James Franco on The Disaster Artist, Tommy Wiseau and Learning to Slow Down

In June 2003, a film called The Room opened in a Los Angeles cinema. Written, produced, directed by and starring the mysterious Tommy Wiseau, it was almost immediately derided for its illogical story, disjointed scenes and inept performances. Yet something unexpected happened: audiences embraced it. The film became a cult phenomenon, turning Wiseau into a celebrity and drawing people back to midnight screenings year after year.

That strange afterlife inspired James Franco to make The Disaster Artist, a comedy-drama about the making of The Room and the even more extraordinary personality behind it.

“The Room is a strange thing in itself,” Franco told me when we met at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles. “You can’t call it a good film by conventional standards, but there’s something about parts of it that makes it worth watching. You can watch it again and again without getting bored.”

Franco based The Disaster Artist on the memoir by Wiseau’s friend and co-star Greg Sestero, played in the film by Franco’s younger brother Dave. The story begins in San Francisco, where the nineteen-year-old Sestero meets Wiseau in an acting class and is fascinated by his bizarre performance style, his disregard for what others think of him and the mystery surrounding virtually every aspect of his life.

Wiseau claims to be the same age as Sestero despite clearly appearing older. He says he comes from New Orleans, though his accent sounds Eastern European. He appears to have no family and few friends. None of that stops Sestero from seeing him as a mentor and following his eccentric advice.

Before long, Wiseau reveals that he owns an apartment in Los Angeles and persuades Sestero to move there with him so that they can pursue acting careers in Hollywood. Sestero, young and conventionally handsome, begins finding work in films and television and develops a relationship with another actress. Wiseau, meanwhile, struggles to win roles and grows increasingly frustrated and jealous. After a humiliating encounter with a producer who tells him he will never make it in Hollywood, he decides to create a film of his own.

He writes The Room, casts himself as the lead and gives Sestero the role of his character’s romantic rival. Not understanding the practical differences between shooting on film and video, he decides to use both formats simultaneously and hires two camera crews. Instead of renting equipment, he buys it. He insists on shooting on a studio set even when real locations would have been cheaper and easier, because, in his mind, a Hollywood film must be made in a Hollywood studio. The budget balloons into millions of dollars.

The irony is that Franco himself has frequently combined acting, writing, directing and producing. But he is wary of being compared too closely with Wiseau.

“I write some of them, but I didn’t write The Disaster Artist. Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber wrote this screenplay,” Franco said. “I actually enjoy doing one job rather than another. When I’m directing, collaborating with the crew is one of my favourite things, especially working with actors. When you cast a film well, like we did here, and give actors a certain amount of freedom, they can give you things you never thought of. They can surprise you in really exciting ways. But when I’m the director and the actor, it’s hard to surprise myself.”

This was far from the first time Franco had played a real person. One of his breakthrough roles was James Dean in the 2001 television film James Dean, which earned him a Golden Globe. A decade later he received an Academy Award nomination for playing climber Aron Ralston in 127 Hours. But Franco says portraying Wiseau presented a very different challenge.

“Every real-life character requires a different approach, depending on the story and who that person is,” he explained. “Tommy was a little more like James Dean in the sense that he was an actor and people knew him because of The Room, just as they knew Dean from East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. People knew his appearance and his mannerisms, so those external things became important. With Aron Ralston, nobody really knew what he looked or sounded like, and that wasn’t the essential part of the performance. With Tommy and James Dean, the voice, the movement and the physicality mattered. The voice is half the character.”

To play Dean, Franco immersed himself in the actor’s life: he smoked heavily, changed his hair, learned to ride motorcycles and play guitar, met Dean’s friends and relatives and isolated himself from his own family and friends in an attempt to understand the loneliness he believed Dean had felt.

Preparing to play Wiseau was almost the opposite problem. Nobody seemed to know his real background. Wiseau would not disclose his true age, his nationality or the source of the money he spent on The Room. His accent suggested Eastern Europe, but he insisted he was from New Orleans.

“You can’t get a straight answer out of him,” Franco said. “He won’t tell you where he’s from. He won’t tell you where the money came from. Or he’ll tell you, but you still don’t really know. So for a truthful performance I had to go to Greg Sestero and his book.”

Franco also gained access to something even more revealing: audio recordings Wiseau had made of himself years before The Room. Sestero had kept the tapes and shared them with Franco.

“They were recordings of Tommy in private moments, talking about his feelings and how he felt about Hollywood and acting teachers,” Franco said. “Sometimes he sounded lonely. Listening to his voice was incredibly valuable. I played those tapes every day in my car. They gave me a chance to understand some of the struggles he had before The Room.”

Franco’s meticulous preparation seems at odds with the sheer volume of work he has produced. Since beginning his career in the late 1990s, he has acted in scores of films and television programmes while also directing, producing, writing, painting, studying and teaching. For years, he seemed almost incapable of stopping.

By 2017, however, he said that had changed.

“I don’t do that anymore,” Franco laughed. “This year I only acted for about two weeks, on a project for the Coen brothers. I went through a period where I was getting experience as a director and a writer. I learned when I started acting that the more you do something, at least in the beginning, the better you get. There are fundamentals you have to learn. It’s like an athlete: if you want to become professional, you practise until hitting the ball becomes instinctive. Acting, directing and writing are similar. You have to do them a lot to gain experience.”

But Franco also came to recognise another motive behind his relentless schedule.

“Maybe I was also running away from myself,” he said. “I couldn’t really be alone with myself, and I felt more comfortable when I was working, so I did a lot of it. I’ve reached a point now where I’m more comfortable with myself.”

Friends and family had been telling him for years to slow down. Eventually, he listened. “They kept saying, ‘Why are you doing so much, James? What are you racing towards? You have a great life. Why don’t you relax and enjoy it?'”

Making The Disaster Artist helped bring that realisation into focus. “I was working with my brother and with some of my closest friends — Seth Rogen and the whole gang — and the material was great,” Franco said. “I thought: this is as good as it gets. Why not slow down and enjoy it?”

The decision appears to have served him well. Franco’s performance as Wiseau has been widely praised, while The Disaster Artist has emerged as one of the most acclaimed comedies of the season. There is something fitting about that achievement: Franco has made one of the year’s best-reviewed films by telling the story of a man responsible for one of cinema’s most notorious failures.