The Room Analysis: Finale

1:26:27-1:39:35

Once more, and for the last time, we get a scene transition that involves us looking at stock footage of the city at night. Then we cut to the apartment, where Claudette is somberly walking upstairs, where Lisa is sitting on a couch, which I swear hadn’t been there before. The party is over, and Claudette has already cleaned up for Lisa and Johnny. Ever since that big blowup, Johnny has locked himself in the bathroom like a sulking child. But Claudette has faith that Johnny will be able to sort things out and make everything better. Lisa seems hopeful that things will work out, creating more confusion as to the director’s intent. Is she putting up a front for her mother (who would already know that Lisa doesn’t give a damn about Johnny’s feelings) or did the director forget Lisa’s character entirely?

Say bye-bye to Claudette, because she never appears in the movie again, along with Steve, Mike and Michelle, who are mysteriously absent through the entire ending. With her mother gone, Lisa tries to coax Johnny out of the bathroom. Johnny rebukes her with a very flat, apathetic, “Inna fyoo minnuts, bitch…” He’s supposed to be angry with her, but it totally doesn’t come across as such, and is instead another one of the most unintentionally hilarious lines in the film. (You might have also noticed that the word ‘bitch’ is the only one that Wiseau doesn’t garble when he delivers it). Naturally, Lisa doesn’t appreciate that, so she calls Mark on the phone. We hear Mark’s voice on the other end, and she greets him by name, yet Johnny doesn’t seem to understand who Lisa is talking to. After some very wooden dialogue, Lisa hangs up.

That’s it for Johnny. He comes out of the bathroom fuming like a rogue elephant and demands to know who Lisa was talking to. Remember that Lisa greeted Mark by name when he answered the phone, and was speaking loudly enough for Johnny to hear it. But Johnny has an ace up his sleeve. He says, “W’ool see abowt daaht,” and descends the stairs. While he’s gone, Lisa begins packing. In only seconds, Johnny’s back upstairs with a tape in his hands, which he triumphantly waves at Lisa. Then he retrieves a tape player, which is conveniently kept in his bedside table. 

Oh, the suspense. What could possibly be on that tape?

Even though this tape must have been recording for several days, Johnny is able to play it right from the beginning of Lisa and Mark’s conversation, which we hear all over again, even though we all just heard it in real time less than thirty seconds ago! The only way that this could possibly work is if we in the audience didn’t know who Lisa was cheating with the whole time, the phone call that just happened was only heard on Lisa’s end (without her naming whoever is on the other end), and then we hear Mark’s voice on the recording that Johnny retrieved! Even a novice storyteller would know something like that!

Well, Lisa tries to snatch the player from Johnny, who takes it away from her and listens to the whole thing. By the end, Johnny has finally decided that Lisa is cheating with Mark and angrily confronts her. Lisa retorts that she had only been putting up with him throughout the years they’ve been together. This is despite how she only fell out of love with him at the beginning of the movie, and not any time before that. Johnny then breaks down into a state of weepy buffoonery. Then he plays the rest of the tape, and angrily throws the player against the wall. He then laments, “Evr’body betray me…I don’hafv a friendinda worwld…”

Johnny’s statement about having no friends is untrue. Sure, Mark is now actively betraying him for no reason besides being in love with Lisa. But what about Denny, Peter, Steve, Mike, Michelle, Claudette, the florist, the barista, and even doggie?

Also untrue is when Johnny says that he gave Lisa seven years of his life. Earlier in the movie, it’s stated that they had been together for five years.

Lisa finally declares that she’s leaving Johnny, and Johnny finally snaps by telling her to get out. Once Lisa’s gone, shit really hits the fan. He storms downstairs and angrily plants his tukus in an armchair, as he loudly shouts ‘why’ to Lisa. Then he flashes back to happier times, such as when he and Lisa got drunk together, or the first sex scene in the movie (frankly, we could have done without those flashbacks).

This is it. The final meltdown. Johnny rages through the apartment and rips it apart with the force of a category five tornado. At least, that’s what Wiseau clearly thought he was performing. It’s not so much a tornado as it is a little girl blowing bubbles. Johnny just kind of aimlessly wanders through his apartment, limply swinging his arms and knocking over anything that they happen to hit. There are a few more aggressive and deliberate actions, such as chucking the TV out a window (which seems way too light for being a gigantic tube TV), and some drawers that Johnny sort of slides out of their slots. Not even the sheets on the bed upstairs or the candles that are dangerously close to the mattress are spared. Strangely, there appears to be a rock by the bed, which Johnny throws at the nearby mirror.

Among the wreckage, Johnny discovers the red dress that he bought for Lisa at the very beginning of the movie. His rage has passed into longing, as he creepily smells the dress. Things get even creepier as he begins rubbing the dress on his crotch and thrusting his hips into it…I wish I were joking about that. No matter how many times you watch that scene, it’s no less bizarre.

