…then join us at !badmovies@lemmy.world. Whether you enjoy throwing spoons at the screen during a midnight showing of The Room, or having a bad movie night watching Manos: The Hands of Fate, Fateful Findings and Troll 2, you’re more than welcome!
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Yes!!! I love The Room! I first watched it on Adult Swim on April fool’s day ages ago and I met Greg Sestero at a movie party!
Dude!
I’ve met both Tommy and Greg several times, including seeing them reenact the entire movie as a play with actors they hired from Craigslist.
LOVE The Room. Seeing it in theaters is so damn fun.
That sounds absolutely mad, you have to tell us more!
I’ve told this to folks I know in person, but never on the internet, so I’ll do my best.
I don’t remember how I learned about this event. It was maybe 15 years ago at this point. All we knew is that there was going to be an event called, “The Room: The Live Reading, The Play”. I’d gotten a few other people into it at the time, my friends, Pete, Margret, & Pam. Pam thought it was a good idea to wear a red dress, and I thought that was hilarious.
So we turn up, sit in the middle of a reasonably small theater with a small stage and movie screen at the front. Things kick off, and it’s literally a play version of The Room with scenes changed (I’d later find out by Greg) to make the whole thing make a bit more sense.
Folks are doing all of the same chanting and such, only there are live actors. I felt bad for the lady who played Lisa, because people were saying sort of the same things. It’s one thing when you’re yelling at a screen. It’s another when it’s a lady doing this for like $50 off Craigslist. Anyhow, midway, they’re doing a football throwing scene, and they’re playing catch with the audience, etc.
Show ends, I realized most people have left to get in line for the actual screening of The Room they’re having about 30-40 minutes after and Greg is standing right there. Mind you, this was back in the day before the movie, before the book, before any of that shit, so this is like hardcore, early fans.
I went up to him and we had a fairly normal conversation about the movie, the stuff they changed in the play, and he mentioned that he never thought the movie made sense, so he thought it’d be fun to fix those problems. He was super nice, normal, and completely generous with is time.
I wound up saying something like, “Oh, I just realized, where’s Tommy?” and Greg goes, “He’ll be out in a minute, I’m sure.” I was like, “Ok, let me see if I can find my friends,” and we parted ways.
I found my friend Pete, but couldn’t find Margret or Pam, when Tommy comes bursting out from the back somewhere like a Tasmanian Devil.
My friend Pete and I were like, “Uh, hey Tommy! Can we get a picture?”
He goes, “Yeah, sure. Follow me!”
Out the door he goes, so I’m grab Pete and am like, “Come on!”
We follow Tommy straight out the door, completely bewildered when outside there’s a line down the block and Tommy goes walking through the crowd, high-fiving people left and right.
Pete and I figure, “What the hell?” and start high-fiving people, too. Three of us (me, Tommy, and Pete) burst through the doors of the lobby like celebrities, follow Tommy in. Mind you, they’ve not let people inside yet.
Now inside, Tommy turns to us and goes, “Ok, let’s take picture.” Margret and Pam had just been inside talking to Greg, inviting him out to a bar later.
We get our picture, Tommy sees Pam, and goes, “Let’s take a picture with your wife!”
Pam and I both waved him off of that notion. We were always just friends.
We get our pictures, and go out to the bar to share our sides of the story. Had some drinks and waited for Greg to show, but no dice.
A truly surreal experience and one of the MANY reasons I’ll always be a huge fan of The Room.
Thanks for that, so very bizarre and cool at the same time!
That’s so awesome!!! Greg had audience members come on stage with him to reenact scenes from the film. It was so much fun!
I was going to meet Tommy, but then we went into the damn lockdown so he had to cancel. I don’t think he’s been back to my home state in a while.
But I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity one day :)
Awesome! :D
Some are enjoyable, some aren’t. It depends on the film.
None of these are technically good, but if I’m channel surfing at 2 AM, it’s hard to turn away…
Buckaroo Banzai
Big Trouble in Little China
Pretty much any Tremors movie.
