The Room Analysis: Part One

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Julie Andrews put it best when she said, ‘Let’s start at the very beginning. That’s a very good place to start.’ And I mean that we literally begin our analysis right at the opening logo, of which we get two of them. One right after the other, we get two versions of a logo for the same non-existent company. The one that Wiseau believes that he had started to make this movie. Perhaps he did, but I don’t know the exact business details. What I do know is that this was done because Wiseau couldn’t decide which one of the two to use. Here’s a tip for all you budding entrepreneurs out there. When you’re trying to think of a logo for your brand, choose one that presents you in a way that you want the public to perceive you. Shape, color and composition matter, and we get two very different feels from the two different logos that are presented to us right off the bat. So even before the film begins, we are off to a bad start. And things don’t get much better from there.

At first, it appears that things are looking up as we are treated to a fade-in of the Golden Gate Bridge, along with an impressive orchestral score that is led by a piano and clarinet. And then we get a view of Fisherman’s Wharf. And then Alcatraz Island. And then the foggy city skyline. And then another view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Holy crap! We get it! The movie is set in San Francisco! Just get on with it! How we would fix this scene is if we got that longshot of the bridge, and faded in closer to the city, and then closer again until we meet our main protagonist as he’s going about his life that day. Speaking of which, it’s time to meet the main character of this story. Ineptly played by Tommy Wiseau himself, we are introduced to Johnny as he zooms past us on a streetcar (one not named ‘Desire,’ by the way). And then he’s gone. He’s supposed to be the main character, but he is introduced to us in a way that seems like he is just another random face that we’re allowed to forget. In a better movie, we would have seen him come out of one of the shops, and then followed him on his way home as the opening credits roll, so that the focus stays on him, and we see him interacting with all of the people who just kind of seem to know him throughout the movie.

Speaking of following him home, the scene then fades to the interior of some random apartment in an undisclosed location of San Francisco. And at the very moment that the opening credits stop rolling, Johnny enters and delivers the very first line of the film with a stone face and an equally stiff, stony voice. Simply for the sake of how it’s so damn funny, any dialogue of Johnny’s will be written phonetically as he says it.

His very first line is,  “Hai, bayb! I’fve sumfving for yoo.”

And with that piss poor delivery, we get a good image of just how bad this movie can be. But, just who is Johnny talking to?

Johnny has been talking to his fiancée, Lisa, who is literally doing nothing but sitting on the couch when he comes home. That’s actually it. She’s not watching TV or reading a book. She’s not working on her laptop or filling out paperwork. No. She’s just sitting there like a dog who has been waiting for Johnny to come home all day.

Also, when we get our first look at Lisa, we get our first real view of the apartment. The furniture is arranged in a way that would give the fire marshal a heart attack. There are no clear pathways from the stairs to the door, the furniture is arranged so that one of the couches is sidled up right next to the hearth, there are candles that are set dangerously close to the curtains, the same curtains are dangerously close to electrical outlets, and the aforementioned candles are very near to the wires plugged into those outlets. There is also a very large candle set directly on top of a wooden table with no protective coaster beneath it. As a cherry on top, none of the chairs or couches face the TV. Watching the film, you’d notice that the TV is actually blocked by one of the ludicrously placed couches.

Anyway, Lisa wants to know what Johnny got for her, and after a very stilted game of keep-away, Johnny relinquishes the box that he was carrying when he got home. Inside of it, Lisa finds a red dress. Lisa remarks how beautiful it is, even though the audience isn’t given very much visual clarity of it. We also get some hints that Johnny may actually be a surviving caveman after Lisa asks if she can try it on, and he mumbles, “Sure. Z’yoors,” and then only grunts with a heavy-browed scowl when Lisa kisses him. Lisa leaves, and Johnny sits down.

Seconds later, we fade to Lisa walking down the stairs in her new dress, and Johnny remarks from offscreen, “Wauw yoo look soseksy, Leesa.”

For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, Lisa does not look sexy. The dress does nothing to accent her figure, face, skin tone, accessories, hair, or even her makeup. When it comes to formal or semiformal wear, women put a lot of work into choosing the perfect dress for themselves, and this is the reason that most of them don’t allow their boyfriends or husbands to choose for them. Sometimes the guy is able to do good, but guys who are that into women’s fashion often end up kissing other boyfriends on the side. Jokes aside, let’s get back to the movie.

Lisa remarks, “Isn’t it fabulous?”

Johnny’s answer, “I wud do aneething fowr mah girull.”

