[Freya-dæg] The Room: "Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!"

{The Room‘s movie poster, found on Wikipedia.}

Plot Summary
The Good
The Bad
Judgment
Closing

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Plot Summary

Everything in the life of Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) seems to be going well: he’s lined up for a promotion at work, he’s about to marry his girlfriend of seven years (Lisa, played by Juliette Danielle), and he’s surrounded by friends. However, little does Johnny know that his world of easygoing trust is about to collide head on with the truth of a betrayal of all he holds dear.

Although he lives there, Johnny risks it all when he enters The Room!

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The Good

The first 30 minutes of The Room are a bizarre quasi-softcore porn hurdle (sex scenes make up 1/3 of it at least) that needs to be leaped in order to arrive at the movie’s middle. And what a middle. Although it should really take a viewer out of the movie, this movie’s middle is like a sweet cream filling while the first and last 30-35 minutes are like a low-grade chocolate shell. What matters, though, is that this set up works.

As the movie’s events heat up and become more dramatic Wiseau’s curious delivery makes all of his intense lines unintentionally hilarious. This is, after all, the home of the internet-famous

{“You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!”}

Speaking of Lisa, it’s refreshing to see an average, real woman featured in the female lead role of a movie such as this.

{But, as Lisa’s mother Claudette (Carolyn Minnott) says, she “can’t support herself.”}

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The Bad

Although Wiseau’s acting often has a tinge of the (unintentionally) comedic, the movie as a whole doesn’t share in the same off-yet-endearing quality.

For starters, several side characters are introduced and then forgotten like so many Scooby-Doo villains, and quite unnecessarily. For example, we’re introduced to Mike (Mike Holmes) and Michelle (Robyn Paris) fairly early in the movie, but they don’t survive into the third act, as Mike is nowhere to be seen at Johnny’s party.

What’s more, Mike and Michelle, as a fellow couple, could easily have been the source of advice for Johnny and Lisa. Instead, for the space of a couple of scenes we get Peter (Kyle Vogt), the psychologist friend. Even stranger is the third act introduction of a mysterious man in a white button up shirt at Johnny’s party who is the one who finds out about Lisa’s and Mark’s betrayal.

Much more importantly for a movie called The Room, the setting is really unclear. We’re definitely watching a story in San Francisco, and that takes part in an apartment building of some sort for the most part. But what kind of apartment is difficult to nail down. Some establishing shots suggests a modest apartment building:

Others suggest a townhouse:

Perhaps the movie’s uncertain setting is simply meant to make the titular room more expansive than one four-walled enclosure, but this lack of clarity is distracting.

Along with the uncertain setting and character introductions, a couple of side plots are mentioned but then just forgotten.

Denny’s run-in with drugs and owing drug money? Apparently solved after Johnny and Mark attack the drug dealer.

Claudette’s troubles with her brother and a house she’s looking to sell? Just noted, and never returned to.

Both of these sideplots feed into the movie’s drama, but developing and integrating either or both would have given it a much more consistent feel.

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Judgment

Decidedly a weird one to watch, The Room has its merits (it inspired its own indie flash game after all).

Wiseau’s strange, quasi-high/drunk, almost entirely eye-contact-less acting style makes all of his dramatic scenes utterly laughable. But as a result the movie’s drama is almost always turned on its head and rendered ineffective. Coupled with an awkward handling of what can only be assumed to be an attempt to make Johnny’s apartment a main character, too much of the movie’s acting and writing undermine the possibility of it all being taken seriously.

The Room is good for a laugh, but its uneven characters, settings, and side stories hamstring its ability to be anything more.

So, Freya, let this one be. It lay already in a prominent place, splayed across a crumbling battlement – there shall all who desire to shall see it, but it simply is not the sort to be raised up.

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Closing

Leave your thoughts on this internet cult classic in the comments, and watch for tomorrow’s Annotated Links – especially if you’re drawn to weird science!

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[Moon-dæg] Fiction in a Melodramatic Flash

Context
A Long-Awaited Kiss
Closing

{Genies are generally benevolent when found in lamps, but what about when found in pens? Image found on askbrianmartin.com.}

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Context

Today’s piece of writing came from a writing prompt that called for describing multiple simultaneous actions and embellishing those descriptions with the senses. A kiss was given as an example of a scenario, and I ran with that.

Describing multiple things is a great challenge for any writer because of the limitations of the medium. Unlike art, music, or film, words alone can convey one thing at a time (or two, if you count what a word on the page is not saying as well as what it’s saying).

This piece doesn’t exactly exemplify the ability of the written word to express multiple simultaneous things, but it does introduce a curious plot that definitely deserves expansion.

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A Long-Awaited

Their eyes met and locked shortly before their lips. She noticed that he closed his eyes seconds before she did so herself, but she didn’t mind. An extra few seconds, however short, of gazing into his kaleidoscopic hazel eyes, knowing that his lips were already closed around hers – just as their arms, and shortly she blushed, their legs, perhaps, were – heightened all of her senses.

