Have you ever seen The Room?
If not, do yourself a favor and watch it when you don’t care about losing a few hours of your life. It is on several “Worst Movies Ever” lists and is definitely a terrible movie. The director, writer and lead actor is a bizarre man. Tommy Wiseau travels the country making appearances at showings of the films. When we found out that he was coming to Houston, we bought our tickets immediately and were so pumped to see the crazy live. We had no idea what we were in store for. The movie has gained quite the cult following and the experience was unlike any other I’ve had at the movies. It definitely qualifies as a Myriadventure, but getting there proved to be one too.
Here’s what happened:
After spending a lovely evening at a housewarming party for a friend, we realized we were cutting it close for the midnight showing. We got in the car and realized that we had forgotten that the car was in dire need of gas. We make it out of the parking garage and David says, “If it starts to lurch when we turn, then we are in trouble.” At that point, we turned onto the street and the car ran out of gas. We coasted down the road and were bursting with pride as we coasted into a gas station. What we failed to notice until we were done high-fiving each other was that the gas station we had so beautifully coasted to was closed.
We pushed the car down the street toward another gas station that is about a mile away. We make it into the parking lot to find that this gas station is also closed. At this point, two people have stopped and gotten out of their cars to help us. The only open gas station on the area is across the street from where we are. In order to get the car there, we would have had to make our way through a busy intersection and perform a U-Turn. David went across the street to buy a gas can, but they don’t sell them. Naturally. I headed to the CVS across the street to buy some gallon water jugs. When I make it back, David has done the same thing from the gas station and is filling a jug with gas. We make a paper funnel and sloppily pour the gallon into the car. After deciding this is good enough, we head to the theatre, reeking of gasoline. We were supposed to be there at midnight and we arrive at the theatre 30 minutes late.
The movie hadn’t even started. Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero(an actor in the movie) were in the lobby signing autographs and taking photos when we walked in. We got some great seats and the pre-show Q & A session started. Tommy was delightfully awkward and we were highly amused by him.
The theatre was packed with people yelling and laughing and from the minute the movie began, people were quoting along and throwing spoons at the screen. There were chants and cheers and lots of howling. We had the chance to sneak out of the movie and wait in line to meet Tommy and Greg. They took pictures with us and we asked Greg a question about our favorite part in the movie and got their autographs on a GIANT poster and some DVDs.
After hob knobbing with the celebrities, we made it back into the theatre to finish the movie. We noticed a very strong and specific aroma around us. Someone was smoking weed in the theatre. It did not take very long for us to realize that that someone was a kid right in front of us. I can only assume he was using a small portable vaporizing pipe because there was no smoke. It was obnoxious. After a few minutes of this, David tapped the guy on the shoulder and said, “Would you mind?” To which the kid responded, “Oh, sorry bro, did you want some?”
The whole thing was kind of awesome.