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The story behind 'The Room,' the 'worst movie ever made'

The story behind 'The Room,' the 'worst movie ever made'

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Tommy Wiseau
Tommy Wiseau

If you haven't seen The Room, it's a difficult film to define. At its core lies the story of a love triangle, but fans of what is often referred to as "the worst movie ever made" will tell you it's much more than that. It's horribly shot with inconsistent cameras; it has awful actors reading truly terrible lines; and it forces viewers to sit through some of the poorest pacing — and likely the worst sex scenes — of all time. It's this combination of ineptitude that led the movie to gain a Troll 2-esque cult following, and saw the movie spread from a single theater in Los Angeles to New York, London, and beyond. But why did this $6 million epic ever get funded? Who is Tommy Wiseau, the film's enigmatic director, writer, and star? And did the actors and production team understand that they were participating in what would become cinematic history for all the wrong reasons? As the movie plays to theaters around the globe in a 10th-anniversary re-release, a feature on Vulture explains away most, if unfortunately not all, of our questions.