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Tommy Wiseau is an alien

Not a theory I come up with myself; a number of people have mentioned it. But it fits perfectly: the weird accent, the lack of an origin or even a definitive nationality, the secrecy, and of course, the complete lack of understanding of how humans work. For example, Wiseau apparently says that the reason Claudette's cancer isn't brought up again is that his research indicates that the seriously ill don't like to talk about their condition, suggesting that he's never had much in the way of normal human interaction and that the only "information" about how humans act that he has, he gleaned from dry studies of human behaviour. If you tried to picture an alien making a film, The Room is what you'd get, isn't it?

• Confirmed.
  • I didn't mean that Johnny is an alien, I meant that Tommy Wiseau is an alien. They're quite different propositions.
    • Eh, same difference, really.

Tommy Wiseau is a vampire.

• He's got no discernible origin.
• His accent is impossible to trace.
• On-set accounts indicate he smells bad, possibly of death?
• He certainly looks like a vampire.
• The rooftop scenes were shot on blue screen because he couldn't shoot them on an actual rooftop in actual daylight.
• The terrible acting, writing, and directing is the result of a creature that's long since forgot what emotions are trying to replicate them.
• He's planning on making a movie about vampires, maybe he's trying to tell us something?
• The unintentional over-sexualization of Denny is due to Values Dissonance. Wherever or whenever Tommy Wiseau's originally from, pederasty was perfectly common.
  • My god... It all makes sense!
  • Perhaps he's a Anne Rice-style vampire.
• Also, in "The Tommy Wi-show", he played Mortal Kombat and asked if there was a playable vampire character.

Tommy Wiseau was born into a homeless family, or at least spend a significant portion of his life homeless

Thus, the subject of his documentary and his reluctance to talk about his past. His looks are due to never getting in the habit of washing regularly, and malnourishment.

Tommy Wiseau is not, as commonly believed, French

Given how often in the movie he calls Lisa his "future wife", he doesn't seem to know that the word "fiancée" exists. So while he is definitely some shade of European foreigner, a Frenchmen not knowing of a word that their own language originated would be pretty inexcusable.

• Maybe he wasn't aware that the word is also used in English and was trying to sound more American?
  • Which would put the lie to his claims that he was born in America.

Tommy Wiseau is Cajun

Think about it. According to The Other Wiki he grew up in New Orleans, plus the suffix -eau is VERY common in Cajun/Acadian surnames. His moving about the U.S. and Europe when he was older must've warped his accent a bit. And maybe his mom is Eastern European while his dad is Cajun.

Tommy Wiseau is from Romania

His accent is kind of eastern European... yet also he can come off as French sounding at times as well. Romanian is a romance language like French. the -eau in his name can be found in a fair amount of Romanian surnames. Or maybe if we combine this WMG with the one above it.... (I'm totally pulling this one out of my ass, I know.)

• I'm starting to think that he's Ukrainian. Just watched an episode of SVU, "Hothouse" and the Ukrainian father of a girl who was murdered sounded an awful lot like Tommy Wiseau (Especially when he's yelling).

Tommy Wiseau didn't even know what was going on in his own movie as often as not.

A recent interview in Entertainment Weekly revealed that there was an uncredited script supervisor, Sandy Schklair, who also ended up handling most of the directorial duties (confirmed by one of the actors, who wished to remain anonymous) due to the fact that Wiseau was more concerned with the acting portion of his job. They also said that the scripts that Wiseau created were almost incomprehensible and that the others went to Schklair for help with fixing it. It seems like the rest of the cast knew that they were making a legendarily bad movie and decided it was best to leave Wiseau, who honestly believed he was making a decent movie, out of the loop. (Schklair was left out of the credits because he quit prior to the end of production in order to work on Jumbo Girl.)

Tommy Wiseau is Palpatine.

Look at their faces. Notice the resemblance?

Tommy Wiseau is an immortal Neanderthal

That would explain the weird, not quite French accent. He must have learned English long ago, and the last place he lived in that spoke French was early colonial New Orleans. He actually was born in France, where he says he lived "a long time ago." Given that his face appears to be that of a Neanderthal's, a REALLY long time ago.

• • He's a Neanderthal Vampire! Oogah Boogah!

Tommy Wiseau had a stroke at some point.

It makes as much sense as anything else.

Tommy Wiseau is an oni.

I swear the oni in the game looks like Tommy Wiseau's face on the poster as seen on the main page, minus the hair.

