"The Room"- At Midnight Spoons Will Fly

November 14, 2014

By: Joe Aubrey

In 2003, an unknown film-maker named Tommy Wiseau released a low budget feature film called “The Room” in Hollywood. It told the story of an awkward man whose fiancée deceives him with his best friend. The film is loaded with horrible writing, atrocious acting, countless continuity flaws, pointless subplots, a cheap production design, and a directing style that is highly incompetent and completely self-indulgent. At first, audiences everywhere detested it and the film’s cast and crew wanted no association with it at all. Wiseau’s magnum opus was deemed disposable by the general public and the film industry.

However, a few months later, some people began to re-watch “The Room”. Soon, even more people began to watch it again. After a year or so, thousands of people began embracing the film for its campy nature. It instantly became a surprise cult hit. Many movie theatres across the US held various midnight showings of “The Room” to packed auditoriums of dedicated fans.

Nobody, not even the film’s own cast and crew, could comprehend this inexplicable popularity. Many of the cast members, some of whom had even quit acting altogether, began receiving fan mail from thousands of people across the country. Eventually the cast even began making surprise appearances at various midnight showings of the movie.

One very hot spot for these highly popular midnight premieres is Boston, Massachusetts. The small but renowned Coolidge Corner Theater, located in the town of Brookline, occasionally hosts these festive events to sold-out showings. As they view the movie, the audience’s reactions are truly overwhelming.

Throughout the movie, tons of excited fans shout out absurdities, talk to characters that appear on the screen, mix in pop culture references and even throw plastic cutlery at the screen during certain moments. Some people even mimic the characters as they speak, indicating that this isn’t their first time viewing the film.

There are assortments of scenes from “The Room” that many audience members love watching and can’t hold back responding to. One particular scene is when one of the characters, Claudette, who is the elderly mother of the protagonist’s girlfriend, announces casually while sipping tea with her daughter that she has breast cancer. After mentioning it, she and her daughter brush it off. Various audience members have been known to shout out “I thought you were dying?!!!” to the undaunted, one-dimensional geriatric character.

Another beloved scene from the film is when the protagonist, Johnny, who is gracelessly played by Wiseau himself, comes storming out onto the rooftop of his apartment. After hearing false rumors that he has physically assaulted his girlfriend, Johnny walks outside wailing, “I did not hit her! It’s not true, I did not hit her! I DID NOT!!….”. Conveniently his best friend, the same man who is also secretly sleeping with his girlfriend, happens to be sitting on the roof holding a football. Immediately after his bizarre line delivery, Johnny quickly responds by saying “Oh, hi Mark”. Audience members cry out in joy and laughter as Wiseau performs this unusual, yet highly enjoyable scene.

Of course the most iconic scene in “The Room” is, without a doubt, when Johnny confronts his dishonest girlfriend, Lisa, in what could be one of the most unintentionally hilarious outcries in film history. After Lisa has lied to everyone about Johnny hitting her, he yells out, “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” The audience practically dies from laughter as Wiseau inelegantly speaks those five melodramatic words, all while raising his arms up in feeble anguish.

One other common joy of attending these famous midnight showings is hearing the witty comments and even irrational actions from random audience members during certain scenes in the film. During the moment when Lisa puts on a cheap looking red dress Johnny bought her, one man yells out “S,he looks like Ken from Street Fighter”, immediately eliciting laughter. When Johnny and his best friend, Mark, run outside to toss around a football, many people rise up from their seats and mimic the scene by throwing their own footballs to each other.

But nothing can compare to the famous “spoon” moments. For some inexplicable reason, Johnny and Lisa’s apartment has various photographs of silver spoons in different places. Whenever one of the photos appears on screen, someone yells out “Spoons!” Immediately the audience throws heaps of plastic spoons at the screen. It’s reminiscent of the famous ‘toast’ moments from midnight screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”.

To this day, nobody can fully grasp the massive amounts of admiration and applause Tommy Wiseau’s bizarre little feature film has achieved since its decade long release. When it first premiered in 2003, it was deemed an abomination. But after the dust settled, things began to look up. Now, people can’t get enough of it. Even some celebrities have embraced the film, including Paul Rudd, Patton Oswalt and the internet sensation the Nostalgic Critic.

If anyone is interested in viewing “The Room” on the big screen in a rambunctiously packed theater, it’s highly recommended that you try it. It’s a definite blast of campy, entertaining cinema ‘magic’. The Coolidge Corner Theater runs the film sporadically, and it will be playing on November 21st and 22nd. Be sure to reserve your tickets ahead of time and remember to arrive at the cinema an hour before the film begins. Also, be sure to bring lots of plastic spoons.

Contributor’s Note:  Joe Aubrey is a art major, whose illustrations are often featured in Red Skies.