"Take that damned pipe out of your mouth, you rat!"

Many moons ago, my friend Joseph, the musical pioneer behind the band Windows to Sky, saw a stage production of URINETOWN and wrote an incredibly intelligent deconstruction about why it did not work for him. Now, unfortunately for most of us, it's not available for public reading, but in brief, he spoke about the play's overreliance on satire and irony, a cause that I will always take up and run with further. I was put in an awkward position, though, because I then used his argument to rip apart a movie musical that he truly likes. But I found it appropriate, and we agreed to disagree. Since we're getting into Oscar season, and the inevitable talk about the most unworthy films to have won the big prizes, this particular movie is again a timely matter. As such, I'm reviving the argument, and have excerpted pieces of his critique in small print to bolster mine.

musicals I Like or Love: INTO THE WOODS. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN...these are pieces of art that generally speaking work on every level: from each character's story, to the story between the characters, to the story of the society and world in which the action takes place. plus, the songs and the movements pulse with life - the life of these characters, about whom we care, even if we care cynically. we are engaged in wanting to know what happens, and every step taken is one step further along that path.

Many more moons ago when I first bought my ticket to see Rob Marshall's film adaptation of CHICAGO, I was very excited about it. I had never seen the show done on a stage, really only knew the hit songs. But I had positive expectations. However, after the first 20 minutes, I felt a strange icky feeling. I did NOT care about these characters. Not even cynically. And while I was going to stay and see what happened next, it had quickly turned to an act of obligation and not of true interest.

CHICAGO is a technically, artistically, aesthetically, musically brilliant film, and if the movie had been nothing but those great musical performances, I probably would have liked it. Unfortunately, those musical numbers are in the service of a story that wears it's contempt for you and me right on it's chest, and is centered around four of the most vile, unpleasant, unamusing characters ever created, and I had to listen to these people talk, and talk, and whine, and hiss, and lie, until it reached a point where I didn't even want to hear them sing and dance anymore. The women are harridans, Richard Gere is a slime, and John C. Reilly is a passive-agressive, self-pitying mope. There is not a single person in this story one can or should give a rat's ass about.

There is no story between the characters, there is no "there" there. This is among the many eternal arguments I have with CHICAGO fans -- Of course they're empty and shallow, they're supposed to be. Indeed, I had that figured out before I even walked in the theatre. After all, some of my favorite movies have no sympathetic characters in them -- SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, SOAPDISH, THE KING OF COMEDY, these films have protagonists that are devoid of any likeability. And in those settings, yes, those qualities can be made interesting. So why did I feel such a violent reaction to CHICAGO's rogues?

And it hit me: not only are they horrible people, they're boring!

For example, TO DIE FOR covers the ground of people who are driven to be famous because they have no skills for anything else, and honestly believe adoration of strangers will make them better people. What is the difference? Flat out: what Nicole Kidman does to become famous is interesting, funny, and ultimately shocking, while what Jones and Zellweger do is predictable, tedious, and unpleasant. Also, Kidman's character honestly believes in the ridiculous platitudes she espouses, so we laugh at her naievete, but the CHICAGO girls seem to know what they are professing is bullshit, and so how can we invest any interest in it if they can't even believe in their own philosophy?

the characters are two-dimensional, but that's okay, it's a satire! we don't know enough about the two leads to feel their situation has any real human gravity - but that's okay, it's what makes it cartoonish! cartoons are fun!

As for the cartoonishly nasty tone, mean for mean's sake is never enough in a story. Something has to back it up. In SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, when J.J. Hunsecker makes an insult, he has the force of his career to back it up: be glad it's just words, because in fact he could have you killed. Sidney Falco is a self-loathing weasel, and his insults carry that awareness: yeah, I'm a louse, but I know what I am, and you're a hypocrite for not recognizing your own sleaziness. Whereas the manner in which the protagonists of CHICAGO are written and performed gives them nothing else to offer but their vices. They have one note -- vanity -- and it wears out very quickly, there's no other dimension to them. The would-be funny banter between the girls in prison is just a pot and a kettle arguing over blackness: it may as well be Pee-wee and Francis yelling "I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?" ad nauseam. If you had to share a cell with any of these fucks, either you would have hung yourself or you would have stuck a shiv in them before they could start that first song.

