The Disaster Artist

The Disaster Artist is a 2017 American biographical comedy-drama film produced and directed by James Franco. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the film is based on Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell's non-fiction book of the same name and chronicles the making of Tommy Wiseau's 2003 cult film mh:awfulmovies:The Room, widely considered to be one of the worst movies ever made. The film stars brothers James and Dave Franco as Wiseau and Sestero, respectively, alongside a supporting cast featuring Seth Rogen (who also produced), Alison Brie, Ari Graynor, Josh Hutcherson and Jacki Weaver. It began a limited release on December 1, 2017, before opening wide on December 8, 2017.

Plot
Aspiring filmmaker Tommy Wiseau and actor Greg Sestero move to Los Angeles to look for Hollywood stardom. Using his own money, Wiseau writes, directs and stars in "The Room", a critically maligned movie that becomes a cult classic.

Why It's Not a Disaster

 * 1) Very faithful to the source material, which feels like real life.
 * 2) James and Dave Franco are well cast playing their roles of Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero respectfully. In fact, James Franco's performance as Wiseau is almost spot-on.
 * 3) Its concept about people working on the movie but received poorly later, only to become a cult-classic, is very creative just like Tim Burton's Ed Wood, which focuses on Ed Wood and his poor directing skills.
 * 4) Entertaining and funny moments like Tommy using thirty-two takes of the "I did naht! Oh hi, Mark!" scene.
 * 5) Endless cameo appearances (Zach Braff, Keegan-Michael Key, JJ Abrams, David DeCoteau, Kristen Bell, Danny McBride, Dylan Minnette, Kevin Smith and Ike Barinholtz in the introduction about the movie, and even the real Tommy Wiseau himself appears in a post-credits scene) from here to there do a very good job.
 * 6) The movie has an excellent collection of classic pop songs used as cues for key scenes, such as "Rhythm Of The Night" by Corona for when Tommy is happily dancing at the bar and Faith No More's "Epic" during the slo-mo shot of Greg and Tommy showing up on-set for the first day.
 * 7) Many of the scenes from The Room are slightly or well-matched in comparison.
 * 8) The film captures Tommy's terrible behavior on the set of The Room perfectly to the point where the scene where Greg explodes at Tommy near the end is pretty justified.
 * 9) The movie explains very well how The Room was considered to be the worst movie ever made.
 * 10) For Tommy Wiseau himself, the movie brought a culmination to his long path to acceptance. He had already found moderate success with his strong fanbase, which included occasional celebrities, but late 2017 brought Tommy interviews with major entertainment news outlets, appearances on late night talk shows and eventually invitation to 2018 Golden Globes, joining James Franco in the acceptance speech for the award Franco received for portraying him. For him and Greg Sestero - two men who never believed they would make it in Hollywood - things really have come full circle.
 * 11) In spite of everything, the scene where Tommy starts typing the script for The Room. Tommy had just been given a dream-crushing speech the night before, yet he manages to put his heart into a screenplay. This isn't just anyone writing a by-the-numbers story that Hollywood would want, it's Tommy Wiseau writing a story that he would want.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) Some scenes from the original 2003 film looked very inaccurate and aren't the same, and certain characters were either dropped or merged with others (see Trivia below).

Box office
The Disaster Artist opened at #12 on its wide opening weekend of December 8, 2017 making a total domestic gross of $6,366,242. The film would later make a domestic gross of $21,120,616. In foreign markets, The Disaster Artist made $8,400,000. Overall, the film grossed $29,520,616 against its $10 million budget.

Critical response
The Disaster Artist received praise from critics and audiences alike with the chemistry of the Francos and their portrayals of Wiseau and Sestero, as well as the film's humor and screenplay, receiving praise. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Disaster Artist holds an approval rating of 91% based on 350 professional reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Oh, hai Mark. The Disaster Artist is a surprisingly poignant and charming movie-about-a-movie that explores the creative process with unexpected delicacy.". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned The Disaster Artist a score of 76 out of 100 based on 44 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by PostTrak gave the film an 81% overall positive score and a 66% "definite recommend".

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Trivia

 * A certain number of characters had to be merged with other ones for the film adaptation:
 * Sandy Schklair was combined with Byron, a stagehand who took over as director once Sandy quit. Sandy is seen in the film working and commenting on the sex and suicide scenes, when according to the book, he had already left before production of those scenes were filmed.
 * Kyle Vogt (Peter) is merged with his replacement Greg Ellery (Steven). In the film, Kyle is present for the entire production, when according to the book, he had already left due to previous commitments before filming of the birthday party scene, and Ellery had to replace him.
 * The director of photography Raphael Smadja would be combined with his replacement Graham Futerfas, who was himself replaced by the film's actual credited DP, Todd Barron.