That isn’t what Lisa asked. This is what is called a non-sequitur. For anyone not familiar, that is when a spoken statement or logical conclusion does not follow what information had preceded it. Sometimes, this can be done in a way that does not break the flow of the scene, usually for comedic purposes. A good example of this is from the movie ‘Out Cold,’ where the character, Luke, says with regard to his new uniform, “Well, it doesn’t really allow my dice to roll down there. And by dice, I mean testicles. Speaking of testicles, get me a beer.” But that was done intentionally for the sake of comedy.  In ‘The Room,’ none of the non-sequiturs are done on purpose. They are all the product of someone who couldn’t form a coherent sentence no matter how hard he tried. And after that first major non-sequitur is spoken, Denny arrives.

Denny is a character who has literally no place in the entire movie. He could be completely removed, and no scene would suffer for it. He doesn’t even exist to show what a good person Johnny is, which is what the audience is supposed to believe throughout the film. But instead, he is written as some kid who occasionally stops by to visit Johnny and Lisa for no reason. And this just so happens to be one of those times, where he enters through the door as if it were opened for him by somebody else, and he steps in from a standing position. If there is anything important that Denny does, it’s that he utters the first of many, ‘Oh, hey’s’ in the movie. That’s another thing that should be pointed out. Throughout the movie, the phrases, ‘Oh, hey,’ ‘Oh, hi,’ and other variations are spoken several times by several different characters. This is because all of the characters talk in the same way that Tommy Wiseau does.

Anyway, Denny has come by for absolutely no reason. All he does from the very moment that he arrives is remark how good Lisa (supposedly) looks in her dress. Denny also wants to know, without any prompting or suggestion, how much the dress cost. Somebody his age should know better, but Lisa has to reprimand him about asking such questions. Johnny then tells Denny that it’s nice to see him, and that he’s going to take a nap. And he does so with a dubbing technique that would make Hong Kong cinema roll its eyes. Denny wants to go too, but Lisa says that it’s just for her and Johnny. This is actually a bit of competent characterization, as it shows that the characters have a certain language that is only known between the two of them.

Lisa leads Johnny upstairs, telling him about all the scented candles and rose petals that she has set up, seemingly before Johnny came home. Or did she do that when she was changing into her red dress? It’s not exactly clear. But Denny watches them disappear upstairs, and then he takes a bite of an apple that is in a nearby fruit bowl. Now, when even the most minute things happen in a movie, it’s supposed to happen for a reason. A good example of this is in the movie ‘Frailty,’ where it turns out that Matthew McConaughey’s character was looking at the pictures on the wall of the FBI agent’s office for a very specific reason, even though it seems completely innocuous. That single action sets up a huge payoff at the film’s climax. On the other hand, Denny eating that apple is probably the most pointless action ever committed by an actor in a movie. If you want to stretch, the apple could possibly symbolize temptation (as in the forbidden fruit of Eden), given Denny’s creepy and highly inappropriate attraction to Lisa. And it gets creepier and more inappropriate as Denny follows them upstairs anyway.

Up in the bedroom, we see Johnny and Lisa engaged in a pillow fight that neither one seems very thrilled about. Limbs are limply flailed as pillows softly thump the bed next to them, and Johnny sums up the game with a deadpan, “Owch…” Denny arrives (and in an example of one of the many continuity errors, he no longer has his apple), and he jumps on the bed with them. This is supposed to be a cute scene that shows how like a family they are, but it instead comes off as creepy and uncomfortable. Especially when Denny chimes in about how he just likes to watch them. And since Wiseau so wants us to believe that he’s American, he unnaturally shoehorns in the phrase, “Two is great, but three’s a crowd.’ Denny finally gets the hint and says that he has homework to do anyway. He then creepily bids his adieus, and leaves. Thank god for that. Except, considering what happens next, maybe we in the audience wish he would have stayed.

Over the course of the next three minutes, we are treated to a romance scene, complete with kissing, slow dancing, rose petals being plucked, undressing, and eventually Johnny and Lisa treating their mattress like an adult bounce house. And it’s all performed by a man who acts like he has never once *ahem* ‘performed’ in his life. Look closely at how high up Johnny’s waist is compared to Lisa’s. He’s not that much taller than her, so you know he’s doing something very, very wrong. By the end of it all, our senses are shattered by the horrors that we have seen like a character in a Lovecraft story. Once all is said and done, Lisa turns out the lights and takes one last look at Johnny, before going to sleep. This is the part that we are supposed to believe that things begin to go wrong. Lisa’s perceptions of Johnny have begun to change, and that kicks off the conflict. Unfortunately, that information is all in Wiseau’s head, and is not presented to us in any way that we would or could understand it.