Another big problem with CHICAGO: No straight man, audience surrogate, voice of reason. Not a choirboy, mind you, just someone grounded in the real world who can speak for us. The closest it has is John C. Reilly, and frankly, he's nobody's hero. He is a whiny drama queen who if he had any spine would have split a long time ago, but instead stays and puts up with Zellwegger's abuse and expects us to feel sorry for poor "Mr. Cellophane." But he loves her! What is to love? We have never seen a single moment where they appear to have had any joy, or even where he alone has had any joy of being with her. What is the first thing you tell a suffering alcoholic? "STOP DRINKING!" If they can't do that, then any other investment in their welfare is worthless. Same for giving two shits or ten bricks about his character or condition.

I kept wanting to care, so I could find the heartlessness actually painful. I wanted my heart to go with them, so the satire could have bite. when we watch Homer Simpson fuck up, we laugh, but on some level, we still like or relate to him. he represents things we care about. these people really didn't, most of the time.

So if there is no individual stand-in for us, then we must identify with the citizens of the city of Chicago. And in that environment, we are depicted as sheep, easily manipulated by people not even that much smarter than us. And while we toil in daily drudgery, we are shown eagerly paying for the big reunion show of the two murderesses. "We win, you lose, and you're too stupid to care." Maybe that assessment is true, and worth stating to our modern-day bread-and-circus-freaks mentality. But is that an original idea? No. Is this idea presented in such a manner as to inspire the audience to rethink their gullibility? NO. So what was the purpose of making me sit through your litany of narcissism and contempt?

Okay, so you don't like the characters. You're not supposed to. You gotta admit the dance numbers are great.

CHICAGO is technically flawless, well-staged and executed. But if I hate somebody, why do I want to watch them sing and dance, especially when the topic of their song is how they can stomp all over me and what I believe in? By a certain point, I have written off every character in this movie as a pig. (And not a sweet cuddly pig like Babe or Wilbur, I mean an ugly, smelly, shit-stanky wild boar with tusks, like Mason Verger was breeding to get revenge on Hannibal Lecter, something from Russell Mulcahy's nightmares.) And no matter how much lighting and lingerie and choreography you throw in, you cannot make me forget that I AM WATCHING UGLY FUCKING PIGS IN COSTUME SING AND DANCE. And I don't want to watch ugly fucking pigs in costume sing and dance! I want to slit their throats and eat them so that they never bother anybody again and that I can get finally get some worthwhile item of pleasure from their person.

CHICAGO has no heart. And it has no original thought. It glorifies insincerity. It is a soulless, derivative machine.

I've said enough, I think you all get that I hate this movie. And I'm not dumb enough to believe that I'm going to make anybody rethink their position on it. But I gotta say, with absolutely no irony, I rather wish they made musicals like THE APPLE again.

Fallin' on the floor for STANDING OVATION!

In one of my earliest blog entries, I dabbled on the subject of loveably misbegotten films...the TROLL 2s, the HELLO DOWN THEREs...movies that confound conventional adjectives because they don't meet the artistic or intellectual standard of "good" but deliver more genuine pleasure than most films that do reach that arbitrary measure. The bearish Dave White is bullish on this type of film, what he has branded "Awful is the New Awesome," and if you consider that said adjective literally means "full of awe," he is spot-on in that description, because audiences in the right frame of mind, myself included, indeed sit in awe, wondering if what we are witnessing on screen is really happening. And in my still-controversial gobspit on THE ROOM, I delved into the appeal further, proclaiming that an audience's true enjoyment of these movies cannot be based merely in feeling superior to them, but in fact in feeling sympathetic with them, meshing the open flaws of the film to our own life's previously best-laid plans in a moment of familial love. The message to the filmmaker is you dun goofed up, and the consequences of me watching your movie will never be the same, but I can't deny the fact that I like you, right now, I like you!"

And right now, I can't deny the fact that I am currently in the midst of a ridiculously ebullient love affair with such a film: STANDING OVATION, an independently-produced East Coast-lensed spectacle attempting to be the tweener intersection of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL and "JERSEY SHORE." In a summer that has given us all manner of underwhelming and mediocre movies, and only a few legitimately brilliant ones, this shiny, scrappy, and occasionally strident film is the wild card I didn't even know I was looking for. In its short theatrical run, I have seen it twice, and if I can drag any more brave friends along while it's still onscreen, I'll return again; the as-yet unreleased DVD is as good as on my shelf when it comes out. And yes, as that preambling (and prerambling) opening paragraph indicates, most of my enjoyment is in that dreaded "meta" zone of irony that is abused so much in pop culture you could mistake it for Luka on the second floor, the kind of reaction that, to invoke legitimate irony, does get explored at one part of this movie, which concerns me a touch because I don't want any of the nice kids who worked on this film to think that I'm laughing at them...at least not in any kind of mean way that would have easily upset me when I was their age.

