The life of an aspiring professional actor is a particularly brutal and unforgiving world to live in; the auditions, the casting calls, the distant and hard-hitting demeanor of casting directors, and the meager penance even well-established actors can barely scrounge for themselves at the end of the day is what lies behind the red carpets and sharply dressed movie stars of Hollywood Boulevard. The world of acting is a brutal business that spits out talented young people at a rate unlike any other, and the streets of Hollywood are notorious for housing washed-up actors who thought they too would have a chance at being the next James Dean or Marlon Brando. Two such men who went by the names Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero would find their places in what could be considered the most bizarre and unorthodox success story(if you’d like to call it that) Hollywood has ever seen.

The Disaster Artist is Greg Sestero’s(with help from writer Tom Bissell) recently published account of his experience with his real-life best friend Tommy Wiseau in producing and acting in The Room, a movie that has been dubbed ‘The Citizen Kane of bad movies’ since it’s 2003 release. The movie, written, produced, directed, and starring Tommy Wiseau, was intended to be a melodramatic romantic thriller, but was so riddled with continuity errors, plot holes, absurd dialogue, poor set design, and ridiculous cinematography that in its initial run it earned only $1,900 on the $6,000,000 spent by Wiseau on the project. Wiseau himself is a character to be seen; with his scraggly black hair, ridiculous choice of wardrobe, nocturnal sleep patterns, and his unique accent that reminds me of what Dracula might sound like after downing a bottle of Benadryl, Sestero himself likens Wiseau to a vampire in his book.

The Disaster Artist is easily one of the funniest and most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long time. The book is written from the perspective of Greg Sestero during the production of The Room, where he plays the lead character Johnny’s(played by Wiseau) best friend, who becomes romantically involved with Johnny’s future wife(played by Juliette Danielle). The book also delves into Sestero’s own experiences in San Francisco and Los Angeles in pursuit of a career in the acting. He met Wiseau in an acting class in San Francisco, where he was enthralled(stupified?) by Wiseau’s, umm…. ‘unique’ acting style, characterized by butchered/changed/forgotten lines and balls-out method acting at the most inappropriate of times. For those who have seen The Room at one of it’s many screenings across Canada, the US, and Europe, this may sound impossible, but Wiseau may actually be weirder in real life than his onscreen counterpart in the movie.

The book moves back and forth in time, interchanging between the making of The Room and the years leading up to the making up to it. In many ways, The Disaster Artist is a behind-the-scenes peek into the bizarre mind of Tommy Wiseau. Sestero describes working under the direction of Wiseau, which he describes as ‘Tommy’s Planet’. He recounts Tommy’s outrageous demands on his cast and crew, the taking down and reassembling of sets, Wiseau’s habitually being absurdly late to shooting, abusing cast and crew members, and firing enough cast and crew over the span of four months to make three movies of the same scale. From another perspective, The Disaster Artist is a story of an unlikely friendship stemming from two men who both had a dream(or maybe in Tommy’s case, a delusion) of making it big in Hollywood. At times, Sestero describes Wiseau like a nuisance; like a needy, childish little brother. At a point in the book, Sestero expressed inability in tolerating Wiseau’s competitive nature, coming within inches of breaking off the friendship, moving back home and giving up on his dreams of stardom.

Despite the nature of the book; a memoir of a perfect catastrophe that went wrong in all the right ways, I feel like I got much more out of The Disaster Artist than I expected. I am involved in the acting and film business as well, having acted in stage plays, some independent stuff for friends in film programs, as well as speculation of a career itself in the media industry, so in these ways I related to Greg’s story of his turmoil in the talent trap that is Los Angeles. To me, what The Disaster Artist represented was a surprisingly profound story of friendship, heartbreak, and unwavering belief in what you love. Tommy Wiseau is weird as hell, but I think a lot can be learned from Greg’s retelling of his mission to make the next Streetcar Named Desire. Behind the scraggly dyed-black hair, baggy cargo pants and nighttime sunglasses of Tommy Wiseau is a highly motivated, determined, and naive, almost-but-not-quite dumb will to get what he wants. It is implied throughout the novel that Tommy Wiseau has a troubled past, having to deal with everything from rejection, heartbreak, to speculation that Tommy was a political refugee from France. All of this can only be implied since Tommy himself reveals so little about his personal life.

Throughout the story, Greg also comes to terms with himself as a struggling actor trying to make ends meet, and while Tommy may have been eccentric, nutty, annoying, and overbearing and mean at times, he comes to realize that himself and Tommy Wiseau had something that not many people in Hollywood had; a true friend. All in all, what The Disaster Artist is to me is a look behind-the-scenes of one of the most bizarre success stories ever seen, a look into a personality of a troubled and eccentric yet hugely driven personality in Tommy Wiseau, and a story of how an unlikely friendship grew and lead to success on the unforgiving Hollywood Boulevard. If you have anything to say about this review or the book, please, do not leave your stupid comments in your pocket. Thanks!

MB