Oh hi readers. Did you know that test audiences for James Franco’s The Disaster Artist refused to believe that the film was based on a true story? In an interview with SlashFilm, The Disaster Artist co-screenwriter Scott Neustadter reveals that some test audience members thought the films story was entirely fictional:
“It’s funny, because when we were testing this movie initially with an audience of people, the one thing that they said at the end, which we couldn’t believe, was that they didn’t think any of this was true. Even though it says, ‘Based on a True Story,’ they just thought it was another Franco/Rogen [project], making something up and a funny character they were doing. The side-by-sides — some people still watch this movie and cannot believe, until the side-by-sides, that there is footage out there like what we shot. So that’s something that I think we, in telling the story, were cognizant of. Truth is stranger than fiction. Let’s lean in on more of what actually went down. And there are enough mysteries that go unanswered that we kept in the soufflé also.”
Now, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room — a film that taught us the meaning of true love, and the proper way to toss a football — is completely, and utterly bonkers. It stands to reason that the production for said film, and really any situation involving Tommy Wiseau, would also prove to be fairly insane. Could anyone really blame them for not believing the plot of this film? It’s part of what makes some of these cult-classic films so endearing. From The Miami Connection, The Room, Birdemic… all the way to Samurai Cop: the fact that someone actively created these, with the intention of making a good film, almost defies belief.
SEE ALSO: Read our reviews of The Disaster Artist here and here
With The Disaster Artist, James Franco transforms the tragicomic true-story of aspiring filmmaker and infamous Hollywood outsider Tommy Wiseau—an artist whose passion was as sincere as his methods were questionable—into a celebration of friendship, artistic expression, and dreams pursued against insurmountable odds. Based on Greg Sestero’s best-selling tell-all about the making of Tommy’s cult-classic disasterpiece The Room (“The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made”), The Disaster Artist is a hilarious and welcome reminder that there is more than one way to become a legend—and no limit to what you can achieve when you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.
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Originally published December 14, 2017. Updated December 19, 2019.
