.

The dialogue Tommy composed for the flower shop scene, which flies back and forth like some sort of postmodern 'Who's on First?' sketch, has the super-compresed density of experimental verse:

Hi
Can I help you
Yeah can I have a dozen roses please
Oh hi Johnny I didn't know it was you here you go
That's me how much is it
That'll be eighteen dollars
Here you go keep the change hi doggie
You're my favorite customer
Thanks a lot bye
Bye bye

What I was sure of was that Tommy had something I'd never seen in anyone else: a blind and unhinged and totally unfounded ambition. He was so out of touch, so lacking in self-awareness, yet also wildly captivating. That night there was this aura around Tommy- an aura of the possible.

With that, Tommy went off to do his seagull thing elsewhere on set - making a lot of irritating noise while simultaneously shitting on everyone.

Mark responds to Peter's accusation with an uncharacteristically abrupt burst of anger and tries to throw Peter off the roof. Then Mark immediately apologizes to Peter for trying to kill him, and Peter lets it slide. It's probably the most swiftly forgiven attempted murder in the history of film.

Right after we sat down, Don turned around and said, "Oh, by the way - I checked online. This is going to be on your IMDb for the rest of your life." I offered Don a courtesy laugh, after which he went back to munching his popcorn.

That, really, was Sandy's choice: Tommy's naked ass or Steven Spielberg's director of photography.

We argue, as you know. I don't think she like me, but so what. I say how I feel. Feelings. That's all we have as human beings.' - Tommy

In the end, Tommy made me realize that you decide who you become. He also made me realize what a mixed blessing that can be.

I was a tall, sandy-blond Northern California kid. Tommy, meanwhile, appeared to have been grown somewhere dark and moist.

Moments after the waitress left us, Tommy whipped out both copies of our chosen play and handed me mine. "All right," he said. "Now we do scene." "Wait," I said. "Now?" Tommy was unperturbed. "So what? Yes. We do it now." I looked around. All the tables around us were full. "Shouldn't we eat first?" "What? Are you not dedicated actor? Rehearsal is very important." Tommy was already demonstrating a lot of promise in knowing how to embarrass the shit out of me.

The Room is a drama that is also a comedy that is also an existential cry for help that is finally a testament to human endurance.

Tommy showed me around, starting with the photos on the walls, many of which were of himself, including a few grand, framed neoclassical portraits he'd had done.

The only casting directors who'd be willing to call Tommy in on the basis of this headshot were the ones curious about what it was like to be murdered.

For reasons neither I nor anyone else could gather, every time I got to the part in Mark's story about the woman being beaten up, Tommy would laugh warmly before delivering his line. It was unsettling. It was disturbing. Take after take, Tommy/Johnny would react to the story of this imaginary woman's hospitalization with fond and accepting laughter.

On his way to his seat, Tommy stopped, put his hand on my shoulder, kneeled down, and said, "I'm happy you're here. I could never do project without you.

You love somebody. Do you? What is love? You think you have everything, but you don't have anything. You have to have hope and spirit. Be an optimist. But can you handle all your human behavior or other's behavior? You don't want to be good, but great. - Director's Note, The Room (2001), by Tommy P. Wiseau