Tommy Wiseau - Jumping The (Big) Shark?
To many, Tommy Wiseau is a joke. To his credit, he appears to be laughing along.
Regular readers will already be au fait with my love of terrible cultural artefacts, in particular the "so-bad-it's-good" realm of cinema. So, a new film by the underwear salesman/director of The Room was a must-see, especially on it’s February 2024 debut weekend at London’s legendary Prince Charles Cinema. (No, they’re not changing the name.)
A room full of spoons. Photo by One Man Underground.
PCC showings of The Room are always a riot. Introduced with an audience Q&A hosted by the man of the hour (off-handedly rejecting questions he’s not interested in, slurring his way through those he is, openly flirting with any women brave enough to approach the microphone), the film is accompanied by a cacophony of quotes, in-jokes, and flying plastic spoons that some poor cleaner gets paid not-nearly enough to sweep up between the day’s multiple screenings. It is the most fun you can legally have in a cinema, and I’m planning to return when he does in September.
However, a new Tommy Wiseau joint brings risk. Unless your name is Neil Breen, if you make a film that audiences love to hate, the risk of losing the magic to self-awareness is high. You can find yourself leaning into the things that people took to their hearts in a way that is cynical and without the spark of art brut. This happened with Wiseau’s sitcom for Hulu, The Neighbors - 6 mirthless half-hours of badly filmed shrieking that is genuinely unwatchable. What’s more, this time he’s dipping his toe into the most self-aware of filmic trash - the “ironic” poorly animated shark film, typified by Sharknado and its equally worthless sequels. As the lights dim, my mood is pensive.
American heroes. Copyright Wiseau-Films 2023.
Wiseau plays Patrick, one of a trio of firefighters in New Orleans hailed a hero for rescuing some kids from a house fire. While celebrating on a fishing trip with his girlfriend, he notices something in the Mississippi River - a Big Shark (roll credits). Naturally, nobody believes him, until the streets of the Big Easy become randomly flooded with water, providing the perfect feeding ground for the Big Shark. And so, with only each other, a mysterious hobo with a map, and a dead pig, it's up to our heroic trio to save the city. Or, as Patrick, puts it,
“Our objective is to kill shark.”
How big is the Big Shark? 35 feet. That's 10 feet longer than the Spielberg's Bruce. So you know it's serious.
A Big Shark. Copyright Wiseau-Films 2023.
Obviously, this film is terrible. By any standard criteria, this is a one-star movie. As such, we must apply a different set of standards, and ask ourselves two simple questions: is it a "good bad" film, or a "bad bad" film? Has it been compromised by self-awareness?
Well, tropes from The Room are present and correct - Wiseau is the hero of the film; the acting is roundly appalling; Wiseau’s misogyny is as pathetic as ever, and the female characters have even less agency in this film than they do in The Room. Alison Bechdel would be unimpressed.
Tommy Wiseau enjoying his own work. Photo by One Man Underground.
But this is a very different film from The Room. It's all shot on-location, all sound is diegetic, dialogue appears almost improvised - perhaps stung by some of the criticisms of his earlier film, this feels like a contrary response to his critics. Furthermore, its storytelling is all over the place. The Room, for all its digressions (e.g. “I definitely have breast cancer,” or “Where’s my fucking money Denny?”), was essentially, start-to-finish, a love triangle story. The main thrust of this film - 3 guys kill a big shark - not only takes a good third-to-half of the film to actually kick in, but even when it does, it gets frequently distracted.
"You're occupying my brain!"
But of course, the biggest difference is the use of computer graphics, used to make rivers appear in the streets of New Orleans, leading to some truly majestic underwater swimming scenes and, of course, to create the titular Big Shark. And when Big Shark first appears - rudely interrupting a boxing match - the laugh it produced was priceless. And that was the point where my anxieties about Wiseau, for want of a better term, jumping the shark were laid to rest.
Attack of the Big Shark. Copyright Wiseau-Films 2023.
Yes reader, I can confirm that, at least with a receptive cinema audience, Big Shark is hilarious in the same way as The Room. Will it stand up to repeat viewing in the same way? Only time (and a DVD release) will tell. Has Wiseau become self-aware? Almost certainly, especially considering the lengths he’s gone to litigate an unauthorised doc about The Room out of existence. But for the 99 minutes you’re watching Big Shark (and it is 99 minutes, for there are no end credits - like Bat Pussy, we have nobody to blame but ourselves), the sheer joy one feels ultimately means… it doesn’t matter. Maybe Tommy Wiseau will have the last laugh on us all.
Photo by One Man Underground.
“Cowboys don’t cry, heroes don’t die, they just sparkle in the sky, so I won’t cry.”
During the Q&A, Wiseau mentioned that he’s planning to shoot a sequel in London. I’ll believe it when I see it. But if it happens, I’ll attempt some on-location reporting. It’s not besmirching the memory of a widely-beloved dead drummer, but it’s the best I can do.
One Man Underground, with one man behind perspex.