Let's make this clear, STANDING OVATION is not "a movie for the whole family to enjoy" as the marketing would have you believe. The majority of families who have grown accustomed to the clean, professional, and star-laden output of Walden Media for the last decade will quickly grow impatient with the abrasively low-budgeted staging on display here. And those progressive hipster parents - the kind that decry anything associated with Disney, forbid sweets, and try to accelerate their offspring's development of righteous anger by playing Consolidated in the nursery - well they'll be downright horrified at what they see as a celebration of prefab pop and the quest for shallow stardom. So unless you live in one of those households where mom, dad, and the kids pop popcorn and sit in the living room to enjoy an evening of reading out loud from the latest issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, this movie is probably not for you.

But if, like me, you find the Monkees more interesting than the Beatles, you miss Crystal Pepsi because you liked the taste, and feel a wonderful tingle every time you hear Bela Lugosi's "Home? I have no home!" speech from BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, this is a movie made for you. In the grand tradition of THE APPLE and THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE, to paraphrase from the "Stimutacs" episode of "SEALAB 2021," STANDING OVATION is a movie that makes me feel like a koala bear hacked up a rainbow in my brain...and to me, that is a pleasant thing!

STANDING OVATION, which opened in over 600 theatres on July 16th, the day before my birthday, and plummeted to 72 matinee-only screenings in its second week, is having a hard time finding any love in the marketplace, either from published critics...

And oh, the music...generic and empty, with derivative music and lyrics consisting of nothing but baseless, idiotic self-assertion. One group sings that they're "one in a million." Another sings that they're superstars. Then a little girl sings about how she's going to be a star.
Everybody's going to be a star, and could you imagine what a nightmare it would be if everybody who wants to be a star actually became a star? You wouldn't be able to walk from your front door to the car without hordes of people following you, singing and singing and singing...
It would be a nightmare. It would be even worse than this movie. But until that dreaded day, "Standing Ovation" must hold pride of place. – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Standing Ovation could barely muster a golf clap from an audience. Unless you're a female senior citizen. The Kelinworth Film Production's debut flick will simply not work for anyone outside of the above mentioned and possibly a five year old. Everyone between the ages of six and sixty-five, wait for this to show on the Disney channel. In the afternoon. On Saturday. When it's raining. – Joe Belcastro, Tampa Movie Examiner

For us grinchy adults out there without children to sedate, the whole thing feels slightly less like a movie than like the filmed record of a mutiny at a juvie talent agency - Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly

...or from IMDb commenters...

"Ugly kids movie...only a pedophile could love"

"Should be called 'How to Make a Narcissist.'"

"How the HECK did this get a theatrical release?"

...or even from moviegoers themselves. In a wide release of 623 screens, STANDING OVATION's opening weekend total of $343,125 (or $551 per screen) was the worst opening since TRANSYLMANIA in December of 2009, and ranks 5th in all-time worst openings since 1982. Despite the best of booster press in its location cities of Atlantic City, Cape May County, and Delaware County, PA, as well as national talk show plugs from its producer, venerated actor James Brolin, STANDING OVATION was unable to find the family audience it aspired to. And I suspect that the kids and parents who busted their buns and boiled coffee to make this film may not be 100% thrilled to hear that one of the few large contingents that's energetically trying to support it also seems to be regarding it as a post-millenial PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

I would like to assure all parties that this is not an accurate assessment. While there are still remnants of the initial Harry & Michael Medved school of snotty dismissal mingling with the too-cool-for-school detachment dinguses (or is that dingae?) that may watch this movie to mock it, everyone I've talked to who has seen STANDING OVATION knows its faults, and openly embraces it regardless. It's a stance that maverick San Francisco film programmer Jesse Hawthorne Ficks calls "neo-sincerity", which he describes as as "post-ironic...you know you can make fun of something if you want to; but, you don't really need to." It's that kind of lopsided love that fuels the cults that embrace TROLL 2, or TEEN WITCH, or any of the films that despite their perceived disposability, have somehow kept their fanbase years after their shelf life should have expired.