The rage returns as Johnny rips the dress apart. This should be where he begins to get over the loss of Lisa, as destroying the dress he gave her should be symbolic of him cutting her out of his life. A movie that did something similar, and much better, was ‘The Changeling,’ where the lead character, John Russel, symbolically gets over the death of his daughter by getting rid of her favorite toy. He’s moved to a new city, met a new woman, and started a new career. It’s time to stop letting the memory of his family’s death hold him back. But that’s not so for Johnny. Instead, Johnny dwells on all of the mean things that were said to him, and the memories of seeing Lisa and Mark together.

And then he thinks the unthinkable.

Johnny reaches for a nearby box, and pulls out a shiny, silver gun. A gun that was never even implied to exist in the film before (but if you look closely, it’s the same airsoft gun that Chris-R used to threaten Denny). Come to think of it, the box that Johnny retrieves it from is unlocked. In fact, it looks more like a repurposed jewelry box than a gun locker. Still, there it is. Johnny loudly sobs, “Why? Why issthis happeneeg toomee?!”

He cocks the gun.

“Gowd furgiff mee…”

He puts the gun in his mouth.

One last vision of Lisa flashes in his mind.

And the trigger is pulled.

Fade to black.

Fade immediately back to the very same scene, where we see Mark and Lisa running up the stairs to find Johnny’s dead body on the floor. It’s possible that they heard the gunshot, but it’s never made clear why they’re suddenly rushing to check on Johnny. Despite the huge pool of blood around him, Mark keeps trying to get Johnny to wake up. Probably because there’s literally no visible gunshot wound anywhere on Johnny’s person. That was a really big gun that he used, so there’s probably a crater in the back of his head. But I’m not a gun guy, so I don’t know these things. I’m just saying that you would think so.

Lisa and Mark confirm that Johnny is positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead. But they sure seem to take a while to figure that out, after they fondle his hands, rub his hair and get a whole bunch of his blood on their hands. And Lisa is devastated. I guess it makes sense that she didn’t intend for things to go this far. What doesn’t make sense is Mark kissing Johnny’s cold, dead forehead. One possible interpretation is that Johnny was having an affair with Mark without anyone else knowing.

So, everyone is very sad about Johnny’s death. Lisa wants Mark to assure her that she still has him. Even though Lisa is acting sad, she sees this as an opportunity for her and Mark to be together. But Mark very angrily rebukes Lisa, blaming her for Johnny’s death, telling her that she can never have him, and to get out of his life. Right here, we’re supposed to feel like the evil Lisa is getting her comeuppance. Instead, it’s just another confusing mishmash of peoples’ feelings, desires, motives, and characters in general changing with the rapidity of diarrhea.

Just like always, Denny arrives in the middle of the scene, and he tries to get Johnny to wake up as well. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Denny calls Johnny ‘Tommy’ in this scene. Lisa assures him that Johnny’s in a better place, but Denny wants her to leave him alone. Even Denny the Dumbass doesn’t like Lisa anymore, it seems. Mark then exits the scene as he tells Lisa, “As far as I’m concerned, you can drop off the Earth. That’s a promise.” This is probably another bit of broken English that didn’t get fixed during the editing process.

Despite being told to leave, Mark and Lisa only walk to the stairs, then quickly walk back to Denny’s side. Sirens begin to sound in the distance as the three of them cry over Johnny’s corpse. Then there are voices of concerned onlookers sounding from outside. Only now? After the gunshot happened minutes ago? And just as we hear a fire engine honking its horn, even though there’s no fire.

The scene fades to black, and the credits roll.

Oddly, one of the songs that played during one of the sex scenes starts playing. If you’ve got the right kind of imagination, one can guess that this means Lisa, Mark and Denny are doing some very not okay things to Johnny’s corpse. But try not to think about that, won’t you?

Finally, that’s it. We’ve reached the end.

Holy monkey! What a ride that’s been. This movie was meant to be one of the greatest ever made, being inspired by the classics that defined what cinema is today. However, it was made by someone who clearly didn’t understand how to implement any of that knowledge that has been passed down through almost a century of filmmaking. If I had to guess, this was just a vanity project that was made by somebody who thought, ‘Hey, how hard can it be?’ You might recall from my analysis of Empress Theresa that the word for something that sounds easy, but is actually difficult, is ‘duck soup.’ And the Marx Brothers movie, ‘Duck Soup,’ is just one example of how to make a movie right. Even today, ninety years after it was first released in 1933, that movie is still funny. And it is used in comedy classes as an example of the right thing to do. 

‘Citizen Kane’ is another example of a film that is used to teach burgeoning filmmakers how to make a movie the right way. And it is what inspired Wiseau to begin making movies. However, nobody’s first effort is ever going to be great art. Oftentimes, people will make several short, cheap films that will serve as lessons for themselves. There are some exceptional cases, such as Robert Rodriguez. His debut film, ‘El Mariachi,’ was made on what can be considered a sub-shoestring budget. However, it was so well made that it became a feature film, and served as the basis of everything that he was going to do in the future. But Wiseau clearly is not Robert Rodriguez.

