'The Disaster Artist' Trailer: James Franco Perfects The Tommy Wiseau Accent In The Full Trailer
Could director and star James Franco win an Oscar for a movie about the worst movie ever made? It's totally possible if the official The Disaster Artist trailer is anything to go by.
The teaser for The Disaster Artist just gave us a small taste of the comedy gold entrenched in the film based around the making of the 2003 low-budget movie The Room, the nonsensical brainchild of the probably-human, maybe-a-vampire Tommy Wiseau. But the full trailer gives us more than just bloopers — now we can dive into the mind of Wiseau and his co-dependent relationship with best friend and writer of The Disaster Artist memoir, Greg Sestero. If you dare.
There's no story that better embodies the adage, "truth is stranger than fiction." Because there's possibly no way to describe the subject of The Disaster Artist, the mysterious billionaire Tommy Wiseau, other than stranger than fiction.
But rather than become a mocking impression of a real human being who feels like a character from a sci-fi novel, The Disaster Artist becomes a loving tribute to an ambitious dreamer who simply has no talent. The trailer follows the meet-cute between aspiring actor Greg and the eccentric Wiseau at an acting class, from which point they become inseparable. Connected by a shared dream to make it in Hollywood, Greg's star slowly rises as Wiseau is met with brutal rejection — until he decides to make his own movie. History is made as he writes an intimate, semi-autobiographical screenplay called The Room and launches a troubled production that only gets more disastrous as time goes on: Tommy blows money on an entire alleyway set that replicates one a few yards away, Tommy keeps looking at the camera, Tommy defies the rules of post-death writhing, etc.
The entire thing is hilarious, but never verges on overtly comical, while Franco nails Wiseau's vaguely Eastern European accent after flaunting a subdued version in the teaser, and Seth Rogen steals the scenes as the perpetually sighing, increasingly baffled script supervisor. While the trailer doesn't have time to explore the nuances of Tommy and Greg's toxic but affectionate relationship, I hope the movie will dive into that part of the book, as it elevated The Disaster Artist from being more than just a collection of making-of bloopers.
The Disaster Artist is already making waves in the festival circuit, accumulating tons of buzz at this week's Toronto International Film Festival, and proving that the film is more than just a big budget in-joke. Like /Film's Jacob Hall said in his SXSW review of The Disaster Artist, the film is "not a fringe joke assembled by a group of comedians looking to strike a few low blows." It's a loving tribute to a cinema in the vein of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, the acclaimed biopic of the infamous B-movie director.The Disaster Artist opens in limited release on December 1, 2017 before opening wide on December 8, 2017.