So sure, I could make jokes about the numerous plot threads about gambling addiction and unrequited crushes and parental absence that are introduced and then abandoned, or how the 5 Ovations are supposed to be the working-class heroes in contrast to the spoiled Wiggies yet they seem to have a budget for back-up dancers and costumes that exceeds their so-called rich rivals, or how the character of Joei Badalucci engages in stereotypes so egregious that I half-expected Joseph Columbo to rise from the grave to file a posthumous complaint from the Italian-American Civil Rights League, or that Alanna Wannabe's bratty antics are not so much adorable as more likely to inspire a response similar to Strong Bad's reaction to 'Cute Little Girl from Sit-Com Sings Patriotic Song', or the fact this story relies on so many deus ex machinae that it becomes a veritable deus ex officina...but see, those are the very things I love about the movie! Its daffy committment to what is clearly a blinkered and hyperactive 12-year-old fantasy worldview made me a little daffy too. And when left to contemplate whether to sit through the bloated emptiness of THE LAST AIRBENDER or the pained seriousness of TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE or the autopilot blandness of KNIGHT AND DAY or the calculated familiarity of THE KARATE KID...a movie like STANDING OVATION that's riddled with wrong yet smiling all the way through it is a lot more entertaining.

STANDING OVATION will never be regarded on the same level playing field as the gleaming Disney franchises to which it wants to, dare I say, Step Up. But like many determined knockoffs of bigger films (PIRANHA to JAWS, KING FRAT to ANIMAL HOUSE, LOVE AND A .45 to PULP FICTION), it is most definitely destined for cult movie status; even Brian Orndorff and Roger Moore, while both panning the film, acknowledge it's kook appeal and camp potential. There is already talk in a couple cities of reviving this in midnight screenings...when of course, the kids would be in bed and the grown-ups would have all the fun. Personally, I would love to see this become the teenybopper training film for THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW: book a theatre on Saturday mornings, let the tweener set learn how to shadow-cast and make funny callbacks, get them prepared for the sexier midnight movies when they get older. Who knows, maybe even some serious hard-partiers and ravers would still be awake from the night before to come watch as well and make it a hip destination.



Now then, in the off chance any of the kids from this movie are reading this essay:

First off, congratulations! This may not be the rave review you wanted to read in reward for your work, but what matters is you worked hard and whether people like it or hate it, you did it, and years from now you'll always be able to look back at it and think of all the fun you had. And as I am predicting, a lot of us will be watching and having fun too. Now some of you are probably also going to be looking at a decade's worth of ribbing and schoolyard taunting in the interim, so I'm hoping you've started building up a sense of humor about that. It might be cold comfort when the jokes get mean, but keep in mind that you did something big, and most people who feel like being nasty to you never will. You should read some of the rude things people said about me when I did "BEAT THE GEEKS" years ago!

And since I keep talking about this thing called "irony" and how it relates to your movie, I suggest you watch a really great documentary called BEST WORST MOVIE which was made by a former child actor about a movie he starred in, TROLL 2, that also didn't get the success or acclaim he hoped for, but earned him fans that years after the fact, are some of the best people he's ever known. I also suggest reading an essay by my friend and fellow blogger Witney Seibold about one of the other movies I compared yours to, THE APPLE, a musical that started me on my love of films like yours, and if nothing else, you can always point your friends to when they give you grief and say, "You think my movie is strange?"

Finally, I hear rumblings that you all may do a sequel. DO EET!!! Do it fast! Make it so fast we can see it this Christmas, where it will stand out in opposition to all the serious stodgy awards-season bait that will be in theatres. After all, who wants to watch another English broad in a corset suffering when STANDING OVATION II: WIGGIE WEVENGE is playing next door?

Oh yeah, and when you make that sequel, hire these boys:

What Hath Wiseau Wrought?

If, say, instead of the targeted buildings of 9/11, Al Queda had chosen to fly their hijacked planes into all five sold-out auditoriums of THE ROOM at the Sunset 5 this past Saturday night, Osama Bin Laden would have received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bail out or buckle up, buckaroos, 'cause it's only gonna get nastier.

As alluded to a couple postings ago, and for years in general conversation with film-savvy friends, I have made my dislike and distrust of a certain "hip" midnight movie called THE ROOM abundantly clear. However, in full disclosure, I was making these maledictions without ever having watched the film, either by itself or in its "enhanced" presentation as it is currently experienced by a disturbingly increasing number of cult movie fans. Much as social worker Sandra Markowitz once observed in A THOUSAND CLOWNS, it is an obvious conflict against all professional standards as an ostensible critic of movies. I didn't like the phenomena of THE ROOM, so I tried to understand it. And now that I have seen it and understand it, I hate it even more.

