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The Founder | Thursday 11 March 2010
E X T R A
Cult Corner:
The Room
Natasha Baddeley
Welcome, explorers of the Movie
Cosmos, to Cult Corner. Here dwell
the films built on ideas too big,
too extravagant and too bizarre
to fashion a place in mainstream
movie history. Instead, they have
become part of something deeper,
threads woven into the rich tapestry
of the cinematic underworld
that is...CULT.
To call The Room the worst film
ever made would undermine the
immense enjoyment that watching
it incurs. The script is atrocious, the
acting is wooden, every aspect of it
should have led to complete and utter
failure, but seven years after its
first release it has become a cult hit.
Why? Because it has sutccessfully
navigated the full loop: The Room
is so bad it’s good.
The film owes its existence to
the mysterious and multi-talented
Tommy Wiseau. Mysterious because
no one is entirely sure where
he’s come from. Multi-talented because
he not only wrote and starred
in The Room, adapted from his
novel of the same title, he directed
and produced it too.
The plot (knowing it beforehand
will not detract from your viewing
experience) centres on a love
triangle between Johnny (Wiseau),
his fiancée Lisa, and his best friend
Mark. Lisa no longer loves Johnny
because he’s “boring” and didn’t
get his promotion at work. She
starts an affair with Mark, which
leads him to reflect on all women:
“Sometimes they’re too smart.
Sometimes they’re flat-out stupid.
Other times they’re just evil.”
The sex scenes are all painfully
long. Lisa and Tommy indulge
one of the most clichéd bedroom
scenes outside of the porn industry,
complete with candlelight, rose petals
and a water feature. The image
of Wiseau’s steroid addled bottom
thrusting towards Lisa’s navel is as
disturbing as it is comical. Viewers
have the chance to see it all again as
Wiseau later recycles the same footage,
cunningly disguising it with a
different soundtrack.
New characters enter at intervals,
many of whom appear to have keys
1001 Films to See Before You Die:
The Breakfast Club
Tom Watts
I’m going to level with you: I only
watched The Breakfast Club for the
first time on New Years Eve 2009.
Yes, correct, I stayed in on my own
and watched The Breakfast Club.
What I discovered was one of the
late John Hughes’s masterpieces sitting
in the DVD rack tantalisingly
waiting for me. You see, it were
quite good as it goes.
The plot follows five American
high-schoolers who are forced
to spend a Saturday in detention
together. Each student represents a
different clique of society (a brain,
an athlete, a basket case, a princess
and a criminal) who come to realise
that they are each deeper than their
respective label. It is these realisations
that create the moments of
poignancy in a film that outwardly
appears to be a light-hearted comedy.
As the audience comes to relate
with each character, we cannot
ignore the fact that through the earnest
and beautifully written script,
we see ourselves. Even taken out of
its eighties context, The Breakfast
Club addresses the problems that
everyday kids deal with or have
dealt with: the pressures of puberty,
losing one’s virginity, a broken
home, getting good grades, lack of
social skills or crumbling under
peer pressure.
It is these problems that are tackled
head on in the moving finale of
the movie, as the gang of kids sit in
a circle and reveal their underlying
pressures, motivating each other to
tears of empathy, tears that are undoubtedly
shared by the audience,
even if it is just an up-welling.
But, don’t let me paint too depressing
a picture of The Breakfast
Club, as the soundtrack is classically
eighties; ‘Don’t You Forget About
Me’ by Simple Minds anyone? It is
the razor sharp dialogue, however,
penned by John Hughes himself,
that really entrances the audience.
Take for example a conversation
between Carl the Janitor and Mr.
Vernon, the film’s villain per se
who repeatedly emotionally bullies
to Johnny and Lisa’s apartment.
There is man-child Denny who
Johnny once wanted to adopt. Denny
gets embroiled in drugs and has
a nasty encounter with gun wielding
dealer Chris-R. Lisa’s mother
Claudette also makes several appearances.
At one point she casually
announces to her daughter, “I got
the results back. I do have breast
cancer”. Lisa seems surprisingly unconcerned
and her mother’s illness
is never referred to again. Michelle
and Mike claim to be doing their
homework in Johnny’s apartment,
even though they are at least ten
years too old to be assigned any,
whilst really using the place to
“make-out” (their words not mine).
It is unclear why they don’t just
go to their own houses. Claudette,
walking in on them, sums it up
for everyone watching when she
asks her daughter ,“Who are these
characters?” – exactly what we were
wondering!
Every so often the action is
interrupted by long panning shots
across the Golden Gate Bridge
and other sights of San Francisco
(although the film was shot in Los
Angeles). This is presumably to
show time passing, even though it
doesn’t. During one party scene,
Wiseau cuts to these shots at least
eight times.
Wiseau originally publicised The
Room as an “electrifying drama
with the passion of Tennessee
Williams” but has attempted to
the detentionees, in which Vernon
expresses his worries of today’s
culture: “Someday these kids are
gonna be running the country.
This is the thought that wakes
me up in the middle of the night.
Someday, these kids are gonna take
care of me,” to which Carl replies,
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Not only
save his reputation by rebranding
it as a “quirky black comedy”. Read
interviews with him and it’s apparent
that he does not understand
why theatres full of movie-goers
spend the full running time in fits
of laughter but he clearly revels in
his new-found fame, turning up to
does Hughes deal with teenagers
coming of age, but he also examines
the worries of the older generation
throughout the movie and questions
the divide between the young
and old.
Although a cult classic in its own
right, The Breakfast Club paves the
way for the future Hughes classics
monthly screenings for Q&A
sessions and autograph signing.
Despite containing all the
elements of a complete flop, The
Room has managed to make
itself utterly watchable. Go and
see it...bring a book for the sex
scenes.
11
Film
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In
Pink and Weird Science. The character
of Ferris Bueller can be seen
as a ‘cooler’ version of The Breakfast
Club’s rebellious and violent
Bender. So why not hang out in
detention with the Club and experience
the true trials of adolescence,
because Saved By The Bell this ain’t.