Do not bring a girl to a screening of The Room, like I did, if said girl has no idea what The Room is. If you must, though, don't sit next to the guys wearing Tommy Wiseau wigs who brought a backpack full of plastic spoons to hurl at the screen throughout the movie. In addition to throwing spoons, they will also be shouting — literally shouting — a running commentary of well-worn inside jokes. They will be cracking open 24-ounce cans of smuggled-in beer to let you know that no, they will not be letting up. The rest of the audience will love it, rendering you helpless as your date shields herself from errant spittle for two hours. You do not want this.

In case, like my poor lady friend, you are unfamiliar with the film, allow me to briefly fill you in: The Room is the best worst movie ever made, or to put it another way, the most beloved movie that is also so unbelievably bad. It was released in 2003 by an independently wealthy aspiring actor named Tommy Wiseau, who wrote, directed, produced, and starred in it. He paid $300,000 to keep up a billboard advertising his creation in L.A. for five years. Out of sheer curiosity, people started investigating, and it slowly became a cult hit. There have been screenings, a book has been written, and a James Franco-helmed movie about the making of the movie is even in the works.

It shouldn't be surprising that Wiseau and The Room have accrued a large and cultish fanbase of disciples who revel in the film's bad acting, cheap production value, and nonsensical plot points. They have seen and mocked it countless times. They have ascribed inside jokes to just about every frame, line, and Golden Gate Bridge cutaway contained in its 99 minutes. They congregate whenever and wherever The Room is screened publicly, which it has been repeatedly over the course of the past decade. Often, Wiseau attends these screenings, squeezing every last drop of recognition he can out of his unintentionally horrific masterpiece. The most recent showings were held this past weekend at the Sunshine Cinema in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Wiseau was there. Six theaters were sold out.

But this time the main attraction wasn't necessarily The Room. It was the world premiere of Wiseau's latest project, a "sitcom" called The Neighbors that he created in 2008. It will never see the light of television, of course, but for the members of the cult of The Room, it was the equivalent of Moses returning with another tablet of commandments.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Once the theater had filled, an employee informed us that The Neighbors would be screened first, and that though Wiseau says it's about 20 minutes long, in reality it's closer to 40. There would be a Q&A after it was finished. I asked one of the wigged teens sitting next to me and my date if he was excited, and the look in his eyes as he nodded in affirmation was genuinely terrifying.

The Neighbors stars Wiseau, of course, as the landlord of an apartment complex with a disparate ensemble of stereotypical tenants: the stoner, the black guy, the angry black woman, a sexpot who wears nothing but a bikini at all times, the hunky maintenance guy, etc. In addition to the landlord, Wiseau plays a letter jacket-wearing jock, another stereotype of American entertainment, but one that's totally out of place in the story. It doesn't matter, though. The Neighbors is a surreal mishmash of incongruous archetypes, and there is no real through-line other than its absurdism. Loosely connected scenes are bracketed by a stock image of the exterior of an apartment building, set, oddly, to generic house music. The entire episode also seems like it's a bow-chicka or two away from turning into a full-blown porn, which makes sense considering The Room's hilariously gratuitous sex scenes. Again, the production value is terrible, as is the acting, as is the plot, as is everything, but just like with The Room, you can't say it isn't something to behold.

The wigged superfans seated next to us and the rest of the audience sat enthralled as it ran, gleefully absorbing recurring lines and themes they could re-appropriate for later use, as they had done in totality with The Room. One character in The Neighbors constantly asks the landlord to borrow $20, and an hour later, well into the subsequent screening of The Room, someone in the audience yelled "Can I borrow $20?" at an opportune moment and got a huge laugh. Even the wigged pair next to us, who had thus far dominated the theater with their commentary, acknowledged under their breath how clever this drop-in was.

Following The Neighbors, Wiseau came out for the Q&A along with two actors. He had long, black, stringy hair, glasses, and two black belts with steel studs, slung low around his hips. It was fashion out of the Jnco era, but there was no mistaking that Wiseau thought he was the picture of cool. He fielded questions frenetically, with a hard-to-place accent — his origins are mostly unknown — that only added to his air of mystery. His presence, and his responses to the audience's questions, were no less absurd than what we had just watched:

"If you made The Neighbors in 2008, why are we only seeing it now, six years later?" "GOOD ONE! Because I made all these promises, and I said I wanted to do The Neighbors. I've been traveling all over. London, New York, etc. You probably know about it."

And just as bizarre:

"How would I go about finding the woman of my dreams?" "That's a good one. Think about 20 percent before you use 100 percent."

He'd return to this "20 percent before 100 percent" advice several times and it never made any more sense. None of it made any sense, but Wiseau was so sure of what he was saying and it all seemed to be coming from such a genuine place that, in a weird way, it was hard to deny him. It felt like it was our fault that we couldn't grasp the wisdom in whatever the hell he was talking about. But that's just the thing: It only felt that way. It had the trappings of something essential, but there was nothing actually there.

Everyone who has worked with Wiseau insists that his intentions were pure and that he was out to create a classic when he made The Room. This is the principal reason behind its lasting appeal. For something to be so awful but also devoid of irony, in an era that has been soaked in irony for years, is as rare as any masterpiece. To watch it is like seeing a dog chasing its tail or a cat pawing at a beam of light: The effort is so pathetic and futile and naive that it's endearing. Watching it never gets old.

But by this point, Wiseau has to be in on the joke, and any acknowledgement of what he wrought with The Room would preclude him from being able to recreate the film's charmingly bad affect. In his mind, though, all the attention The Room has received is only a sign of its legitimacy. "Bad" and "good" lose meaning. He has a legion of fans who can recite every word of his movie. How does this indicate anything but success, and why would he not indulge the very same instincts for his next project? It's not intentionally bad; it's just intentionally Wiseau, and the result is something nearly as weird and surreal and, yes, compelling, as The Room. It's certainly more aware of itself, but not to as big of a detriment as one might expect. It's also safe to say that just as The Room is the worst movie ever made, The Neighbors is the worst sitcom ever made. That doesn't mean I wouldn't gladly watch another episode.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io