But, you ask, all you sensible people and aging Gen-Xers who don't find bad movies funny anymore, what is THE ROOM? In brief, it's a very ineptly executed vanity project for mysteriously wealthy writer/director/actor Tommy Wiseau, a drama about a love triangle that, as described by British newspaper The Guardian, plays as a mix of "Tennessee Williams, Ed Wood and R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet". Shot in both digital and 35mm (and indiscriminately cutting between the two formats), with noticeable green screen superimpositions, continuity errors, and gaping plot holes, on its own, it is admittedly a rather amusing addition to the pantheon of works by delusional wunderkinds, rating somewhere above Babar Ahmed's ROYAL KILL but below John S. Rad's DANGEROUS MEN. I distinctly remember the one week in 2003 that THE ROOM was four-walled into numerous Laemmle theatres in Los Angeles; employees of the chain told me wild tales of the film's awfulness and the lack of customers for it, and that it could easily become another ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW if nurtured properly.

Sure enough, their prediction came true. Since Mr. Wiseau had enough money to keep this billboard on La Brea Blvd. for nearly four years, he definitely had enough money to continue four-walling the Sunset 5 once a month. And to humor the parade of post-Modernists willing to hand over their cash, he played along with their mocking and asserted that the film was meant to be comedy all along, despite his actors insisting that he was dead serious during the shoot. Soon, celebrities known for their poses of ironic detachment (Kristen Bell, David Cross, members of "The State") became public champions of the film, and attendance grew at the screenings over the years, to the point now where, for its monthly appearance, the movie is run on all five screens and sells all of them out before 10 pm that night. That kind of drawing power is impossible to ignore, and many of my friends over the years have taken the bait, and encouraged me to do the same.

I have always resisted until now; something has never smelled right about this whole affair. In all candor, it smells of astroturf and bullshit. I think it is safe to say that unless your name is Montgomery Brewster or Max Bialystock, there is only one kind of individual who is determined to fritter away large sums of money in such a grand fashion. And considering that Mr. Wiseau never gives a straight answer or any bonafides on his background or where his money comes from, coupled with a private investigator discovering the San Francisco locations which he claimed housed a successful fashion business in fact had no retail activity whatsoever, a major accusation comes to my mind. This accusation is Most Often Baseless, if you look at it initially. To be fair again, I admit plenty of the strange movies I enjoy have gotten direct or indirect support from shady sources. Still, I could never shake the feeling that this guy had an undocumented container in a Baltimore shipyard.

Enough character assasination of Mr. Wiseau. Let's nuke his fanbase now.

I imagine that years ago, a group of jocks and rich nerds with severe Stockholm Syndrome went to a ROCKY HORROR performance, and when it was over thought, "Gee, I really enjoy making a loudmouthed jackass of myself in a theatre, but I hate being surrounded by all these punks, faggots, and freaks. If only there was a movie where we could yell out stupid shit without having to be around these undesirables." Well, they've gotten their wish. In all my years of cult movie viewing, I have never seen cinematic cheese being devoured by so many crackers. This contingent may as well have been auditioning for NIGHT OF THE HIGH FIVE'N WHITE GUYS. Granted, you don't see that many minorities attending a ROCKY HORROR performance either...which has always baffled me some, since most of the black men I know would love to be among scantily-clad white women...but nonetheless, if I pulled a random Roomie from the crowd they could claim to have a Black friend from college or an Indian co-worker or an Asian dominatrix, but only one of the three; the average ROCKY fan knows and/or has had mad screaming sex with multiple non-white people. But lest I sound down on Caucasians in general, let me say these folks looked nothing like the average American man of beige either, toiling it out in a job they hate to pay for home and family. This was a special sampling of trust-fund trash, venture capitalists, and former sitcom boiler room gag men. Yes, that terrifying demographic feared worldwide, the Douchebag Hipster, complete with occasional unattainable Model/Actress/Designer/D.J. girlfriend. And greeting and waving to them all was their leader Mr. Wiseau, grinning like Sylvester McMonkey McBean as if promising the horde that upon exiting the cinema they would have a star marking them the Hippest of Sneetches on Los Angeles beaches. And all it would cost them was 7 bucks eaches.

