The Story Behind The Best Worst Movie Of All Time

Tommy Wiseau is a human being. It’s sometimes easy to forget that – the dilettante auteur is practically a walking cartoon, what with his distinct features, wild hair, ambiguous accent and apparent total disconnect from reality – but he’s a human being nonetheless, a fact of which US-bred actor, and now author, Greg Sestero is keenly aware.

Sestero met Wiseau as a young, struggling actor looking for a break, Wiseau an older, enigmatic, mysteriously well-financed but nonetheless also-struggling actor looking to make the greatest drama ever created. The pair formed an unlikely bond that saw them share an apartment for about nine months, but even that did little to dissuade Sestero from signing on to be a part of Wiseau’s masterpiece, despite his roommate’s increasingly bizarre behaviour.

“One of the stories I always tell is that one night I came home and there was a pull-up bar that he’d installed in my bedroom door jamb, and he was hanging from the door jamb like a bat one night, and I just thought to myself, ‘Man, what am I doing here?’”

Wiseau’s film – The Room – has become widely regarded as among the worst movies ever made, and its tumultuous production process is the stuff of legend, which means two inevitabilities: a) it would become a cult phenomenon, and b) somebody would write a book about it.

Sestero, as one of the main characters, ended up being that somebody, releasing The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made last year.

“I thought the book would be a good chance to tell my story and kind of humanise the whole experience, and the cast, and Tommy as well, to get an idea of what it was to make this movie and what it’s like to be an actor. But really, at the end of the day, I think it’s kind of an odd take on the American Dream.”

Sestero didn’t know it, but he was sitting at the cusp of a decade-long journey of cult heroism and infamy as a member of its cast, an experience that has led to the realisation of a dream of his own – the film and life rights for his book have gone to Seth Rogen, with perennial offsider James Franco set to star as Wiseau in the cinematic retelling of the literary retelling of the author’s life on- and off-set with the so-avant-it-hurts performer.

“I think what’s cool is that the book is obviously kind of focused more about the friendship and the personal story,” Sestero explains. “You know, The Room is The Room, … but I think what’s cool about the book is that the story behind it, I think, is kind of… it’s hilarious, but it’s also got aspects to it that are moving, that I think would make a really great film; a great film about a bad movie [laughs].”