National Post

WHEN ART IMITATES LIFE IMITATING ART

James Franco on becoming Tommy Wiseau in The Disaster Artist.

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Never doubt James Franco’s commitment. Whether truly ambitious or perilously illadvised, a Franco project will if nothing else be the work a man who cares – even if the colossal effort is misdirecte­d. In his new film The Disaster Artist, Franco tells the ludicrous true story of the so- bad- it’s- legendary cult classic The Room, and plays that flop’s writer-director-star, the notorious Tommy Wiseau, as if he were Macbeth. His imitation of the man has pundits predicting Oscars. His recreation­s of scenes from the original film, meanwhile, bear the laborious rigour and dedication of a total lunatic – so pointlessl­y exact that it’s a kind of genius.

As the film opens theatrical­ly across the country, we sat down with Franco to discuss the art of mimicry, the ethics of biopics, and why The Room is not unlike Faulkner.

Q Your recreation­s of the movie are stunningly precise. What interests you about that kind of exacting precision?

A In my little artistic side projects I had done stuff like that already, recreated stuff like that – like Interior Leather Bar, where I remade scenes from an old William Friedkin movie. But then the real training ground for recreating those scenes shot-for-shot was when Seth and I redid “Bound 2”, the Kanye West music video. That was eye- opening: oh, you just look at each shot closely and the actors just do the movements.

Q And so it was the same process replicatin­g The Room?

A With The Room, the difference is that you’re replicatin­g something that’s incredibly bad. So the cinematogr­apher spends as much time working on replicatin­g the bad lighting as he would on a normal movie doing good lighting. The set designer, the wardrobe guy, everyone works as hard on that strange process – on perfecting something that’s bad – as they would trying to make something good. It was kind of magical.

Q Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to replicate so much of the film and excerpt it?

A The funny thing is, no, not at all. We hadn’t planned on showing the recreation­s side by side. You’ve seen the movie?

Q Yeah. You mean the recreation­s running beside the original footage from The Room over the credits?

A Exactly. We hadn’t planned on the side by side stuff at the end. But when we did the scenes we were looking at them to see how it turned out and how exact it was, and we were like, wait, this is so good. We want to show more of than our achievemen­t than just the premiere scene in the movie. The problem was, we hadn’t negotiated to use footage from The Room. We only had Tommy’s life rights and the rights to adapt the book. So we had to go back and renegotiat­e it. Q Was that a problem? A It wouldn’t have been. But Tommy, his biggest stipulatio­n in his contract from the beginning was that he have a cameo opposite me. But he didn’t know – I guess he didn’t read the contract closely – that we only had to shoot the cameo. We didn’t have to put it in the movie. Q And he found out. A He must have. He must have asked someone “how my scene” and they must have said sorry dude, it’s not in the movie. So when it came time to renegotiat­e that was the first thing he said. He was like, “Well, you want my footage, you have to put my scene in there.” So we did. Of course, he didn’t read it closely again, and the new contract didn’t say where

OUR AIM FROM THE BEGINNING WAS WAS NEVER TO MAKE A SATIRE. IT WAS TO FIND THE UNIVERSAL STORY AT THE HEART OF IT.

the scene went. We realized we could just put it at the end of the film, after the credits, like a Marvel teaser. I don’t know if you stayed that long, but it’s like this David Lynchian, Ed Wood moment. Q All to get the footage. A That was all to get the side by side thing.

Q But why was it important for the recreation­s to be so perfect? A It’s because we’re replicatin­g a real, documented thing. That needed to be as exact as possible because you can see exactly how correct it is. On the other hand, when we’re doing the behind the

scenes stuff, the movie proper, that becomes this art of getting Tommy down, getting the behaviour down. Other than that, who knows exactly how it was? Q So you didn’t feel the real-life material had to be 100% true? A I’ll tell you a story. I remember when I was making Milk, I had a conversati­on about this with Gus Van Sant. We went to San Francisco, we got the storefront where they had their real-life camera shop where they were running their campaign, and it was the exact spot, and I remember having this moment where I was just like, Gus, don’t you feel like a lot of pressure to get this right? And he’s like, “Yeah but, you know, who knows what they were doing in their private moments?” You just learn as much as you can and you sort of roll with it. If you’ve done enough of your research, you’ll get the spirit of it, you’ll get that right.

