Trailer for new Tommy Wiseau movie somehow also trailer for Tommy Wiseau underwear
Tommy Wiseau has released the trailer for Big Shark, his first feature since The Room—and then he stuck an underwear ad at the end, because why not?
Film News Tommy Wiseau
There’s no point, in 2023, in trying to accurately parse the mind of The Room and The Neighbors creator Tommy Wiseau. The whole point of Wiseau is that he’s inexplicable: Moved by his own, very odd notions of what is romantic, or exciting, or smart, or sexy, or funny, and empowered by a confidence so wildly out of step with his own creative faculties that it takes on a sort of patina of genuine courage.
Even so, sticking an old ad for his own vanity underwear brand onto the back of the trailer for his first movie in 20 years really is a master-level Tommy Wiseau move.
Said trailer is for Wiseau’s film Big Shark, the trailer for which, as the title might suggest, consists of, like, 80 percent footage of people boxing each other. (There is also a CGI shark. It looks terrible, so Wiseau is careful to show the same shot of it at least two times.) Also, Wiseau apparently still has access to the font he used for the poster for The Room, which is simply savvy marketing.
See also: The point where the trailer runs out, and Wiseau bulks it out with an old ad for his “Thunder Wear” underwear, filmed back around when he was making his sitcom The Neighbors. This includes, as far as we can tell, the clearest shot of Wiseau that appears in the Big Shark trailer, even though he’s supposed to be starring in the film. (We understand: How else would he have gotten so much amateur boxing footage in here?) The Room’s Greg Sestero is also supposed to appear, although you wouldn’t know it here.
Big Shark has had postponed release dates set in 2021 and 2022; it’s supposedly supposed to debut in New York in August of 2023, which should be a big thrill for shark/boxing fans.
28 Comments
I wonder how Ed Wood would’ve reacted if he’d become famous while still alive.
Might be the first time I’ve ever seen stock footage used in a movie trailer.
Oh hi, Shark.
I assumed his underwear brand would be called “Me Underwears.”
Ha, what a story, Shark!
Giant animal creature features are a way more saturated Bad Movie category than bizarre homages to Tennessee Williams, and to be perfectly honest Tommy hasn’t been funny since he got in on the joke.
This is just a shameless advertisement from a man who wants to cash in on his failed directing career. I’m ordering 2.
The problem is – Bad Movies are very, very hard to recreate on purpose. If you strike out to make Plan 9 From Outer Space or Troll 2, you’ll just wind up with The Asylum’s output. Bad Movies have to be organic, something that kind of happens.But thinking that “I can make the Room 2, but with sharks and everyone will love it” isn’t reading the . . . . well, the room.
Idk man, I laughed out loud at both “Ok boys, I’m the referee!” and “love is awesome”
It’s hard to tell, but I think Tommy is generally that disconnected from reality so much that he thinks that the bad movies he makes that people love are good.
I think there’s one more layer to that stinking onion: I believe he set out to make the Room an actual proper film, and failed spectacularly. Then, when the midnight movie cult developed, he pretended to be in on the joke to save face, but also attention is attention, you know? And now, he’s a trapped. A shitty filmmaker who thinks he’s a real filmmaker, but who is forced to double down on the “bad on purpose” films, resulting in a bad movie, made badly. That said, I’m sure everyone who loved the room will love this, too.
Yeah, I mean , it’s not true to life exactly, but the reaction he (James Franco as Tommy) had at the premier of The Room was that he was pretty upset that people were laughing at it, but then came around to idea that it was so bad it was good.
Yep. And therein lies the rub. If he were more like, say, Neil Breen, he likely could’ve been able to keep making Room-esque films that were similarly terrible but popular because of the specific way they’re terrible.One of the best (worst?) examples is Samurai Cop. That was a genuinely terrible movie in pretty much every way, but earned “so bad it’s good” status much like The Room. But Samurai Cop 2 is nigh unwatchable because they tried to make it bad in the same way.The Birdemic movies fall somewhere in between. They’re self-aware, unlike Breen’s films, but they don’t lean into it quite as hard as Samurai Cop 2 or Big Shark.