Tommy Wiseau is Muammar al Gaddafi

He tried his hand at film directing because he didn't see why Kim Jong-Il should get all the fun.

Greg Sestero (Mark's actor) had no idea that he was in a movie until the end.

Think about it. His "acting" sounded like he had no idea what was going on. Like when Lisa called him again and why he didn't get that Lisa wanted to have sex with him.

• • I actually didn't think he was that bad an actor. It's just that Mark is written to have no personality.

Chris R's actor, Dan Janjigian, was an actual drug dealer.

Denny's actor seems pretty surprised by Chris R's appearance on set, and Chris himself seems pretty intent on getting Denny's FUCKING MONEY! After Wiseau figured it out and took him to the authorities, Denny probably made the drug deal story up on the spot because they didn't want to lose precious film. Just a possible justification for the poorly written scene.

Johnny is the reason why harsh topics like breast cancer and drug money are dropped after they are mentioned

Ideally because his presence indicates that there should be no need for something as bad as say, owing some guy who tried to kill you for money. Only when Johnny died will those bad things come back at full force, thus reinforcing the Downer Ending.

Johnny's weirdness is the key to his success at the bank

His banking skills are decent enough, and they get customers purely because they want to see this fascinating weirdo. This also explains why he never gets promoted, that's all well and good at his current level but his boss wouldn't want him to have any more control.

Johnny is mentally handicapped and Lisa is his caretaker.

Johnny is related to a wealthy banker who pays for his home, wardrobe, and a full-time caretaker, Lisa. Johnny thinks that he works at the bank because he goes there several times a week to see his relative, who puts him into an empty office and gives him random papers to shuffle around. Johnny gets so far into the delusion that he's convinced that he's earned a "promotion", which is why he's upset when he believes he was passed over. Johnny actually does go upstairs to take a "nap", and his sex scenes with Lisa are dreams, which explain why he's always wrong about how sex works. People only call him "Johnny", never "John" or "Jonathan", as though he's a child.

The lady at the flower shop treats Johnny the way she does because he actually is a regular customer but doesn't know she's ripping him off. She always has a bundle of day-old flowers that some customer forgot to pick up or pay for ready to hand off to Johnny.

Claudette knows that Lisa is woefully underqualified for her job as caretaker, but she doesn't have any qualifications or certification that would allow her to get a job anywhere else. "Honey, you can't take care of yourself," she says. Lisa got that job by seducing Johnny's rich relative.

Denny is an actor, paid off to act as a friend to Johnny. Lisa doesn't like him, but keeps him around because she gets paid to "like" him as well. He doesn't have to pay rent and he gets money for college by humoring the rich eccentric and keeping Johnny entertained. His moment with Chris R. was orchestrated by him, Mark and Lisa to insert some drama into their lives and to deepen The Masquerade.

The same goes with the people at the birthday party at the end. They were all (apart from the "main characters") extras, paid off to act as friends to keep Johnny happy.

In short, everybody in the movie is in on Johnny's disability and either humors him, takes advantage of him or is a paid off extra.

Johnny is a Reality Warper who is losing his powers.

At the beginning he is a prosperous man with a well-paying job, a beautiful future wife with whom he has had a seven year relationship with (yet she looks 18), many friends, and is generally adored by everyone. This is because he can warp reality to his specifications, though it is limited mostly to situations and personalities. Then his ability starts fading: he loses out on his promotion and his future wife realizes she doesn't love him (and never has, only thought she did because of said reality warping) attempts to exert free will by seducing his best friend who is also exerting his free will. As Johnny desperately tries to fix everything while his powers continue to fade (causing many of the plot holes, inconsistencies, and dropped subplots), Reality Ensues more often: breast cancer, troubles with a drug dealer, and more. Seeing Mark and Lisa together at the party proved to him that his powers were soon going to disappear completely (until then, they had at least kept the affair somewhat discreet) and unable to handle it, he takes his life. The oddness of the characters afterwards is the residual reality warping still affecting them (until reality finally fixes itself).

Johnny kept a pistol in a box labeled "In Case of Betrayal, Open Box."

If you look closely at Johnny's gun, it's not the same model as Chris-R's gun. Johnny knew that his life may someday go to pot so he bought a gun as a contingency plan.

That, or it was meant to be the same gun as Chris-R's and Tommy Wiseau is incompetent at keeping continuity. Either explanation is equally plausible.

