Jimmy Kimmel: "And now, we're gonna meet the writer, director, producer, and star of one of the strangest cult movies of all time."
Kimmel: "It's called The Room. Please welcome Tommy Wiseau!"
[entrance music plays, crowd cheers and applauds]
[click, sound cuts out]
Is Tommy Wiseau an auteur?
There's already been plenty written about Tommy Wiseau.
The enigmatic man who funded a film starring himself as a good man betrayed by an incomprehensible world.
...and also possibly a vampire.
We all know he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in his own film,
Giving himself individual credits for each role,
So we certainly know he claims authorship of his film.
But is he an auteur?
Well, what is an auteur?
The basic concept is one shared by critics and audiences alike.
First, the director is responsible for the creation of a film.
Second, a good director is one who develops a distinct aesthetic present throughout their film careers.
Third, such aesthetic seen over a body of work speak to a "deeper meaning" about human existence or the greater meaning of cinema.
A consistent collection of philosophies that illustrate a unique perspective on the world.
An auteur is an artist who just can't help being themselves.
[click] But is Wiseau an auteur?
Well, it's been suggested before.
It's been suggested before as a joke, but it's been suggested before.
[click]
Though I doubt Wiseau would think of himself as an auteur.
According to The Disaster Artist (Greg Sestero's book, not James Franco's movie),
One of Wiseau's many neuroses is a boiling hatred of the French language. Like, even individual words.
This scene? He really tackled Greg Sestero, all because Sestero adlibbed a few words of French during the take.
But in hindsight, it makes sense. Ever wondered about this quirk?
Wiseau (as Johnny): "After all, she's my future wife."
Denny: "Lisa's your future wife."
Wiseau (as Johnny): "I'm your future husband."
Wiseau (as Johnny): "You're my future wife."
[click]
The word that isn't being said is "fiancé".
[click] But I'm on a tangent.
Like Wiseau, auteur theory's talked about a lot. Like, a lot, especially on film YouTube.
And there are plenty of great overviews of the history of the idea out there.
I recommend these videos by Filmmaker IQ, Lindsay Ellis, and Shannon Strucci.
They all do great jobs expanding different areas of the auteur theory.
Go watch them. I'm not gonna bother explaining it.
And I've also put a link to the full audio of Pauline Kael reading Circles and Squares,
Which you should really listen to in full, because...
...it is savage!
Oh...!
Perfect!
One of Kael's many great points is that the theory encourages the viewer to look for repeated patterns.
But a consistent body of work only signals one thing:
Following artists who repeat their own work, Kael argues,
Distracts from the artistry of filmmakers who experiment with form, narrative, and genre.
To use Kael's example: we elevate Hitchcock while ignoring artists like Carol Reed.
It's a bias we still have today.
There are hundreds of articles about the work of the Wes Andersons and David Finchers of the world,
But we don't see the same appreciation for great storytellers who never really stuck to a style.
Storytellers like Jonathan Demme or George Miller.
And, I'd also argue, there's a little-explored progressive argument against auteur theory.
If an auteur is someone who maintains a consistent style over a body of work,
Doesn't that require a body of work in the first place?
Wouldn't it be so much harder for directors who for various tangential reasons out of their control,
To get consistent work from an industry who has an increasingly narrow definition of what an artist looks like?
[sarcastic cough]
But let's go with the folk definition of auteur theory.
A while back, I did this informal Twitter poll asking for people's definition of "auteur",
And a lot of the answers I got identified the auteur by their command, by the control they exhibit on a set.
And... they're not wrong?
"Author" shares the same root word as "authority".
Authorship isn't a mark of quality, but control.
But there's a side effect: If even the most humble productions can be seen as the work of a passionate creative person,
How does that affect the director's self-perception? How do they see their films? Their crew?
How do they see their actors, for example?
Interviewer: "That is the shortest, the most pertinent quote of yours of actors, that 'actors are cattle'."
Hitchcock: "I had been accused of saying that actors are cattle. I'd say this is absolutely untrue."
Hitchcock: "What I possibly said was that 'actors should be treated like cattle'."
Interviewer: [chuckles]
And so it goes: The auteur catches on, becomes popular and therefore marketable, a generation of filmmakers see the director as a position of great power...
...and, oh, who's trending on Twitter now!?
Kael: "Isn't the anti-art attitude of the auteur critic implicit in their peculiar emphasis on virility?"
"Anyway, how is your sex life?"
Another side-effect of auteurism: How so often that personal stamp includes a surface level discussion of the director's sex life.
Kael: "The auteur critics are so enthralled with their narcissistic male fantasies."
Kael: "These critics are so enthralled with these fantasies, they seem unable to relinquish their schoolboy notions of human experience."
Philip: "How many film directors make films to satisfy their sexual fantasies?"
