Nosh 93: 'Disaster Artist,' Best 12 (+1) Movies of 2017

By David Elliott

                                                  

Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, fresh each Friday.

APPETIZER: Review of The Disaster Artist

As usual, Noel Coward said it best: “Strange how potent cheap music is.” But Sir Noel paid meager attention to cheap movies, and I don’t mean just low-budget junk. Some of the cheesiest ones cost quite a bundle, like Independence Day, Sahara (the McConaughey, not the Bogart), Nine, Australia and Star! – the last even had Daniel Massey playing Noel Coward. The campy truth is that many movie fans develop an itch in the armpit of their taste, and for really awful films we must scratch.

Such a turd flambé is The Room, which star, director, writer, producer Tommy Wiseau gave to the world at a “glamorous” L.A. premiere in 2003. After many viewers left early, the theater posted a No Refunds sign. But then came the miracle: name talents like James Franco and Seth Rogen touted their tortured fascination. A cult was born. The Room has fan sites, midnight giggle shows and The Disaster Artist, a 2013 memoir by Wiseau partner and co-star Greg Sestero. Probably The Room has earned back its reputed $6 million cost (Wiseau seems to have lavish private funds, and maybe some shady investors).

The title location is the San Francisco seduction apartment of Johnny (Wiseau), where stagey, almost painted lighting flatters lamps and curtains but leaves actors stranded in a dead zone of helpless choices. Johnny is a glowering, goth-haired “banker” whose Baltic or Balkan accent often dips into gibberish. To borrow the meat metaphor (“filet Fane”) applied to Stephen Boyd’s rotten actor in The Oscar, Johnny is Polish sausage aspiring to beef jerky. With his cyber-stiff moves and slugged diction, he personifies failure, but pretty-boy Mark (Sestero) is entranced by Johnny’s ego plumage. Their kinky bond is so adhesive that the woman they both “love” is driven to nymphomania, or maybe just mindless panic. The plot seems extruded from an Enigma machine on another planet, and dreary, soft-porn episodes emphasize Tommy/Johnny’s bulging meat magnet, his rump. There is a distinct odor of De Niro’s Jake La Motta, faking Brando schtick in Raging Bull.

Using Sestero’s book James Franco has made The Disaster Artist. He stars as Wiseau, and his younger brother Dave plays Sestero. Dave echoes James’s early fame playing James “You’re tearing me apart!” Dean, in a 2001 TV film. In a bravura sibling transfer, James has given primal Dean fever to Dave, while he discharges the smoldering Brandonic moods and “Stella!” blasts. The Disaster Artist is a somewhat satirical re-shoot of The Room, plus background scenes rich in gaudy, motivational wallpaper. James Franco, reaching for kamikaze kicks (and kitsch), takes bold chances. His Tommy is a quasi-Brando Quasimodo, festeringly insecure, short on talent but also canny. Sensing his vanity flop’s rescue by slumming hipsters, Wiseau declared it an intentional black comedy. In essence he jumped to Late Shatner cash-in status, without ever achieving Star Trek.

Tommy, in both Wiseau and Franco modes, lacks the naïve charm of Johnny Depp in Ed Wood, and the funny complexity of Martin Landau’s Lugosi in that film. But the Francos rocket up on their vivid arc of brotherly fervency, and most of the game cast rises with them (not Seth Rogen, doing his usual, hey-whatever snarks). The Disaster Artist has road kill charisma. It is like a craftier version of gonzo actor Timothy Carey’s ludicrous ego trip The World’s Greatest Sinner. So go ahead, scratch that itch! We don’t get low-down highs like this very often.  

   

SALAD (A List)

My Dozen Best (plus One) Movie Experiences Found in 2017, in loose order of personal preference:

1. The Florida Project – Sean Baker’s tough, entirely humane vision of desperate lives in a big, purple motel in Disney’s shadow. It pivots on wow kid Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite as her mom and, at his most appealing,  manager Willem Dafoe (see Nosh 88).