The scene where Johnny rips his apartment apart is meant to recall the scene at the end of ‘Citizen Kane,’ where Charles Foster Kane has a similar tantrum after his wife leaves him. However, that scene was much more effective, because their separation was a long time coming, and Susan was the only thing that Kane couldn’t acquire with his wealth. This comes after the rest of his ventures begin to fail, because of his past misdeeds coming back to haunt him. One could interpret Lisa’s red dress as a parallel to Rosebud. Rosebud was a symbol of Kane’s lost innocence, while the dress could be a symbol of Johnny’s devotion to Lisa. Also upon discovering each one, the raging protagonist is calmed down. However, the symbolism of Rosebud is much more effective, as what it is meant to represent is made clear from its first appearance. That, and Kane never fucked his sled.

We could interpret the bizarre sequence of events as being similar to ‘Citizen Kane’s’ nonlinear storytelling. But the major difference is that the events of Kane’s life follow a discernible timeline, while Johnny’s life seems to jump from one day to the next without any indication. One way to fix this problem would be to have subtitles at the bottom of the screen during certain scenes that say ‘TWO DAYS LATER,’ or something to that effect. There could even be a suspenseful element added by having a date listed, and then beneath the date it could say the number of days before Johnny and Lisa’s wedding.

One could make the argument that everything that happens is just a small part of a greater whole, and everything only makes sense by the end. You just have to pay attention to it. However, there are two examples that I can think of that did this much better, both being anime: ‘Samurai Champloo’ and ‘Violence Jack.’ Both of them tell stories that seem to be disjointed and random. But by the end, everything makes sense. Things actually begin to pull together somewhere in the middle of each, because things are presented to us in a way that we can start to put a picture together in our minds. This leads to a grand payoff where we feel satisfied by the endings. Not so with ‘The Room.’

Usually when a person is trying to sell a film, they often brand it with some very specific imagery that conveys the tone of what you’re going to experience when you watch it. The original cover art literally looks like a horror movie, with it being a picture of Tommy Wiseau glowering at the camera with his head tilted down and his eyes looking forward. His one drooping eye does a great job of making him look like a deranged serial killer, and the night vision filter that is plastered over the picture does him no favors either. Basically, this film looks nothing like it is supposed to for its intended audience. Later releases have seen a composition that is more in line with a drama movie, with a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, and headshots of Johnny, Lisa and Mark all superimposed over the setting sun.

The title itself is also something that has been a point of confusion for many fans. Along with the picture of a murderous Wiseau, the title suggests a horror movie. Some of you may remember a video game that came out around the same time as this film, ‘Silent Hill 4: The Room,’ which had an overtly horror theme to it. Between the ambiguous title and the misleading cover, it’s a wonder how anyone was sure which audience to sell this movie to.

You may remember me saying that the title is meant to evoke the feeling of a safe place for the viewer to be. If that were true, don’t you think that the theme of the movie would be a lot more hopeful and optimistic by the ending? Don Bluth was very good at conveying these themes in his movies. In ‘The Land Before Time,’ Littlefoot and his friends experience horrible hardships and lose their families. But it’s the hope of what’s ahead of them that keeps them going. Same goes for Fievel in ‘An American Tail,’ where even after he gives up on ever finding his family, he musters the strength to search for them one last time, and eventually follows the sound of his father’s violin into his waiting arms. Instead of that kind of warmth and hope for good things to come, the film ends on a tragic note.

Johnny’s whole motive for suicide is a mess in itself. The best that I can personally determine is that he’s like a teenager who thinks that everyone will be sorry for being mean to him if he kills himself. Granted, Charles Foster Kane’s story ended with his death, but that wasn’t the most tragic part. For Kane, the worst part was that the last thing that ever held any meaning to him would never be discovered. The one memory that he took with him to his deathbed would never be known to anyone but him, and the symbol of that memory is destroyed along with everything else he owns. Even Lisa’s red dress isn’t present in that final scene of ‘The Room,’ despite its implied significance. 

There are so many ways that this movie could be fixed, but that would take an amount of effort that no normal human is capable of. It’s great if you’re creative and have the means to make art. But you also have to be competent. In the hands of anyone else but Orson Welles, ‘Citizen Kane’ might not be the pinnacle of cinema that it’s regarded to be. Just as ‘The Room’ had its own potential, it was left in the hands of Tommy Wiseau.

Finally, I’m done here. Once more, I’ll honor my dad by watching another one of his favorites tonight, ‘The Muppets Take Manhattan.’ Goodbye, everyone. Maybe I’ll do another analysis of something else horrible someday.