The Tommy Wi-Show is Even Weirder Than You Expect

Tommy Wiseau, the anti-visionary director behind the cult classic, The Room, has been busy. This time he's tethered to a much smaller screen: your laptop. Growing media giant, Machinma, provided Tommy with a venue to express his various eccentricities. He is the host/subject of a weekly web series called The Tommy Wi-Show.

On the Wi-Show, Tommy generally sticks to playing video games, although he occasionally drifts off into the stranger corners of his mind and viewers are rewarded with comedy gold. His trademark "Ha, Ha, Ha..." laugh makes many appearances as well. The production values aren't excellent, but they're good enough to fully capture the force of nature that is Tommy Wiseau.

I can't tell if I feel sorry or envious of the poor souls that are behind the camera for this one. It is a rare opportunity to be able to film one of the strangest human beings alive, but it's impossible to imagine how absurdly long it takes to make a series of 10-minute episodes. During the filming of one scene in The Room, Tommy reportedly took 33 takes to do a scene in which he had two short lines.

Props to Machinma and their crew for creating this.

Part 2 of Fun Times with Bad Movies: The Room plus An Excellent Tommy Wiseau Interview

(Okay, this one is a little predictable, but it needs to be said) For the last few years, the nearly unrivaled cinematic catastrophe that is The Room has slowly been percolating through movie-going circles. Many fans are calling it the worst movie since Plan 9 from Outer Space.

A big part of what makes The Room so bizarre is also what makes it hard to describe. There are a series of almost completely unconnected subplots that weave in an out of a strange, almost bipolar love triangle between the main character, Johnny (Tommy Wiseau), his friend, Mark (Greg Sestero) and Johnny's fiance, Lisa (Juliet Danielle). These awkward relationships are characterized by intermittent, extremely intense, and definitely uncomfortable sex scenes.

The Room, not unlike The Happening, the last bad movie I wrote about, is incredibly entertaining. The madness of each subplot (perhaps most memorably: a woman tearfully discovers she has breast cancer and proceeds to never mention it again) is matched only by the oddness of the dialogue. All that can be said of Tommy Wiseau's portrayal of the main character is that it will leave you astonished.

The guys over at CinemaSins did an excellent job skewering The Room. Frankly, I'm surprised how short this clip is.

As a bonus, here is writer, producer, director and main actor, Tommy Wiseau talking about his experience creating The Room as well as, wow, the finer points of comedy (see part 2). Apparently he's a misunderstood expert in the field. Enjoy.

Note: The man does seem like a nice guy, I'll give him that. He's no Uwe Boll (who's up next).