Tommy Wiseau did not walk the red carpet. He snuck behind the step-and-repeat just before 10 p.m. Sunday night and took his seat in the middle of the Paramount Theatre, then listened to hundreds of people laugh at his expense. Not merely howl at the unintentional absurdity of his most famous work, The Room—the rowdy SXSW crowd bellied over at James Franco's live impression of the mysterious and maybe/maybe not self-aware Wiseau, the man. He briefly stood up and waved like a Frankenstein in sunglasses, then sat back down. The buddy comedy mocking his life started rolling, and people laughed even harder.

Austin's hottest ticket of the week was a work-in-progress screening of The Disaster Artist, a semi-fictional, behind-the-scenes look at what is widely considered the worst movie ever made. Wiseau's 2003 smutty, narratively challenged drama is a cult classic that you may have seen at a midnight screening or heard quoted out of context. ("Oh hai, Mark," "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!") The film's script makes no sense, its tone is all over the map, it repeatedly diverts into soft-core porn, and Wiseau's protagonist, Johnny, abruptly kills himself at the end.

As time has passed, all of The Room's many flaws have given it a strange charm. Many film buffs have seen the film a dozen or more times and can reference it in acute detail, the same way you might hear a Scorsese or Hitchcock film discussed. Plenty of essays and think-pieces have been written about The Room, and yet none of them can capture its singular weirdness or unequivocal hilarity.

Somehow, James Franco and Seth Rogen's film-about-the-film is even funnier than its source.

Somehow, James Franco and Seth Rogen's film-about-the-film is even funnier than its source. Given that Sunday night's screening was a work-in-progress, it's not fair to use this space to properly review it, but The Disaster Artist will easily rank among the duo's best work. Franco completely loses himself in Wiseau, right down to the mysterious semi-Eastern European accent, stringy jet-black hair, and perpetually half-closed eye. Franco's younger brother, Dave Franco, plays Greg Sestero, a naive, not particularly talented baby-faced actor who Wiseau took under his wing in the late-'90s.

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The film is based on Sestero's book of the same name, which chronicles his his experience working on The Room and his history with the perpetually weird Wiseau. To this day, Wiseau's birthplace, age, and origin of his allegedly immense wealth remain a mystery. The fact that The Disaster Artist neglects to answer any of these questions makes it all the more funny.

Hollywood loves making movies about itself, but this film is unlike anything else in that genre. It's a multi-layered piece that's better than any of Franco's many other self-serious art projects. This is a cultish passion project loaded with cameos made within a big studio (Warner Bros.). Its protagonist is not handsome. There is no love story. Its humor is almost entirely self-referential, and those references are completely innocuous (poorly throwing an American football, petting a small dog). But it works. It is wildly funny and strange and captivating. And its shot-for-shot consistency underscore the seriousness of Franco's devotion to the project. It will probably very soon become a cult classic of its own.

From: Esquire US