• The Disaster Artist

  • My Life inside 'The Room', the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made
  • By: Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell
  • Narrated by: Greg Sestero
  • Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (8,746 ratings)

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The Disaster Artist

By: Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell
Narrated by: Greg Sestero
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Editorial review


By Seth Hartman, Audible Editor

THE DISASTER ARTIST IS THE ULTIMATE ODE TO FAILURE

During my first college semester, I was relentlessly diligent in my pursuit of a social life. Through the endless array of dorm parties, club signups, and free cupcakes, I came across a fellow freshman who pitched me a club idea of his own— "The Z Movie Society." Basically, the vision was that we would meet weekly and watch movies with infamously bad critical receptions. Through the deluge of shark-infested weather patterns and Nazi militias on the moon, one film shined through, a film with a surprisingly straightforward plot.

The film in question was The Room, the story of a man who slowly realizes that his wife is cheating on him with his best friend. The star and creator of the movie, Tommy Wiseau provides one of the most baffling film experiences I’ve ever enjoyed. Wiseau had never acted let alone created a movie before, and so relied on his instincts when it came to script, direction, and performance. He is both serious and silly, reading his lines (which he wrote himself) either with robotic swiftness or completely over-the-top emotional gusto. Yes, the plot makes no sense and the instances of green screen usage were egregious, but I was mostly interested in Tommy Wiseau, the ringleader of this exceptionally weird experience. Where did he come from? What accent does he have? And, above all else, why the hell did he feel compelled to make this movie?

Luckily for me, I did not need to wait to find any of this information out. In 2013, 10 years after The Room’s release, Greg Sestero (Tommy’s costar in the film) came out with The Disaster Artist, a memoir recounting his strange experience meeting, working with, and eventually being creatively tied to Tommy Wiseau. By this point, the original film was enjoying cult status in pop culture, and it quickly became apparent that there were tons of curious people out there like me. Greg narrates the audiobook, too, steeping the listener in his experience.

Throughout The Disaster Artist, Sestero does his best to pay tribute to a creative with a singular vision and the drive to make it happen, logic be damned. Despite countless roadblocks, questions, and concerns along the way, this man, for better or for worse, threw caution to the wind and made his dream a reality. To this day, The Room remains a cult hit, and The Disaster Artist even got its own feature film.

The long-lasting success of this objectively terrible film and the book that followed fill me with so much joy. It is strangely empowering to know that a single person can fight against the current like Wiseau did and somehow land on his feet. While I don’t see anything like The Room winning an Oscar any time soon, I sincerely hope that more works like The Disaster Artist come along to shine a light on more Z movies.

Continue reading Seth's review >

Publisher's summary

Nineteen-year-old Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at an acting school in San Francisco. Wiseau's scenes were rivetingly wrong, yet Sestero, hypnotized by such uninhibited acting, thought, "I have to do a scene with this guy." That impulse changed both of their lives. Wiseau seemed never to have read the rule book on interpersonal relationships (or the instructions on a bottle of black hair dye), yet he generously offered to put the aspiring actor up in his LA apartment. Sestero's nascent acting career first sizzled, then fizzled, resulting in Wiseau's last-second offer to Sestero of co-starring with him in The Room, a movie Wiseau wrote and planned to finance, produce, and direct - in the parking lot of a Hollywood equipment-rental shop.

Wiseau spent $6 million of his own money on his film, but despite the efforts of the disbelieving (and frequently fired) crew and embarrassed (and frequently fired) actors, the movie made no sense. Nevertheless, Wiseau rented a Hollywood billboard featuring his alarming headshot and staged a red carpet premiere. The Room made $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. One reviewer said that watching The Room was like "getting stabbed in the head".

The Disaster Artist is Greg Sestero's laugh-out-loud funny account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and friendship to make "the Citizen Kane of bad movies" (Entertainment Weekly), which is now an international phenomenon, with Wiseau himself beloved as an oddball celebrity. Written with award-winning journalist Tom Bissell, The Disaster Artist is an inspiring tour de force, an open-hearted portrait of an enigmatic man who will improbably capture your heart.

©2013 Greg Sestero and Thomas Carlisle Bissell (P)2014 Tantor

Critic reviews

"This downright thrilling book is a lot like watching Tim Burton's Ed Wood: it's sometimes infuriating, often excruciating, usually very funny, and occasionally horribly uncomfortable, but it's also impossible to look away from." ( Booklist, Starred Review)

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Best Memior hands down!!

Greg Sestero does an amazing Tommy Wiseau Impression I thought it was really him!

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Insightful

I’m a sucker for any Hollywood success stories, and as a screenwriter, this one made me laugh uncontrollably.

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So entertaining!

Intriguing story, and look into such a loveable weirdos life. The narrator does a great job impersonating Tommy.

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If You Wonder it is Worth a Listen

A curious book about the most interesting man to reach popular strata.

Greg's performance is a little awkward at times, but nobody else could deliver this book as passionately as him.

The alternating chapters was a bit confusing at first, but begins to make sense later.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Loved it!

loved it! Greg's actually an amazing storyteller and his impersonation of tommy is hilarious

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Very insightful

A look behind the scenes of The Room and underneath the enigmatic facade of Tommy Wiseau, co-written and read by the one person who knows him best, to the extent that anything about the maker of The Room is knowable. Sestero reads with clarity and passion and, having spent so much time around Wiseau, impeccably imitates his “New Orleans” accent. At the end, I was legitimately torn about how I felt about Wiseau.

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Must read/hear

This is so good I recommend anyone listen to this, Sestero does a great job reading. The story is just so interesting. I couldn’t stop listening.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Funny and a bit sad

For the most part I enjoyed listening to this audiobook. The author did a good job of reading and doing Tommy's voice. Parts of the book are funny because of the absurd situations. Bit if I think too hard about Tommy's history I get sad.

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“A beeg delawght (delight) it was like titaneek” (titanic)

I adore this book it is one of the funniest books I’ve ever listened to or read for that matter.
Don’t waste your time get it!

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A Fascinating Look at an Iconic Film

I have seen The Room a few times and every time I see something new and bizarre that makes me ask "how did this get made?". The answer is even more fascinating and strange than I would have believed. The movie adaptation starring James Franko does not do this story justice and it needs to be heard in its entirety.

Greg Sestero does an excellent job of narrating this story and has a pretty good impression of Wiseau. There are some weird audio glitches like volume and tone suddenly changing but those can be over looked.

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