Storey: "I would imagine most of them."
And Wiseau's dream, his fantasy, his self-perception?
Beautiful wife, young hip friends, steady job, and a chance to help people who need it.
And the only reason he doesn't succeed is for reasons that he really doesn't understand.
The problem with auteur theory is that auteur isn't just a loose concept anymore.
In folk understanding of it, it's a role that one can play.
A role desperately coveted by...
...men like Tommy Wiseau.
This has given rise in recent decades to a loose movement coined by the film critic Andrew Tracy:
Vulgar Auteurism. An idea that's been adopted, knowingly or unknowingly by the average cinephile,
Just as quickly as they adopted the first ideas of auteur theory.
Vulgar auteurism is simple: the idea that, just because a director imposes a certain style on a piece, doesn't make the director good.
Look at Michael Bay, look at M. Night Shyamalan, look at...
Wiseau (as Johnny): [imitates the sound of a bird]
...Yeah!
But expanding on the idea further: Richard Brody, writing for The New Yorker,
Argued that vulgar auteurism could be seen at the logical outcome of the original ideas of the theory.
He poetically defines the first auteurists as artists who...
The revolution was to see the disreputable cinema as an art, and to make themselves artists in the same canon.
But Brody also writes...
Their canon became... well, canon.
Elevating the works of Welles, Renoir, Hitchcock, Hawks, and a dozen other white dudes into the canon of great 20th century art.
Taken by itself, it sounds like a noble goal. To see inspiration and creativity, even in the lowest of art forms.
Vulgar auteurism asks...
Well, how low can we go?
And there may be something sad about the story of Wiseau.
He saw himself as a leading man, while everyone saw him as a monster.
Ironically, if he had embraced his appearance, he might have succeeded in a more traditional venue.
I mean, look at Wiseau. Can you imagine what David Lynch might have done with him?
[scare chord] Wiseau: Oh hi, Mark!
[disturbing rumble]
But Wiseau chose not to play to his strengths. Instead, he played the game.
The game that Hollywood told him to play.
The game of the passionate artist. The game won by vulnerable titans of masculine genius.
Men like Orson Welles...
Marlon Brando...
Both Wiseau and Brando: [anguished screaming]
And, of course, James Dean.
Wiseau: "You are tearing me apart, Lisa!" Dean: "You're tearing me apart!"
Wiseau, like so many other American actors before him, wanted to put himself in that pantheon...
...by giving the world yet another aggressive, passionate man who can't hide his pain from the world.
Of course, when Wiseau came to Hollywood, the revolutionary acting techniques he worshiped were decades old.
Performances slovenly replicated, not because of their inherent qualities,
But because of a memetic assumption that this is what "good acting" looks like.
As an actor, all that Tommy's performance as Johnny reveals is that this kind of style, this form of melodrama, is outdated,
And as a director, Tommy's work reveals that the auteur, the cinephile whose passion brings him into the ferment of artists who came before him...
...is kind of dumb, right?
(someone off-stage): Action!
Wiseau (as played by James Franco): What line?
And that revelation is really really really really funny!
Wiseau (as Johnny): [awkward laugh] What a story, Mark!
The reason The Room resonates is because it takes the auteur theory and makes a mockery of it, showing the ludicrousness of the fantasy.
Through the culture around The Room, it mocks what the auteur has become:
A vain, sad, insecure, lonely man who can't understand his own failings.
The auteur tries to reveal everything, but yet reveals nothing.
In auteurist cinema, we don't see the auteur's soul, but his lusts. We can see the auteur's bare ass!
But not his history, not his parents or childhood or life,...
Only his dumb, pedestrian daydreams about being awesome.
We see him better than he sees himself. Yet, he remains unseen, except for his ugliest parts.
Then again, we all have ugly parts.
And we've all shared Tommy's daydream.
We've all felt the need to perform, to show ourselves to the world as funny and charming and vibrant and loved,
Even if we're only pretending to be.
To have that selfish fantasy of glory in spite of all our flaws,
Of being a star loved for our beauty and brilliance and bombast and...
...and Wiseau unintentionally exposed that fantasy.
Wiseau (as Johnny): "And I am the fool!"
Yes, you are, Tommy. Yes, you are.
Pauline Kael's right. Auteur theory favors trash.
Wiseau's accidental brilliance was to reveal it to be trash.
So, is he an auteur? Yes.
Not only is Tommy Wiseau an auteur, he may very well be the last auteur.
Thank God for that.
Kael: "The independent filmmakers, Lord knows, are already convinced about their importance as the creative figures, the auteurs."
Kael: "A theory which suggests that the importance of writing the film arts might seriously damage their egos."
Kael: "And is it perhaps also their way of making the comment on our civilization by the theory that trash is the true film art?"
Kael: "I asked, I do not know."