Q And you have a lot of experience with biopics, so this must be a tested philosophy for you.

A Yeah, I’ve done a lot of movies that are based on real events or real people. For example, when I was making 127 Hours, Danny Boyle and I met extensivel­y with Aron Roston, who I was playing, but Danny didn’t want him on set. Q Why not? A Because sometimes people get it – that you’re making a movie and that a movie has certain requiremen­ts. That doesn’t mean we’re like, Hollywoodi­zing it, it doesn’t mean Aron Roston comes back and gets his arm and sews it back on. It just means that there are dramatic requiremen­ts to a movie. Q And some people don’t understand? A Some people, when a movie is being made about them, they just don’t understand that. They’ll get down to like, “I don’t move my hand that way.” It’s not about that. Danny wanted us to have our own experience of it. He wanted it to come from an organic place rather than trying to slavishly replicate what Aron told us. Instead, have all the parameters and set up and get that from him, but then organicall­y create our version of it. That, in a way, is how I worked on Disaster Artist.

Q What’s interestin­g is that the charac- ters you just mentioned are fairly ordinary people – just in extraordin­ary circumstan­ces. Tommy seems a much bigger personalit­y.

A That is true. A better comparison for Tommy – and it’s ironic – is James Dean. It’s ironic because Tommy sort of believes he is James Dean. I played James Dean, in a TV movie in 2001. Tommy’s two people he wanted for the role were Johnny Depp and me. I think that’s largely because I played James Dean. When I played James Dean back then, I was obsessed. It was actually a Trivial Pursuit question: which actor stopped talking to his friends and family and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day to prepare for James Dean?

Q And your approach to Tommy was similar?

A Sort of. Greg had years ago taken audio tapes from Tommy’s apartment. Tommy records every conversati­on he has, even with himself. He would drive around and talk to himself on a recorder, just talk to himself. So I had Tommy in his most private moments. He never thought anyone would be hearing that. It was moving and weird. As an actor, though, it was gold. Like, when do you get the character’s private thoughts! The most private moments! I would just listen to that over and over and over in my car, learning how to be Tommy.

Q What’s the difference between adapting one of the worst movies ever made and adapting, say, Cormac McCarthy or William Faulkner

A Well… haha. It’s funny. When I do those movies not many people watch them. When I do this, though, people are really excited. But basically it’s the same.

Q The Room is the same as As I Lay Dying?

A It’s sort of the same. The thing with The Disaster Artist is this: our aim from the very beginning was never to make a satire. In fact it was to find the heart and soul at the centre of it, the universal story at the centre of this. These people are outsiders with a vision trying to break into a really difficult industry. And I think everyone with a dream can relate to that.

 ??  ?? James Franco
James Franco
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 ?? JAMES FRANCO IN THE DISASTER ARTIST. JUSTINA MINTZ/A24 VIA AP ??
JAMES FRANCO IN THE DISASTER ARTIST. JUSTINA MINTZ/A24 VIA AP
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 ?? ILLUSTRATI­ONS BY BRICE HALL ?? James Franco as Tommy Wiseau
ILLUSTRATI­ONS BY BRICE HALL James Franco as Tommy Wiseau
 ??  ?? Tommy Wiseau
Tommy Wiseau
 ?? JULIETTE DANIELLE AND TOMMY WISEAU IN THE ROOM. WISEAU FILMS ??
JULIETTE DANIELLE AND TOMMY WISEAU IN THE ROOM. WISEAU FILMS

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