S1E6 - The Room: It's still TEARING ME APART

And welcome back to Coolidge After Dark. I'm R.C. Beiler.

And I'm Jenn Evans.

And yeah, we're coming at you with a little micro episode, little update, because we went and resaw a film that, well, it's what we started this whole project doing.

True.

Went and saw The Room.

Yeah, so welcome to 2:34 AM.

'Cause yeah, we went and saw— they did a midnight showing. Not only did we get to see The Room again, but it was introed and, and I guess hosted by Greg Sestero, one of the stars of the film.

Yeah, Q&A'd.

They did a Q&A, they did a scene reading from the script.

Yeah.

And he also just did a little intro of his own as well.

Mm-hmm.

But it was also in Movie House 1.

Yes, the main one, the best one. Totally filled up. It must have been sold out or close to.

It felt like it.

And when they did a count of who had seen it before and who hadn't, it seemed to be about half the theater hadn't. So this was their first time.

But despite that, the crowd was like into it.

Raucous.

Like, I don't know if it's because the people that have been there before were kind of like feeling the energy or if it was just because maybe they already knew what to do, but it just felt like everyone was very involved.

Yeah. I was wondering since this is only my second time seeing it, I was wondering if like some of the same jokes were gonna be carried over, which I know like on the internet they are. And like most of it was from the first time, like water and go, go, go, go, go when things pan and the spoons. So many spoons.

Yeah, an absurd number of spoons.

Yeah, we brought 24 and that wasn't enough.

Yeah, we spent those very quickly.

Yeah, we did.

I was saying towards the end that I'm surprised that the people in the front weren't collecting the spoons that were hitting them and throwing them back at people.

Full admission, I definitely hit the people in front of me.

Well, I was trying to aim towards the aisles because I was like—

I mean, I was too, but I didn't play sports for a reason. I kept hitting the guy 3 rows in front of us. But I would pick up some of the spoons that landed in our aisle and throw them too, so that was fun. But yeah, I was glad we ended up at the back for that.

Yeah, yeah. It was a great showing. And yeah, so Greg Sestero was there. We got to see him actually and meet him very briefly right before the film because he had a merch booth.

Every type of branded merch you can imagine. Every quote on every t-shirt.

T-shirts, hats, underwear.

Framed photos of spoons.

Framed photos of spoons.

I'm trying to think of the most unhinged thing. They had the script. The underwear was pretty unhinged, the Tommy Wiseau underwear. Purchasing a framed photo of a spoon. The framed photo of the spoon was pretty funny.

That's the most unhinged thing.

That might be the unhinged thing.

'Cause it's not branded, it's just—

It's the spoon, yeah, it looks like it is from the movie, like a Walmart frame and a stock photo of a spoon.

I purchased a significant amount of merch. I got the movie on Blu-ray, I got the book, that Greg wrote, picked up a poster, and he was kind enough to sign everything.

Yeah, he signed it, oh hi, RC.

Yeah, yeah, all 3 are signed, oh hi, RC.

Very funny.

It was very cool.

He's very nice.

Yeah, he was very nice. The scene reading was— I wasn't expecting that. I knew they were gonna do the Q&A.

Yeah, we have a little picture that we'll put up on our Instagram, but they just took 2 people from the audience that were very into it, and they did the—

Those are just 2 audience people?

Yeah, yeah.

I did not catch that.

I'm gonna out him. The kid that read for Tommy Johnny Wiseau was the one that ran down Naruto style in the middle of the movie down the aisle.

I saw the kid run. I didn't realize it was the same guy.

That was the same kid. So yeah, they picked like a girl and a boy out to read for Johnny and Lisa. And then they had Mark. Mark just was like not reading. He knows his lines at this point. And then they had Mark, the lovely, wonderful program director of Coolidge Corner, reading like set blocking. So it was very funny. It was just a quick little scene with all of them.

Yeah, very interesting start to the night.

Yeah.

What was also funny, because we were in line waiting, because we thought we were in line waiting to get in, and it was not too long after that I realized, oh no, wait, we're waiting, we're in the line that's gonna go to Mark's merch booth.

Committed, and RC bought everything he brought.

Yeah, not everything. No, I was gonna say again, I didn't get the tie-dye, so—

He didn't. He held himself back, or the script. Or the 5,000 quote t-shirts.

There's things that I didn't need, but I enjoyed what I got. There were things I would have considered getting anyway.

Yeah.

Very interested as to if this is like a circuit that he does, 'cause they—

I think so, they've talked about that before. And in the Disaster Artist movie, they showed a little clip of Tommy Wiseau doing this.

Yeah, yeah.

That he will go places.

Yeah.

And Greg Sestero said he had been here years ago.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, doing this.

Well, they said Coolidge has been playing it pretty much Once a month since 2007.

Which is fucking crazy.

And tonight we specifically saw the 35mm.

For the first time in 10 years, they took that out.

Yeah, and there was— because we saw this in Moviehouse 1 with the 35mm, and the last time we saw the non-35mm in Moviehouse 2.

2, yeah.

And there was like a noticeable amount of like detailed difference between the two.

I noticed it, yeah. I mean, the— it honestly just made the bad filming worse.

Oh yeah.

Like it made—

Well, the focus stuff, in particular for me. Yes.

And when you have characters against like a green screen backdrop, it just, oh my God, they just popped out in a really horrible way.

Well, I nudged you at one point and I said that I don't think I noticed this upon previous viewings, but seeing it like this, like full 35mm, that like the rooftop that they're on looks to be overlooking like a docking area.

Yeah. It doesn't look like a residential area. No, you're right. It looks like it's, yeah. Both with the fog, which San Francisco, sure, but like, yeah, it looked like— the building they show from the outside doesn't match the rooftop in that way. Not in the least.

Yeah.

But it made like the Chris R scene when he went to go get Denny on the rooftop spookier.

Oh, yeah.

That was crazy.

It's one of the best scenes.

It's so stupid. Don't worry about it, he's going to jail. It'll always get me. But I honestly, watching this back a second time, The scene where Lisa is at the very end about to leave Johnny and Johnny's pouting in the bathroom or closet or something and she's like, are you coming out? And he's like, in a minute, bitch. That'll get me forever, I think. That was so funny.

It's so funny. I think the Chris Hardwick scene was the one that really, again, I think on this second viewing—

He's going to jail. Well, no, not just that.

Just the 0 to 100 of, just give me 5 minutes, gun comes out.

I'll give you 5 fucking minutes. Yeah, no, that did go really fast.

But yeah, we just wanted to take a moment because we took the opportunity when we saw this was happening to go and see it and we wanted to give that update to the rest of y'all. Yeah.

So if you see this happen in the future, we recommend it. I mean—

Well, we definitely recommend a midnight viewing.

Yeah, go to a midnight viewing. But like if Tommy Wiseau pops up in the future, we're going.

Oh, absolutely.

But if Greg Sestero comes around again, we encourage you to go. That was really fun.

It was cool. Yeah, it's really cool that he does that.

Yeah.

All right, well, with that being said, I'm R.C. Beiler.

And I'm Jenn Evans.

Keep it Coolidge, everybody.