The Room: The Hayden Orpheum Experience

This isn't a movie review so much as an experience review, because I would never recommend you to watch this movie at home by yourself, but I would definitely recommend for you to watch it at Hayden Orpheum if you love hating on terrible movies.

Why?

Because the whole movie experience revolves around just how shit the movie is.

Case in point: here is the trailer for the experience.

It's "The Citizen Kane of bad movies"
I'm actually quite surprised that it got such a good rating of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, because I can't imagine that 7 of the 21 reviews thought it was at least a 6/10. But reading the reviews shows that the ones that have rated this movie as 'fresh', have only done so because it falls under a case of "so bad it's good".

"What puts "The Room" in a class of its own is its overabundant idiocy. While you're still gasping at one of the film's moronic lines or vagrant plot knots, another one rises up to smack you in the head." - Kurt Loder

So the experience begins with you walking into the theatre and grabbing a handful of plastic spoons from a big cardboard box. Some people are cradling piles of spoons in their arms, as if precious gems to them, but if you have small hands like me, it really doesn't matter (but more on that later).

Then the theatre manager is up on the stage introducing the film, seeing who the 'virgin Roomers' are and telling us what to expect. It's the only film where no one cares if you have your mobile phone on, because "it doesn't matter. The film's SHIT." Also, the bar's still open, but no matter how much you drink, "it doesn't matter. The film's still SHIT."

They also have a program for the 'virgin Roomers' to take so we have a rough idea of what to do, but it's so extensive that he tells us that, once again, "it doesn't matter. Just follow what everyone else is doing."

He invites people to go up on stage to imitate lines from the film in a bid to win a pair of movie tickets (but it doesn't matter, because all the contestants won), then we begin the movie.


There are two main activities during the experience:

1. Throwing Spoons
There's a small artwork in the film that's just a drawing of a spoon. Whenever it's in frame, you throw a bunch of spoons at the screen. But also as the film progresses you can just start throwing spoons whenever something is particularly shitty (but it has to be extra shitty because the baseline of this film is already very shitty).

If you grabbed a small bunch of spoons, like me, there's no need to throw your spoons sparingly, because when you throw a bunch of spoons, a second bunch of spoons will simultaneously hit you on the head, fall into your lap, or may even amazingly fall into your, spooncup-holder.

This is particularly the case if you sit near the front. We sat on the last row of the untiered section, so we had the great opportunity of having a very large open-floored area to gather up our next lot of ammo.

People will also often come down to the front of the theatre to loot the massacre of spoons on the floor. You can also throw spoons at them while they are doing this.


2. Heckling

When you are not throwing spoons, you are shouting at the movie. Honestly, about 90% of the movie was just yelling. Constant yelling.

The program mentioned above outlines all the things you can yell out, but it's best when people yell out random things. Thus the experience relies a lot on the crowd you are with.

Common phrases you will hear are:

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU"/"WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE" every time characters whom you've never seen appear on screen, and every time they show a location shot that does absolutely nothing in our understanding of where people are located, but most particularly when the psychologist character is replaced by a completely different actor

"FOCUS" every time the camera goes out of focus, but when it goes back and focuses on a sex scene, you yell out "OH GOD! UNFOCUS"

"BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN" every time there are females on screen, everytime females are talking, and every time there is very blatant misogyny occurring

"SESTOSTERONE" every time you see the character Mark, played by Greg SestosteroneSestero

"DENNY"/"BYE DENNY" every time the character Denny enters and leaves the scene

"CANCER" every time you see Lisa's mum, since she off-handedly mentions she has cancer once, only for this fact to never be alluded to ever again

...and a whole heap more

The film is even funnier knowing that the man who starred in it (Tommy Wiseau) also directed it, wrote it, AND produced it. And he spent $6 million on it.

Also, it is completely not what you would expect. The poster and even the title makes it sound like some sinister psychological horror, when it's really the opposite of that. In fact, I walked out not even knowing why it was called "The Room".

I don't think I could go every time this movie was screened (it's shown every first Friday of the month), but I think if you live near the area and have nothing to do on a Friday night it's actually something you could potentially do semi-regularly. In between the terrible acting, out-of-sync audio, appalling accent of the main character, spoons hitting you from all sorts of directions, and just general side-splitting from the shittiness of the film, this was a pretty great time.

Also, if you read the IMDb trivia page, it is the most hilarious thing ever.

"Mark (Greg Sestero) is named after Matt Damon. According to Sestero, Tommy Wiseau misheard the actor's name despite his obsession with the actor."

"According to Greg Sestero's book, Tommy Wiseau insisted on having his bare bottom filmed. "I have to show my ass or this movie won't sell" was Wiseau's reasoning."

"The film's editor tried to convince Tommy Wiseau to cut the shot of his naked ass from the movie, on the grounds that the sight of it scared his wife."

"Entire scenes were out of focus because nobody bothered to check the lens."

"Post release Tommy Wiseau has claimed that this film was always meant to be a comedy full of so-bad-it's-good elements. The rest of the cast has cast doubt on this theory however."