Tommy Wiseau’s The Room from 2003 is rightly remembered as one of the best terrible movies of all time.  But what if it turned out that Tommy Wiseau hadn’t really directed it?  Would he just be a bad-bad director?  A bad-good actor and nothing more?  That’s the shocking allegation recently leveled by script supervisor (editor’s note: LOL) Sandy Schklair, who now wants a directorial credit.  YOU’RE tearing-me-apart-the-room

In the EW article (which is not online yet) Schklair tells the story of how Wiseau met him in 2002 and asked him to not only be the script supervisor but also to “tell the actors what to do, and yell ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’ and tell the cameraman what shots to get.” Here’s the exchange, according to Schklair:

Schklair: “Umm…you want me to direct your project?”
Wiseau: “No! I am director!”
Schklair: “Yeah, you’re the director, whatever. But you want me to direct your movie for you?”
Wiseau: “Yes, please.”

Whoa, that sounds strangely like an exchange from The Room. Maybe it was more realistic than we thought.  I CUT MY EYES OUT BEFORE YOU EVER DIRECT MY FILM, YOU SON OF A BEEEETCH!!!  Oh, hi, Suzie.  Snapple?  Don’t mind if I do.

EW spoke to one of the actors from the film, who chose to remain anonymous:

“The script supervisor ended up sort of directing the movie. Tommy was so busy being an actor that this other guy directed the whole thing.”

According to Schklair, actors would come up to him with the script and a panicked look on their face because it was “unintelligible.” “Please Sandy for the love of God rewrite this so it makes sense,” they would say.

Schklair believes it was him, not Wiseau, who embraced the awfulness of the script and infused it with the level of comedy that is so prevalent in the movie. “Yes we were making the world’s worst movie,” Schklair told EW. “But we knew it at the time. I embraced The Room.” Unfortunately (or fortunately) for Schkalir, he quit the film after a month and remained silent about his role until he finally realized how big it had gotten as a cult classic. [via /Film]

Someone needs to get Tommy Wiseau and James Nguyen together for an Ishtar-style road comedy like YESTERDAY.  It would be Ishtar with Asperger’s disease!  Plus, there’s the constant conflict over who’s going to grift who first, AND it’s an interracial buddy flick.  With delightfully broken English!  It’s like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels meets Shanghai Noon!  Translated by Babelfish!

Universe, make it so.

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