Pretty much any Fast and Furious movie.OTOH there are garbage movies that need to be shot into the sun:
Dark Tower
Rogue One: A Star Wars StoryHey! Rogue One was better than any of the Sequel Trilogy movies, there I said it. It’s not great, but at least it was not a clear destruction of an amazing saga, just a tiny side-story. Some people couldn’t see it yet with The Force Awakens due to all the nostalgia flooding in… but it was pretty obvious to me they were just ripping-off the originals, and by the last movie everyone understood that it was all just a very, very, veeeery bad idea.
Rogue One is garbage, full of cardboard cutouts, not characters, and stuff that makes zero sense because of the change in writer/directors.
Example: We meet Cassian and he straight up murders an innocent informant because someone wanted to give him a “Han shot first” moment.
Later, when he’s sent to assassinate a legitimate military target, OH! He gets all sweaty and-just-can’t-pull-the-trigger!
Why? Because the first scene was done by the 2nd guy and the 2nd scene done by the first guy.
Gareth Edwards was incompetent, burning money and resources shooting off script footage “because it felt good”. That’s why the trailers were full of scenes not in the movie. It wasn’t cut content, it was content with no purpose.
https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/6/14195898/rogue-one-star-wars-trailer-jyn-erson
Then they kick him off the film and bring in Tony Gilroy to save the film…
“I’ve never been interested in Star Wars, ever. So I had no reverence for it whatsoever. I was unafraid about that,” said Gilroy. “And they were in such a swamp … they were in so much terrible, terrible trouble that all you could do was improve their position.”
So the guy brought in to save a Star Wars film has outright disdain for Star Wars… How did that work out for Andor?
https://www.ign.com/articles/andor-showrunner-said-his-mandate-was-to-completely-avoid-fan-service
“We didn’t want to do anything that was fan service,” he explained. “We never wanted to have anything… the mandate in the very beginning was that it would be as absolutely non-cynical as it could possibly be, that the show would just be real and honest.”
Yeeeahhh…
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/andor-viewership-star-wars-bad-branding-1234781916/
"the latest — and greatest — ‘Star Wars’ TV show isn’t generating the same kind of buzz as the stories that came before it. Viewership, by what metrics we have, has been so-so. Audience demand (as measured by Parrot Analytics) doesn’t compare to the likes of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ at its peak, nor can it match ‘The Mandalorian’ right now, nearly two years since a new episode debuted. And for those who question all ratings data in the confounding era of peak TV, take it from Tony Gilroy himself.
‘I think I was surprised,’ the “Andor” showrunner said in a recent interview with Variety. ‘I thought the show […] would have this gigantic, instantaneous audience that would just be everywhere, but that it would take forever for non-“Star Wars” people or critics or my cohort of friends to get involved in the show. The opposite happened. We ended up with all this critical praise, all this deep appreciation and understanding from a really surprising number of sources, and we’re chasing the audience.’"
Gee, you intentionally avoid everything your audience likes and you can’t figure out why they don’t show up?
Hopefully it’s not like the Reddit version, where most of the posts were about good movies.
Edit: Hmm…you did mention Troll 2, which is a good movie
A ridiculous and fun movie I love is The Ice Pirates.
For a bad movie, I’ll recommend The Visitor since I don’t see it discussed much. The birthday scene in that is one of my all time favorites!
The Ice Pirates is a fun movie! The movie’s director (Stewart Raffill 🙌🏻) also made Mac and Me + Tammy and the T-Rex, both ridiculous movies in their own right!
Funny that you mention The Visitor; I posted that one a little while back in !badmovies. ;) A truly baffling movie!
Wow, had no clue the director also made those other icons. Typically I stick with movies covered in the How Did This Get Made podcast. I joined !badmovies to expand my horizon!
I’m glad to have you with us! :)
I wouldn’t say so. But it seems a lot of people disagree with me.
They can be an acquired taste. ;)