Johnny's ideas for the bank aren't as great as he thought they were.

Johnny has a very weak grasp of how banking works. The ideas he gave the bank manager was stuff like "I think it would be a good idea if the bank gave people money when they asked for it. They could pay us back later, and give us a little extra so we make money." The next day, he spotted the loan department for the first time, asked what they did there, and said to himself "Wow! They already put my ideas into practice, hah?"

Johnny works at a bank, but he's not a banker.

Johnny's secretly a low-level janitor or similar at the bank. That's why he's so vague about everything going on at the bank. The "upcoming promotion" and his "ideas" for the bank were all a lie. It also explains why nobody at the bank seems to mind his disheveled appearance. When he gets to work, he takes off his wrinkly suit, puts on a jumpsuit, and gets to mopping. He can't tell Mark about the "new client" because he knows nothing about the client, he just heard people talking about it at the bank. His constant hangdog expression is because he's been living beyond his means for years, and the bill collectors have been hounding him for a while now. He didn't want to give money to Claudette's friend not only because he doesn't know her, but because he's already massively in debt. He'd been considering suicide for months now, and being betrayed was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Mark is a Magnificent Bastard Depraved Bisexual with No Fourth Wall.

• Mark is aware he's in a movie, commenting on the soundtrack when Lisa seduces him. Others seem to be aware of it too, but only he takes advantage of it. By maintaining a "sympathetic" facade for most of the film, he can do almost whatever he wants within the context of the film, including vanishing from a frolic in the park with Johnny to go try and get it on with Lisa, then returning an hour later wearing different clothes.
• When he, Johnny, and Pete are all talking and Lisa shows up with Denny, Mark gives Denny one of the most brutal eye-rapings ever, mirroring the one Denny gave Lisa at the beginning. It's not hard to imagine that Mark's planning on taking Johnny's place as Lisa's future husband, with Denny as a little bit on the side.
• We see him doing drugs at least once, and he was probably high far more often, and he was willing to throw a friend off a building while doing so. Note that they never said what happened to Chris-R, just that "it's clear", and that the last time we see him Mark has a gun to his head. Clearly, Mark took Chris-R down into the basement and blew his brains out, possibly because Chris-R was moving in on his territory, Denny.
• By the end of the film, Mark's the boyfriend of the defacto owner of a building in San Francisco, has a monopoly on the local drug trade, has a man child sex slave, and the one man who stood in his way is now dead. Unfortunately, the party-goers all know that Mark was sleeping with Lisa, and the gun Johnny killed himself with has Mark's fingerprints on it...
  • Yes, but Johnny had his hands on the gun too. Plus, you're forgetting gun residue - Johnny would have it all over him and Mark wouldn't.

Denny is prostituting himself to pay for college.

He already shows signs of being at least a bisexual (See his eagerness to join Johnny and Lisa and his disappointment when he's unable to). His whole exchange with Chris R is what you'd expect between a Prostitute and his/her Pimp (He calls him "Baby.") He only says that he bought drugs off of him as a cover story as it was the scenario least likely to freak them out. After taking Chris R to jail, Johnny then figured out the truth and decided to pay for his tuition so he wouldn't prostitute himself anymore.

Claudette has Alzheimer's.

She seems to always forget that Lisa fell out of love with Johnny, so much so that he is always taken by surprise whenever Lisa tells her so; this would also explain why Lisa seems exasperated every time he has to tell her the same thing over again. Her breast cancer is never mentioned again either because she forgot about it, or perhaps sometime in the past she was misdiagnosed with it and it became a recurring memory. After the fight at Johnny's birthday party, Claudette goes upstairs and calmly talks to Lisa as if nothing serious has happened.

Claudette is Mary Worth.

Do I even need to explain further?

Helping engaged women cheat on their fiancés is a hobby of Mark's.

Notice the best man in this video: Coincidence?

Claudette is fully aware that Lisa is a lying, conniving bitch.

This completely explains her complete nonchalance when Lisa says "He got drunk last night and hit me." Her response of "Johnny doesn't drink!" actually implies she knows that Lisa's lying, and instead is defending Johnny.

• Or Claudette has no problem with her daughter's actions (being that she's a lying, conniving bitch herself), and is trying to subtly point out to Lisa that she needs to make her lies more convincing.