Things did not get better inside the theatre. People scrambled to get into the better auditoriums, though they were promised that Mr. Wiseau would visit all of them, and then they waited for the show to start. And waited. All the while, nothing was going on - no warm-up, no announcements, they couldn't even be bothered to play the theatre's preprogrammed monthly music sampler CD. Oh sure, a few veterans yelled to the crowd asking for first-time viewers or people with beards (since the film's nominal antagonist has one), and there were some yells of "I've got spoons," "I've got a football," etc. Many of the ladies near me were already bored at the somewhat unimaginative banter. Finally, since apparently I was in the last stop auditorium, Mr. Wiseau came for his "humorous" pre-show Q&A, where he was greeted with such knee-slappers as "How many women have you had sex with," "How would you have directed UP," "Recite us some Shakespeare." I had to severely stifle the urge to stand and ask, "HOW MUCH PROFIT FROM HEROIN TRADE AND CHILD PROSTITUTION HAVE WE GULLIBLE TRENDOIDS HELPED YOU LAUNDER OVER THE LAST HALF-DECADE?" After a few minutes of this, our master of shenanigans departed and the movie began.

Now, when people compare this to ROCKY HORROR, they are essentially correct in that both experiences feature timed callbacks, ritual activity, and people in costume. The most obvious difference is that THE ROOM features no shadowcasting, i.e. actors mimicking the film events live in the theatre. Because this movie contains so many love scenes, and so many views of Mr. Wiseau's leathered posterior, I'll allow that perhaps this is an impractical idea. In keeping with the limited staging and action of the movie, there are also few uses for props and/or costumes: basically, some guys showed up in tuxedos or suits and half-heartedly tossed a football around because the characters on screen were doing so, and at moments where supposedly a painting of flatware could be seen in the shot (I never saw it), everyone threw plastic spoons. And even that gag lost steam over the course of the movie - I guess the audience suffered from mental fibromyalgia and had just plain run out of spoons. I submit that there were some funny callbacks, but you had to wade through a large amount of unimaginative blather to get to them; dull repetitions of the obvious instead of exploring and heightening the comic and verbal possibilities. Film critic Ernest Hardy once described the movie JAWBREAKER as like watching an annoying young drag queen who flubs the quips she's stolen, refuses to shut up, and thinks attitude is wit. Change the drag queen to that heterosexual breakroom bozo who manages to burn every comedy catch phrase six months past their shelf life, and you've captured the spirit of this audience. And keep in mind this has been going on for six years. Six years? And that is your A game? You guys couldn't even be bothered to buy the Rifftrax parody and borrow some jokes? A Mexican rent boy could come up here with a goat, an onion, and a Madonna album and kick your ass.

To properly enjoy and embrace a so-called "bad" movie, one must approach it with a peculiar combination of ridicule and reverence. Sure, we are laughing at every bad line reading, or clumsily structured song, or cardboard set, or piece of stock footage. But because freaks like us have experienced failure all our lives - the recital where our voice cracked, the bad poetry we wrote in high school, the large romantic gesture that was cruelly unreciprocated - when we see it happen to others, for as much as we are laughing, we are also in sympathy with the doomed enterprise. There's a respect for the notion that, well, they went off and did it, and most people never do. Whether it's something flawed like ROCKY HORROR or as cheap as MANOS, HANDS OF FATE, or as batshit insane as STRANGERS IN PARADISE, we embrace and love these movies because they inspire a sense of community in us.

Unfortunately, the audience that has embraced THE ROOM does not radiate that vibe. If a typical ROCKY HORROR fan is Carrie White, the collective attending THE ROOM are the ones who poured the pig's blood on top of her. Most of them have never experienced "bad" filmmaking before, hell, I don't think they've experienced "bad" anything before. They have never had the joy of a welfare Christmas. For all the fawning and cheering and "We love you Tommy" shouts, the truth is they have come solely to mock and throw stones. They will never have the balls to attempt anything similarly risky in their lives because they know exactly how their kind will treat them if it is anything less than massively successful. Mr. Wiseau doesn't care because he's already taken their money and bought guns for Chechnya. Which is why I can't particularly support him in this matter either - he's a willfully vague and sleazy character who won't admit to a single sincere moment of pain because someone might grow a conscience and not pay money to laugh at him. To paraphrase Simon Pegg in "SPACED," this is boil-in-the-bag subversion for overgrown frat boys and vintage clothing profiteers who are sitting on a stack of unopened lounge music CDs that they bought "ironically" a decade ago during the waning days of the SWINGERS phenomenon.

THE ROOM (and all of its enablers) needs to be sealed shut, bricked up, and walled over as if the last cask of Amontillado was contained within. You will never find a more wretched hive of yuppie scum and bland villainy.