Mocking ʺThe Roomʺ at the Mayfair

Last Saturday I went to my first ever interactive screening of a movie, the "Mock-Along" screening of The Room at the Mayfair Theatre. 

For those of you who don't know, The Room is the worst movie ever. Seriously. It's been called "the Citizen Kane of terrible movies" by Entertainment Weekly, and has been riffed by the best, including Rifftrax and Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Adult Swim has shown it for April Fools Day pretty regularly, and it essentially has gained the biggest bad-movie cult status since Rocky Horror. Except it's actually terrible and not just weird.

The plot? Hold on, let me see if I can find one. Okay so, this guy Johnny, (played by Tommy Wiseau, who also wrote, directed, produced, and executive produced the film) is in love with this girl, whatsername. Doesn't matter. And she starts cheating on him with his best friend, because women, amiright? There are other sub-plots going on, but since most of them go absolutely no where and are barely noticeable to begin with, they're not really worth explaining. Eventually Johnny finds out about the two-timing, and (SPOILER ALERT) kills himself. Everyone is sad. Girl gets her comeuppance. That bitch.

I can't even begin to explain how bad this movie is. If that plot summary doesn't give you a good idea, the movie is terribly acted by pretty much everyone but Wiseau seems to be the worst, filmed so poorly it goes in and out of focus and some scenes are used multiple times, and contains something like five cringe inducing sex scenes, set to the most godawful 80's love-music you've ever heard. In fact, the whole movie looks like it was made in the late 80s. It was made in 2003.

You need to see this movie. But more importantly, you need to see it with other people.

The Mayfair theatre in Ottawa invites you to see this wonderful travesty of cinema in a big, beautiful theatre full of people who have seen it probably too many times. On top of mocking and riffing on the movie as loudly and proudly as you want while it plays, there's actually a list of things to do while watching, including:

• Yelling "SPOON!" and throwing spoons at the screen when you see background art featuring a spoon (and there's a lot more of that then there's any reason to be)
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• Yelling "I PUT MY EVIL INTO YOU" when Lisa's mother boops her on the nose (Lisa's mother having cancer is one of many plot lines brought up and abandoned)
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• Saying "Hi" to Danny when he shows up and "Bye" when he leaves. He does this a lot, rarely staying on screen for more then five minutes.
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• Telling the movie to "FOCUS" when it unfocuses, which it does a lot. And if it happens to focus during one of too many horrible sex scenes, tell it to "UNFOCUS! OH GOD UNFOCUS!"

And that's just a sample, you can find the full list at the Mayfair's blog. 

I'd never seen The Room before but I'd heard a lot about it, and wanted to see it. I love movies "so bad they're good," and even a few movies that are so bad they're just bad. I was a little intimidated going to an interactive screening like this being a first timer, but honestly it made it even better. It's a lot easier to laugh at and make fun of a bad movie in a group, even if you don't know everyone in the group. It took me a bit to catch on to the riffing, even reading the list ahead of time, but once I did all inhibitions were dropped and I was yelling and throwing spoons with the rest of them. Sometimes the yelling made it a little hard to hear the movie, but let's be honest this isn't the sort of movie you need to pay attention to to understand.

I had a great time and would recommend this to everyone who loves movies so bad they're hilarious, and anyone looking for a night out in Ottawa. The Mayfair does a screening like this once a month, their next one is on October 19th, but their calender is available on the website for future screenings. And of course, if you're not in Ottawa you can do this exact same thing from home - I think this would make an awesome party. Especially since there's also a drinking game - but I warn you, you will get slammed.

Links to Tear You Apart:
The Room Wikipedia
The Room IMDB
The Trailer (on Youtube)
The Official Website

"HAHA WHAT A STORY MARK!"