Everyone in the movie is just bilking Johnny for money and gifts

Mark, Lisa, Claudette, et al, have all seen how generous Johnny is, and are merely pretending to like him so that he'll buy them stuff. Note that Claudette is angry with Johnny for not giving her friend money to buy a house. The whole movie is a result of Mark and Lisa starting to get tired of pretending to like him. Denny isn't really a socially awkward Man Child, he just acts like one because it makes Johnny feel like he's a father figure. Note during the Chris R. scene, he seems to break character. For one moment, he goes from whining and crying to screaming "You're not my fucking mother!" at Claudette, then goes back to the sniveling. In his frustration, he accidentally let them see his real personality. Denny's extreme reaction to Johnny's suicide is because he realized that he's lost his gravy train.

The sex scenes are POV shots.

Denny: I just like to watch you guys.

• This is both the funniest and creepiest WMG I think I've ever seen.
• Also explains why Denny is so open and confident that Lisa will kiss him: He knew about her affair with Mark, and figured she'd be just as willing with him and/or was trying to drop sadistic hints that her secret was blown.
  • If this is the case, then perhaps Denny's lust for Lisa is just a cover story, and there's a reason the scenes focus so much on Tommy Wiseau's wrinkly, pulsating buttox.

Johnny was actually murdered by Denny

And the whole movie is a story that Denny made up on the spot to cover the truth, but he got really carried away with it.

• And he's acting it out while he makes it up. This explains Johnny's bizarre dialog and accent; it's Denny's rather over-the-top impersonation of how a French guy talks, and he's not doing it very well.
• It also explains why everyone in the movie is constantly going on about how beautiful Lisa is. Denny was a Stalker with a Crush, and assumed that everyone thought she was as beautiful as he did. This is why he killed Johnny, to Murder the Hypotenuse.

The Room is, either deliberately or coincidentally, the Anti-Citizen Kane

Many people have refered to The Room as the Citizen Kane of bad movies before, but I'm pretty sure it was only meant in the sense that it's the best of the worst. However, both films are very similar in some aspects, the main difference being that while Citizen Kane made these aspects work, The Room... didn't. Now, consider this:

• Both had one person as the director, producer, and lead actor.
• Both cast new actors who had never been in a movie before in leading roles.
• Both are on one end on a scale of quality, with Citizen Kane being the best and The Room being the worst.
• Both have a scene with the main character destroying their rooms after being left by their wife/future wife near the end.
• Both feature affairs in the plot, though this one might be pushing it a bit.
• Both Kane and Johnny are betrayed by their best friend in one way or another. Again, might be pushing it a bit.
• Both Kane and Johnny are dead by the end of the movie.
  • For bonus points, the scene at the end where Johnny destroys his apartment was meant as a deliberate Shout-Out to Citizen Kane.
  • Tommy Wiseau himself had a webshow, and his first episode was spent comparing Film/TheRoom to Film/CitizenKane. Which is about as close as we're going to get to calling this one confirmed.

The Room is Tommy Wiseau's Springtime for Hitler.

• The film's budget was $6 million. However, with the poor image quality, the use of only a few locations and little set construction, the apparent lack of continuity editing, the ill-fitting costumes, and a lead actor filling in as line producer and assistant to the director, is there any way $6 million could have gone into the production? Even with Tommy Wiseau's poor purchasing decisions vis-a-vis cameras and the rights to birthday songs ... $6 million?
• Tommy Wiseau will not even hint at where the $6 million came from. Not that it's anyone's business but his possibly-nefarious, possibly-vampiric investors', but still. That's awfully suspect.
• With his $6 million, Wiseau made a So Bad It's Good/ So Bad It's Horrible movie that was sure to tank, especially with its extremely limited release, and which conveniently was way under budget. Once the movie failed and it was clear that none of his investors would be getting their fuckin' money! back, Wiseau would be free to leave the U.S. - with the rest of the budget - for Kuala Lampur! Or Mars. Wherever he's from.
  • You sir have effectively decribed the best Xanatos Gambit I've heard in a while.
  • Furthermore, once the film tanked at the box office, Wiseau was able to repurchase the exclusive rights to the film from the investors for pennies on the dollar, leaving him free to profit from it by screening it at midnight and selling DVDs to fans of So Bad It's Good.

The Room is a The Sims movie

Repetitive and irrelevant conversations, limited leisure activities, time spent in shops excessively brief, little-to-no motivations behind actions...because the unseen player is controlling all the sims in the room. Johnny's suicide was via a third party mod.

The Room really was supposed to be a dark comedy.

