The film junkie comes in all shapes and sizes, all points on some arbitrary spectrum. You have the conservative art-hoarders on one end who larp as intellectuals when, in reality, they’re all just jumped-up fools who lack any real ambition or credentials of their own. On the other end, you can see the swathes of geeks obsessing over the objectively terrible, praising a pile of mess as the next Picasso piece. I’d like to think that I could be found somewhere in the middle, ambling along the metaphorical annals of a run-down movie store spending more time looking than actually watching anything worthwhile. However, to be honest, both ends of this pointless spectrum feel like home to me.
Firmly seated in the back end of that spectrum, embracing the bad, enduring the awful, is where I found myself and some other veteran movie-vagabonds this past weekend. Our local community cinema, CultPlex, was showing The Room, arguably the ultimate ‘so bad it’s good’ flick, for its 20th anniversary. Moreover, one of the original cast members was going to be there cashing in on his catastrophic failure-turned-success. Naturally tickets were purchased along with adequately sizable portions of alcohol to see the night in. For those unaware, the film is truly abysmal, perhaps even to the point of incomprehension but equally that is where the film’s allure is. There’s no chance that even the most pathetic student film fails to surpass The Room in quality. Regardless of that, I had been assured that it would be a good and memorable night.
So far, that had yet to be seen. The train got to Victoria on time. 5:30PM, peak hours for spotting Manchester’s population lazily shuffle onboard the train home. It was hot and I was tired. The mood wasn’t right for a film of this silly calibre. A bed would have been more fitting than a packed-out cinema screen, I thought. However, with an investment already made on the ticket, doubling back was not an option. Outside Cultplex were a plethora of food hustlers who catered to the on-trend dietary requirements of largely hipster populous of the area. Small morsels from all corners of the globe, each stamped with the assurance that it was made with “traditional recipes passed down from generation to generation”. Sceptical as I was, all other options were out of the question as there was no food near enough and the window for eating was rapidly closing. I settled on … something. It looked like deep fried fat balls given out by middle class mothers with an amateur eye for birdwatching. Biting into one, it was confirmed to me that these were in fact deep fried fat balls. My moment of supposed wit had been turned against me as I munched down on the compilation of seeds, grain, and some sort of fattening product. Nothing that couldn’t be washed down with a few pints of lager, I thought to myself in an attempt to claw back some semblance of pleasure from my depressingly inedible meal.
The picture was scheduled to start soon so I headed up to the screening room. This wasn’t a traditional cinema, more a renovated shed with a few benches outside. The one and only screen was kept behind a dramatic red curtain, a successful attempt to add a touch of class to the otherwise industrial interior of the building. Standing proudly by the entrance to the cinema room was Greg Sestero, the sidekick component to the infamously insane Tommy Wiseau and star of The Room. His conventionally American characteristics and attitudes made him stand out in a room full of awkward Mancunians, making his presence that more surreal. What’s more, he stood behind a table covered with a plethora of his parafenalia: a book he wrote detailing The Room’s troubled and confusing production; posters and tee shirts with iconic quotes from the cult film; Blu Ray copies of The Room and other, lesser-known films of his, all set at an extortionate price considering their quality. Heaps of film fans waddled over to his kiosk to purchase his wares and have a chance to speak to this strange man. He was an alien in this landscape, there to be uncomfortably ogled by curious punters. I for one had no idea who he was. I was there to see the picture, nothing more. Let these rabid adoring fans have him, tear him to shreds for all I care.
Here I met up with my companions, one of whom a nervous wreck, the other, incredibly drunk. A good combination I’d say. We found our seats, second from the front, left hand side of the room. The heat outside was manageable, a summery twenty degrees, but inside that was magnified to an unendurable heat. Overpriced, watered down beer would have to do as the only source of hydration in this hellscape. Shortly before the picture started, star of the show Greg came on to do a quaint moment of audience participation. He did the usual plugging of his products in a respectably mannered and succinct fashion. There’s nothing worse than those C- list celebrities who get booked out to these kinds of events and obviously couldn’t give less of a shit about it or the people who have paid to see them. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case with Greg. It was clear he cared, but maybe that’s because selling a twenty-year-old rotten movie is his only credit and source of income and he feels obliged to pump whatever care he still has for it into everything he does. After showing some dodgy trailers for his upcoming projects, the screening started. Applause was aplenty and I knew in an instant that my initial cynicism would fade.
It was an unmistakable privilege to be surrounded by those who unendingly adored this trashy movie. This adoration mainly was demonstrated through very, very vocal audience participation. Shouting, screaming, throwing bouquets of wooden spoons at the screen, counting the seconds a shot would last for, counting how many times a seemingly superfluous pigskin was chucked between the sheepishly awkward actors. We were, for those ninety or so minutes, united by this bizarre failure of fiction before us. That, and the unanimous sensation of sweat-soaked shirts sticking to the seats.
If nothing else, maybe I started to write this as a form of condemning the pretentious film snob that lives inside society, twisting and convoluting the simple pleasures of enjoying art. Yes, this was an excruciatingly terrible movie. Imagining viewing it one lazy Sunday night into Monday morning, an increasingly warm beer propped in my hand, and this suddenly becomes a hellish nightmare of fear and loathing, undoubtedly making you want to destroy your television. But watching something shamefully terrible in a packed out sweatbox filled with fans was something else, an experience beyond the film.
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