The scene fades to the morning, and the alarm clock is already buzzing. For reasons not known to us, the clock is on the floor. The hour is covered up by part of the sheets from the bed, but the minutes clearly read 28. Why would anyone set their alarm for such an odd time, as opposed to on the hour or half hour? Or are we supposed to believe that Johnny and Lisa slept in twenty-eight minutes past the alarm? Whatever the case, Johnny shuts up his alarm, he leaves a rose on the bed next to Lisa, and we are treated to a shot of Johnny’s bare ass, which if the sex scene didn’t qualify this as a horror movie, that sight surely would. The scene fades to Lisa awake and wearing nothing but her sheets as she’s sniffing the rose that Johnny left her.

Johnny asks her, “Did yoo lyke lahst na-iiiight?”

Lisa answers, “Can I get you anything?”

Even though she’s still in bed and undressed, she’s acting like she needs to serve Johnny somehow. But Johnny declines and says that he has to go, leaving his loving, live-in fiancée behind so that he may go to work. But at this point, we’re not quite sure what Johnny does for a living. They say their goodbyes, and Johnny leaves for work.

That’s the first ten minutes thus far. The only things that we know for certain is that Johnny and Lisa love each other, Lisa lives to serve Johnny’s beck and call, and some creepy kid just stops by unannounced for no reason on occasion. What we’re supposed to garner from it is what a good person Johnny is for being so devoted to Lisa and for taking care of Denny. The problem is that we don’t even know who Denny is, why or how he knows Johnny, or why Johnny’s looking after him. And Lisa is supposed to be this loving, faithful wife figure, but she seems to only exist as an object of lust for the male characters (even the kids…gross), and to satisfy Johnny’s sexual urges. Her red dress could be a symbol of promiscuity and lust, as once upon a time a woman who wore a red dress was thought to be of the lowest moral character. But that still doesn’t save Lisa’s character. Besides Denny, she is probably the least developed character in the main cast. And that’s a problem, considering the role that she plays.

The use of symbolism and certain motifs is something that Wiseau took from ‘Citizen Kane,’ which he has openly admitted to being one of the most major influences of ‘The Room.’ The main problem is that Wiseau doesn’t seem to understand how symbolism or motifs are supposed to work. In fact, he is on record as saying that the title of the movie is meant to be evocative of a safe place to be. This could explain why most of the movie’s scenes begin with a character walking in through a door, and end with a character walking out through a door. Except I’m pretty sure that this was done by accident, along with all of the other examples of symbolism.

As for motifs, I’d bet good money they were done by accident as well. For anyone who doesn’t know, a motif is something that is repeated to a noticeable degree, which is meant to serve the story in some way. The most noticeable things are spoken phrases, such as certain greetings, the idea that Johnny and Mark are best friends, and people talking about how sexy Lisa is. These things were very likely not done as a form of storytelling, but were produced from a lack of any real creative spirit, and the inability to write punchy dialogue with compelling characters.

As a pastime, my friends and I like to try and think of ways that we can make ‘The Room’ into a better, more competent movie. We don’t have a script written out or anything, but we do have some ideas that I think you’d agree with. To fix the opening credits, we’d first get only an establishing shot of just the Golden Gate Bridge. Zoom in to where we see Johnny coming out of the clothing shop with a box under his arm, and follow him on his way home. The scene in downtown ends with Johnny getting on a streetcar and then fades to him as he’s walking to his front door. Lisa would be introduced as she is in the middle of some kind of paperwork, and she’s interrupted as Johnny walks in. When she leaves to put on the dress that was just bought for her, Denny arrives and intrudes on what is supposed to be a private moment to ask for money, or to ask what Johnny’s doing tomorrow. As Johnny tries to shoo Denny away, Lisa comes back downstairs, and Denny’s young brain begins to see Lisa in a different way that he can’t quite comprehend. Denny leaves with what he came for, Johnny and Lisa try to engage in their adult fun, but Johnny gets interrupted by some urgent phone call from work. Lisa tries to set up that romantic atmosphere for when Johnny gets done, but he shouts upstairs to her that he has to take care of something. Disappointed, Lisa goes to bed by herself. By morning, Johnny has woken up before her, but leaves her a rose. Lisa wakes up feeling neglected, because this has been going on for a long time.

Do you see how just by making a few minor adjustments that this might have been a semi-decent film? Even with my hackneyed, cliché edits, this is shaping up to be a better movie than it actually is. What do you think? Let me know as you wait for the next round of analysis. Tonight, in honor of the dedication to my dad, I’m going to watch ‘Labyrinth.’