2. Jackie – Chilean maestro Pablo Larrain made the most personally felt film about the JFK tragedy, capturing it through superb Natalie Portman’s angry, anguished Jacqueline (Nosh 49).

3. Wind River – Fist-faced Jeremy Renner reaches expressive apex as a federal tracker solving a Montana reservation murder case, in Taylor Sheridan’s superbly rooted, emotionally searing neo-Western (Nosh 78).

4. Norman – The nuances Richard Gere opens up as a glib schmoozer, finding his Jewish soul, is a New York hustle far beyond Trump and Madoff. Joseph Cedar wrote and directed expertly (Nosh 66).

5. Lady Bird – A superb cluster of female performances across generations (Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lois Smith) centers on a young woman’s reach for independence, directed and written by Greta Gerwig as a deep soaper, bubbling with wit and revelation (Nosh 90).

6. Paterson – Inspired by his life and route, a New Jersey bus driver (Adam Driver) writes subtle poems. The cinematic poetry is Jim Jarmusch’s feather-fine command of every subtle sight, mood and moment (Nosh 56).
7. Neruda – Another poet’s tale. Chilean master Pablo Neruda is depicted in radical youth by Luis Ghecco, with Gael García Bernal his fascist pursuer, in one more marvel from director Pablo Larrain (Nosh 60).

8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Plenty of Heartland heartlessness, violence, sneaky twists in the Trumpian red zone. Actors Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, etc., give real grace to Martin McDonaugh’s crypto-Lynchean vision of a town where revenge is a dish best served hot (Nosh 90).

9. Hidden Figures – Three black women of science (ace actors: Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Taraji P. Henson) get our young space program off the launch pad in Theodore Melfi’s rousing lesson in history, math and sisterly soul (Nosh 48).

10. Lucky – Harry Dean Stanton left as a true star at 91, exiting with amusing, acerbic grace in John Carroll Lynch’s salute that includes a lovely Mexican song from HDS (Nosh 86).

11. A Quiet Passion – Another poet, no less than Emily Dickinson. English master stylist Terence Davies’s austerely deep view of her Amherst milieu and discrete passions let Cynthia Nixon, as Emily, top her long career (Nosh 67).

12. Faces Places – Old (88) auteur AgnesVarda chalks up another marvel, touring France with whimsical photo-site artist JR. It is a bright, surprising, satisfying trip (Nosh 84).

And….

13. The Disaster Artist – See the stunned review above.

Also definitely worth my time, and I hope yours: The Big Sick (Nosh 72), Chasing Train (68), Chavela (91), Chuck (66), Columbus (78), Fences (53), The Glass Castle (76), I Am Not Your Negro (55), I, Daniel Blake (70), Julieta (61), Kedi (58), LBJ (87), Letters From Baghdad (74), Lion (48),  Logan Lucky (77), Marie Curie (74), Neither Wolf Nor Dog (81), The Red Turtle (59), Take Every Wave (87), Wonder Woman (69) and Wonderstruck (89).

WINE (Vin Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)

Orson is away this week to South America, looking again for the fabled lost print of The Magnificent Ambersons. But did Che Guevara find it in Bolivia?

ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)

Raising money to make The Producers, about a Broadway hustler overselling investment shares in a new show, Mel Brooks “probably didn’t know of an obscure precedent. Appraising Orson Welles’s Othello, Frank Brady states that Welles ‘sold more than 100 percent of the film to sundry investors, but the financial machinations were so complicated that it is difficult to ascertain exactly how much was sold to whom, and probably Orson lost track himself.” (From the Zero Mostel/The Producers chapter in my book Starlight Rising: Acting Up in Movies, available from Kindle, Nook and Amazon.)

DESSERT (An Image)

A great movie image is more than a still, it’s a distillation.

Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) explodes his Brando ammo in The Room (Wiseu-Films 2003; director Tommy Wiseau, cinematographer Todd Barron).

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