That’s why, as their lips locked, and their eyes closed, she finally noticed a pen in her pocket jabbing into her leg. It can’t be drawing blood, no – she thought, struggling to keep her arms around his shoulders, her hands at the middle of his back.

But if it’s jabbing me that must mean it’s open.

And if it’s open…

The stream of her thoughts hit a rock as she felt their lips parting slightly and his tongue edging through them. She sent hers to meet his, but wondered if she’d done it too quicky, if she’d maybe thrown him off. She soon realized that such was not the case.

Oh well. As long as he’s distracted he won’t notice me being distracted. Maybe I should just tell him.

As their tongues embraced and broke apart and embraced again, she thought she caught a whiff of ink. She mentally waved it away and tried to relax her shoulders, her thighs.

Yet, as she felt the rush of the outside air coming into her mouth from over her teeth and past their tangling tongues, she imagined herself pulling away, looking at the man as seriously as she could, and telling him that they needed to stop what they were doing right away because an interdimensional menace might have escaped from a sealed click pen she kept in her pocket.

The image lingered.

No. No that just wouldn’t do.

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Closing

Check back here tomorrow for Annotated Links #14. Come Wednesday, I’ll have posted the editorial, and on Thursday watch for Annotated Links #15. Then, Friday will see the uploading of Part Two of All-Request August: Alien Apocalypse.

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[Wōdnes-dæg] The E-Book Shades and the English Classics

Introduction
The Article Summed Up
A Classical Fixation?
Fan-Fiction and a Possible Future
Closing

{All three books in the Fifty Shades series, covered. Image found at the telegraph.co.uk.}

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Introduction

Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels are exploding all over the internet. Though some might be too shy to buy it from brick and mortar stores, they will soon be able to use convincing cover stories when buying other racy reads.

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The Article Summed Up

In today’s Globe and Mail, Russell Smith reports on Total E-Bound’s announced e-book series of re-vamped literary classics.

These re-releases aren’t abridged versions, or copies re-written with androids, zombies, or werewolves (that’s all been done, after all), but instead will have “graphic sex scenes” added to them. Rightfully so, this series of e-books will be called “Clandestine Classics.” According to Total E-Bound, the series was planned before Fifty Shades came out.

Smith ultimately regards the re-release of classics with addition prurient bits as positive as it potentially brings new readers to the English classics.

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A Classical Fixation?

Smith definitely has a valid point in his closing paragraph. Total E-Bound’s altered classics do have the potential to draw new readers to the established classics of English literature. But is that really a good thing?

Some might say that the English classics are horribly under-read nowadays, and as a result the Western world’s literacy and taste are slowly slipping. Genre fiction is eroding what was once a great literary tradition.

But what the apparent manipulability of English classics suggests is that they’re anything but un-read.

Back around 2009 and 2010 we saw nineteenth century novels re-written with horror and science fiction elements added to them. Now, sex is being explicitly added to them, and they’ll be read anew.

At its heart, the desire to see the classics read and thus to add things to them to entice new readers seems like a sound strategy. But, it also seems like sugar is being added to medicine. English classics are considered classical because they speak to various aspects of human nature in a rather direct way, and shed light on much of the foundation of Western society. Yet, there’s no end to new books that do the same, both those considered genre fiction, and those considered regular fiction.

And that’s where the focus needs to be. Nineteenth century classics are a fine literary cornerstone, but that cornerstone has plenty of sound material built on top of it as well. Why not look up?

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Fan-Fiction and a Possible Future

Although Smith only mentions it briefly, fan-fiction, a form that often involves the “a gleeful uncapping of [established] texts’ repressed fountains of desire” merits expansion.

Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan-fiction. Many young writers cut their teeth writing fan-fiction under an alias or anonymously. Projects like Total E-Bound’s “Clandestine Classics” are definitely a variety of fan-fiction.

Yet, they’re obviously something more – most people on fanfiction.net aren’t getting paid for their efforts, after all.

And so, the question that we need to ask is: To what extent does the success of Fifty Shades of Grey and the existence of a project like “Clandestine Classics” validate fan-fiction?

Ultimately, though industry-validated fan-fiction might see success and may open for more in the future, the track that some publishers seem to be on now seems dangerous. Re-hashing classics by adding what is essentially fan-fiction portions seems to be a perilous few steps away from going the way of Hollywood and making a senseless number of sequels and re-makes rather than focusing on original ideas.

Though, at the same time, were the mainstream to become more predictable, all of the vibrancy and life that’s to be found in genre fiction would get more and more exposure.

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Closing

Don’t miss tomorrow’s Annotated Links #11, or Friday’s Nicolas Cage Month finale featuring Seeking Justice! Watch this blog!

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