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I did not [chat] her!

JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh9lC7IBJvI

From the last thread:
Jacobkosh wrote: »
I'm a bit late to the party on this, but I just started reading Greg Sestero's The Disaster Artist, about the making of The Room (which Sestero was in, as "Mark" of "o hi Mark" fame). I haven't even seen The Room, per my skepticism about sitting through bad movies, and I wasn't sure if this would be an interesting read or just a weird obsessive look at a bit of pop culture flotsam...but for some reason I was curious, and it turns out the book is actually terrific.

It's simultaneously a history of the filming of this terrible movie, a character portrait of Tommy Wiseau, who is a uniquely bizarre person, and the story of Sestero himself as an occasional actor on the fringes of Hollywood as well as Wiseau's friend (which often sounds more like being his caseworker). It's well-written and very funny and has an interesting thematic unity that you sometimes don't find in narrative nonfiction, about ambitions and the cost of pursuing or not pursuing them. Sestero starts out kind of shy and uncommitted, and through hanging out with the very off-kilter Wiseau, learns to start taking the initiative more, chasing his ambitions harder, and ends up making mistakes and burning himself in the process. I'm curious, when I get to the end, if he'll conclude if it was worth it or not.

This book is pretty great and Sestero's Wiseau impression is on point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K40IToeN51Y

The best story from the book so far has absolutely nothing to do with The Room, though.

Several years before The Room began shooting in 2002, Tommy Wiseau, after meeting Greg Sestero in acting class in San Francisco, invites Greg to stay in Tommy's unused LA apartment so he can look for acting gigs. Greg eventually finds some success, gets represented by an agent, and films a "Puppet Master" sequel in Romania.

Tommy doesn't take it well and is clearly both jealous and creepily obsessed. Greg comes home to find that Tommy has opened up his mail, including the check from the Puppet Master production company. Tommy tries to put a brave face on things, though, and is super enthusiastic about seeing Greg in the movie. Once he sees it, Tommy decides, with his usual level of taste, that his favorite part (which was also Greg's least favorite) was a cheesy scene where Greg's character, an old-timey Frenchman, stands on a wide balustraded staircase holding a candelabra.

One day Tommy calls up to ask Greg how to get a SAG card, and Greg, feeling like he can't really tell his buddy to give up on acting, goes ahead and tells him - you need to be a featured extra at least three times, or have a speaking role in a commercial. "Commercial, eh?" Tommy is excited and hangs up.

A few days later he surprises Greg in LA, having arrived in town for "is very important meeting" (mmhmm) and proudly shows off...his brand new SAG card.

Greg is genuinely astonished. How did he get it?

"I get in commercial," Tommy says, and pops in a VHS. The picture comes up and it's Tommy - in a flouncy lace shirt, on a staircase, holding a candelabra. "To be ahr not to be," tommy intones, and then the logo for his fake-Levi's jeans company comes up. He hired himself to make an ad for his own company so he could get a card.

I love this book

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