However, Wiseau's script supervisor, the above-mentioned Sandy Schklair, didn't see it that way. Either he didn't understand the comedy, understood it but didn't find it funny, or thought that the comedy got in the way of what he saw as a great story. Regardless, Schklair rewrote the script and instructed the actors to treat it as a drama, which Wiseau either begrudgingly allowed or didn't notice. However, Schklair did a real lousy job covering his tracks; he basically got rid of some scenes, added some new ones, and left the rest completely intact. This explains tons:

• Denny's creepy behavior was supposed to be a lot more obvious, but the really questionable stuff was cut out.
• Claudette's breast cancer was a subplot that was completely removed (not sure what jokes you could make out of breast cancer, but there you go).
• We were supposed to be disturbed by Johnny's nonchalant "what a story, Mark!" That's the joke.
• Ditto for "anyway, how's your sex life?" and "I did not hit her, I DID NAHT! Oh hai Mark!"
• Mark's obliviousness to Lisa's advances was meant to be clearer, but since the actors were told to play it serious, that didn't come across.
• The endless amount of football scenes would have had even more examples, as an Overly Long Running Gag.
• "Oh hai!" was also a Running Gag.
• The huge number of overdubbed lines is a result of Schklair making post-production edits of lines he considered too funny.
• The drug dealer scene was clumsily thrown in to add some drama.

The Room is a sequel to Plumbers Don't Wear Ties.

• The two Johnnys are the exact same character—both of them are Marty Stus that have the respect of a lot of people and can cause Love At First Sight. His face got horribly scarred before The Room.
• Jane is Lisa. She catches herself between two men, both for whom her love is completely superficial, but she went a little further in Plumbers Don't Wear Ties due to being younger.
• The boss, Thresher, is Denny. He's a time traveler, and in both stories he is a sexually agressive, possibly mentally-disabled person that gets into something illegal.
• Claudette is the Straw Feminist second narrator. Just because.
• Lastly, Mark is the man with the upside down fucking chicken mask. Again, just because.

The Room is a sequel to 10 Things I Hate About You.

In Ten Things, Heath Ledger's character, Patrick, has long curly black hair and speaks with an accent - not nearly as weird as Johnny's, but he's still noted as having one. Sound familiar? Obviously, he didn't age well. Lisa is an older Kat.

The story (intentionally, or otherwise) is told from the perspective of an "unreliable narrator" with a serious mental disability.

The way that things play out makes very little sense, to a normal person. People come and go through Johnny's house for no explained reason; they wear clothes that make no sense for the occasion; their emotions and tone-of-voice don't match the situation, and so on. However, Johnny (and perhaps Tommy Wiseau) notice nothing out of the ordinary about any of this.

This is because the protagonist (and writer/director/star, perhaps) does not understand how people work, or maybe even how the world works. From his point of view, this is just the way things are: people randomly show up in certain places, and randomly leave; they change their clothes and tones of voice from time to time; and he constantly hears phrases like "That's me!" and "Oh hi Mark." Johnny/Tommy doesn't understand that people have reasons for doing these things. From his point of view, they just do them.

In addition to being laughably bad, this film might be an insight into the mind of a disabled person with no concept of cause and effect.

The Room is the fever dream of another Johnny.

Nny gets the flu, feels crappy and accidentally falls asleep. He has a dream about what his life would be like if he were a normal guy and not a crazy serial killer, but because he's sick and doesn't really understand normal people to begin with, all the conversations and events are extremely weird and stilted, his sick, delusional mind creating the many non-sequiturs in the dialogue and storyline. Johnny is now his idea of what sociable and friendly must be like, petting doggies and doing "nice" things for his friends.

• Denny/Danny is an aged up stand in for Squee, whom he is able to mentor and be a father figure for in the dream.
• The nonsensical football-toss scenes are what he imagines normal people must do for fun.
• The sex scenes are disturbing and nasty because that's what he thinks sex is like.
• His fever finally breaks in the infamous suicide scene as he starts to remember who he is again.

The "bank" Johnny works for is, or is affiliated with, the Bluth Company.

They already put his ideas into practice! Namely, his terrible chicken impressions.

Regarding the alien species at the ending of the game that Johnny is a member of

They reproduce asexually. To do otherwise would require female members of the species.

How the film got its name....

Someone looked at the first page of Tommy's untitled script and said "Be sure to leave room for the title." Tommy's mind is so scrambled he thought they said "Be sure to have 'The Room' for the title"