Lisa Exits “The Room” | THE AWL
EJ Dickson | June 28th, 2013
About ten minutes into The Room, a film that is considered the worst ever made, the actress Juliette Danielle has to make love to her fiancé, who is played by the film’s writer and director, Tommy Wiseau. They are atop a bed of rose petals. Soft R&B plays. The camera lingers over Johnny’s pale bottom. Cascades of mermaid-length black hair spill over his back cleavage. As he thrusts into what seems to be Lisa’s belly button, she looks at him chidingly, as if he’s a soused comic who’s just told a fairly racist joke at an open mic.
Like most soft-core sex scenes, the love scene in The Room is a little awkward and profoundly un-erotic; the whole time you want to give the man a haircut and the woman a hug, or a fistful of Valium. Yet at the Lower East Side’s Landmark Sunshine Cinemas, which hosts now infamous midnight screenings of The Room on the first Saturday of every month, the scene elicits an entirely different reaction—one that borders on absolute malice.