Considered by many to be the worst movie ever made, writer-director-producer-star Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” is a cult hit with fans nationwide. In addition to the awful writing, acting, and production, the viewer can’t help but be captivated by the enigmatic figure of Wiseau himself. Is he really like that? How did he get the money to finance the film’s estimated $6 million budget? The Argus spoke with Christian Phillips, who is the Artistic Director of the Actor’s Theatre of San Francisco, which is where Wiseau’s career kicked off, to uncover the truth behind the crazy.
Argus: First off, how much do you know about Tommy Wiseau?
Christian Phillips: It’s embarrassing, but Tommy was a student of mine for about a year.
A: Do you know about “The Room” and his notoriety?
CP: Yeah, people say it’s the worst movie ever made, and I can believe that.
A: A lot of people would be interested to know anything about him.
CP: Tommy has a ton of money. Nobody has any idea really of where it came from. He’s French. He’s a character, man. He took acting classes for about a year and did only what he wanted. Nobody wanted to be his scene partner, he hogs attention—you’d say a line, and Tommy would go wild. Ultimately I had to get rid of him as an acting student, so he went to study with my sister [Wendy Phillips, an accomplished film and TV actress], and she had the same problems with him. She had some difficulties with her landlord at one point, and Tommy overheard, so he just bought the building her studio was in. It’s a very nice building in Westwood, and it must have cost several million dollars. A month later, she found out her rent had lowered, she asked why. The guy said, “Tommy Wiseau bought it.” Tommy financially can do pretty much anything he wants to do. If that means making a bad movie, he can do it.
A: The rumor of how he got the money for “The Room” is that he had a leather jacket business, but that doesn’t sound like the case.
CP: My guess would be family money, trust money, something like that. I don’t know. If Tommy keeps doing things like this, I’m sure someone will investigate on a larger scale and find out where it is. But he’s a nice guy, he’s a great guy, he just dances to his own rhythm. His whole persona is definitely not put on. He’s not creating some character. That’s who the guy is. I don’t know how bad “The Room” really is. Is it that bad?
A: It’s pretty bad.
CP: As a teacher, I just had fun with him. About six months ago, I ran into him at Kinko’s, he was like, “Ohh, Chris.” “Hey Tommy,” he goes, “I’m still mad at you!” I go, “Why?” “You threw a pencil at me for acting badly!” Way back when, I had thrown a pencil at him to get him to act a different way. “It’s okay, I forgive you now!” That’s what he remembered of me.
A: What about your sister?
CP: In my sister’s class, nobody wanted to work with him and he got sick of doing monologues over and over again. So we had scholarship students work with him. Then I guess Tommy finally left my sister’s studio and went on to make “The Room.” When I talked to him at Kinko’s, he said he was doing another film and wanted to know if I was interested in being in it. I said, “Well, send me a script, Tommy,” to be polite, but I haven’t heard back from him. I think he’s smart. He’s just sensitive: when I said “send me a script,” I think his feelings were hurt. So he’s not a dumb guy, he’s just weird, man. How old is he, do you know? Like 45, 50?
A: I think he doesn’t release that information. Part of his public persona is he doesn’t talk about his background. It’s part of his mystique.
CP: It’s hysterical that Tommy has a public persona and that he does or doesn’t release [certain] information. When I heard that he had this successful movie, my mouth dropped. I couldn’t believe it. When I heard it was the worst movie of all time, that made sense, but you know, a cult hit… life is pretty strange, man.
A: Do you see him around any more?
CP: He comes to plays here a lot. Last time I saw him, he had adopted the persona of an international race car driver playboy type. Dark shades, you know.
A: Do you have any acting-guru wisdom or technical specifics as to why he fails?
CP: (laughter) Tommy is deep inside his head. Acting, for it to work, has to be in response to someone else. Tommy is so far from doing anything and being affected by other people, I mean so far inside his head, that everything he says comes from Mars. It’s not affected, that’s just who he is. You say, “Tommy,” and he’ll go, “The plank?” or something fucking weird, you know? “How’s it going?” “I stole your pencil!” He’s just on a whole different fucking plane. Tommy doesn’t listen, and when he does, it goes through this maze he has, and becomes something entirely different. My brother saw his movie, and he was saying, “You are making me crazy,” or something like that?
A: “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!”
CP: Yeah, that’s it! I can hear him saying that, I can hear Lisa going, I don’t know what the line before is, but I’m sure it’s, “Hi, Tommy, do you want a muffin?” or something like that. Because he’s like that, he’s got his own thing going on in his head, and I think it’s wonderful that he’s successful, albeit in a very perverted way. I should talk to him. I had no idea how big of a hit this film actually is. I’ve seen where they play it, people come dressed up like Rocky Horror, and it’s hysterical.