That said, I’m sure everyone who loved the room will love this, too.
I dunno, a big part of what made The Room so captivating was that he clearly thought he had something there, something Meaningful and Important and True, and it occasionally feels like some of his own raw emotions are up there on the screen. Combined with Tommy himself being such a singularly weird presence, that made it pretty hard to look away from.This just looks like a bad creature feature. Asylum releases those on a weekly basis.This’ll probably get more attention than all the other things Tommy’s done since The Room, but I doubt it’ll last long.
Wholly anecdotally, it seems to me that The Room appeals largely to a millennial/gen-z crowd who might have missed out on the bad/good old days of grabbing something off the shelf at the video store and being FLOORED by something surprisingly, terribly wonderful. The kids I know who are super into The Room seem to view Wiseau as some sort of trash auteur. I could be completely misreading them, of course, or projecting my own middle-aged curmudgeon assumptions on “the kids these days.”
There might be an element of that, but he’s been working pretty consistently since then and it’s notable that nothing else he’s done has had anything even approaching the level of fondness The Room still enjoys. The Neighbors was unwatchable and The Tommy Wi-Show died on the vine.The Room has a lot of fans who are new to the whole bad movie appreciation thing, but they still haven’t given the time of day to his other shit beyond a cursory glance. They might not have the context to explain why it works, but they can still feel when it doesn’t.
I keep hearing about this movie but haven’t seen it. Just going by the vagaries of human nature, though, that sounds like a good theory.Reminds me of all of the tiktoks I’m seeing lately where young people are literally pretending to be idiots – “why is there water rushing from my electrical sockets, oh no, what do I do?” What a bizarre way to get attention. Or maybe they’re working up a stand-up comedy persona. That might actually play well these days.
I watched The Room after I saw most of the memes, clips, etc. and…it is just a slog to try to actually sit down and watch the whole movie. Of course it’s full of classic, timeless meme-able bits, but the rest of the movie is just endless poorly filmed love scenes and rambling conversations that go nowhere.It’s pretty clear it was intended originally as a serious film by a deeply incompetent filmmaker. What happens when said filmmaker leans hard into the incompetence is not likely to produce the same effect.
“I’m the referee.”I think this could be good.
Hm. I understand the whole “organic vs. manufactured” theory behind bad movies, but including a bad CGI shark—long after anyone cared about Sharknado anymore—does seem like an Ed Wood move.
You linked to the wrong “The Neighbors”. It’s this one: https://www.avclub.com/tv/reviews/the-neighbors-2015
Neil Breen is shaking in his boots
Is the referee the ShamWOW guy?
This is gonna be so annoying and unfunny.
I’m still in.
Gotta love the Casino Goals tattoo on one of the underwear models.
I believe Tommy is playing us all for fools.He knows the movie is crap. We know the movie is crap. But it’s a commercial for his competent underwear?!
So…wait, is it actually a shark-monster movie? With all the boxing footage, I was assuming that was a metaphor or something; like, the character is the “big shark” of the amateur boxing world, hunting down promising talents and ruining their careers before they can start. But…maybe not? Maybe it’s actually a movie about a big shark, that just happens to focus on boxing as well? People are, naturally, talking a great deal about whether Wiseau is deliberately making a bad movie or if he’s just genuinely that incompetent. Obviously I can’t speak to that, but to make a trailer that completely obscures the actual content of your movie seems more like the action of a genuinely incompetent person rather than somebody who could do better trying to appear incompetent. Like, there are lots of ways to make a purposefully bad trailer for a purposefully bad movie, but to be confusing on purpose without making it clear that this is what you’re doing would require some 4-d-chess-level meta-awareness. I don’t know if Wiseau’s really operating at that level.