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.

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