TIFF17 MASTERPOST: “The Disaster Artist”

written by Neide XIII.IX

Hello Dave fans! These past days have been very good for us Dave fans, as Dave and The Disaster Artist co-stars were at Toronto International Film Festival to promote the movie (which premiered last night, September 11). I have decided on writing this post on Dave and The Disaster Artist at the film festival, which you can read bellow and under the cut! A masterpost has also been made on the interviews – and you can watch it here.

For those of you who might not know much about the movie, The Disaster Artist is an American biographical comedy film starring, directed and co-produced by James Franco. The film depicts the meeting and early friendship of the actor Greg Sestero (played by Dave Franco) and Tommy Wiseau (played by James Franco), the actor, writer and director behind the 2003 cult film The Room, a film often hailed as the Citizen Kane of bad movies, the troubled making of it and their respective careers after the surprising success of the film. A24 has distribution rights to the film, which is set to be released in theaters on December 8, 2017.

Dave’s first appearance at the festival was on September 9, when he attended HFPA & InStyle’s TIFF Celebration with Alison Brie. The adorable couple posed for pictures before walking inside and chatting with other celebrities.

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Day 1 – September 10

Promotion for The Disaster Artist kicked off the following day with the cast hitting up multiple lounges for interviews. Their first stop was at The IMDb Studio Hosted By The Visa Infinite, where Dave spoke about his first interaction with The Room, listening to The Disaster Artist audiobook, being in a movie with James for the first time (James joked about the matter and said it had never happen before because Dave is picky with his roles), his favorite line from The Room (“Keep your stupid comments in your pocket!”) and his first on-screen kiss (it happened during the 9th season of Scrubs).

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Followed by IMDB Studio was The Hollywood Reporter and The Wrap. While no video has yet been released from The Wrap interview the cast talks about the plot with The Hollywood Reporter, Tommy Wiseau’s reaction and Dave shares a bit about his interactions with Greg Sestero. Spoiler alert? James calls Dave “Davey” during the interview.

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Aside from interviews, Dave and the cast also attended some lounges inside the festival. While not many official photos are out from the lounges, we can tell you that he and James hit up the[fix] Luxury Retreat, in which Dave signed on the charity board (and had a Nerve reunion with Emma Roberts) and Calii Love – where Barista Brian showed off his latte art talent by drawing the celebrities face!

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Day 2 – September 11

Following the busy day at the festival, Dave and The Disaster Artist were back for more promotion. The day started with Dave doing some solo interviews with multiple online websites, before joining the cast at Variety Studio presented by AT&T. On the short video released by Variety, Dave speaks about recreating scenes from The Room on The Disaster Artist, and how they had to follow every single move done on the original movie.

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The cast then headed to Q Unlocks Lounge where Dave and James reunited with Greg Sestero and Tommy Wiseau for an interview with Los Angeles Times. They speak about the making of The Disaster Artist, and first interacting with the real life people they would later on play in the movie. Dave mentions spending 3 hours with Greg Sestero and “picking his brain” to find out why Sestero and Wiseau connected in the first place.

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After another busy day of press, it was time for the big event – The Disaster Artist Premiere! The cast made a quick stop at the Pre-Screening Event hosted by Audi before attending the official event hosted by the festival. To our happiness, according to reviews and public reactions – the movie is an “amazing and wonderful tribute to The Room” and “James Franco’s best work”. The cast received a standing ovation as they took the stage for the Q&A!

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The screening of The Disaster Artist was the last event Dave attended at Toronto International Film Festival. He was photographed the following day at Toronto Pearson International Airport with Alison Brie, heading back home but don’t worry because Dave is set to be out and about promoting The LEGO Ninjago Movie which is set to hit theaters on September 22, 2017!

Studio Visits

While promoting The Disaster Artist at Toronto International Film Festival, Dave and his co-stars were at numerous magazine studios where they took a couple of portraits for the magazine’s festival special coverage.

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Reviews & Public Reactions

The moment during a screening is always nerve-wrecking as we’re not sure of how the public and professional critics will react to the movie. With the history The Room has, The Disaster Artist was set to be either a miss or a hit. To our relief, it looks like it’s a hit! The movie was well received by the public and the critics who got the chance to watch the movie at Toronto International Film Festival and some people are already talking of James Franco becoming an Oscar Contender for his role as Tommy Wiseau in the movie. We have collected some public reactions and pieces of reviews, which you will find bellow. They only make us more excited to watch the movie in December!

: Teared apart by The Disaster Artist. Brilliant movie about epic fail and importance of friendship. Hilarious and touching. 

: The Disaster Artist is a masterpiece. James Franco is a genius. This is literally the reason why I love movies. 

: The Disaster Artist is pure. The Disaster Artist is heart. The Disaster Artist is life. Surreal and perfectly bizarre — and Tommy digs it.

Deadline: I have to say this screening was a total blast. An A24 source admitted that The Disaster Artist isn’t typical Oscar fare, but the company thinks there could be a real shot for the Adapted Screenplay by Scott Neustadt and Michael H. Weber, and maybe even Franco, whose performance/imitation of Wiseau is dead-on brilliant.

ColliderThe Disaster Artist finds a surprising honesty that goes far beyond simple appreciation for The Room. Granted, people who have seen The Room will probably get a little bit more out of the film than those who haven’t, and there are plenty of laughs to be had at the absurdity of how the cult hit came into existence. But instead of coasting on camaraderie with The Room fans, The Disaster Artist feels like a richer, more thoughtful experience about how even bad art has its place if you can come to its honestly. Even though the reaction to The Room isn’t what Wiseau intended, his movie only could have come fro his mind. Rather than exist as the butt of the joke, he decided to make the joke his own.

The Disaster Artist is about that ownership and how the path there came from the friendship between Wiseau and Sestero. The relationship never feels false or saccharine, and it makes the story of The Room so much richer than a celebration of a cult hit. Fans of The Room will certainly relish the humor, but The Disaster Artisthas so much more to offer than jokes and James Franco doing a weird accent.

The VergeThe Disaster Artist is fantastically entertaining, and not just for the litany of The Room Easter eggs (though those are certainly there, both in the form of drive-by references and shot-for-shot scene re-creations). The centerpiece is James Franco’s turn as Wiseau, and it is a hilarious, committed performance. He nails the filmmaker’s odd voice and awkward mannerisms, but also brings a charm and fragility to the part. Those elements make the movie version of Wiseau more than just a one-off joke. The film heavily implies that Wiseau is attracted to his best friend, and when Sestero starts dating a bartender (Allison Brie), James Franco plays Wiseau’s outbursts as adolescent attempts at masking a real sense of rejection. That idea carries through in the on-set meltdowns that stack up during the production of The Room. As absurd and hilarious as Wiseau is here, he also genuinely feels out of sync with the rest of the world, and he’s consumed with the frustration of not being able to truly express himself.

The film also delivers on the meat-and-potatoes comic absurdity that James Franco has made such a highlight of his career, often alongside collaborator Seth Rogen. (Rogen is here as well, playing the film’s script supervisor, who is constantly befuddled by how clueless the filmmakers are.) Combine that with Wiseau and Sestero’s buddy-comedy throughline, and a movie that should be nichey becomes accessible and mainstream. The golly-gee idealism of Dave Franco’s Sestero makes him a perfect audience surrogate, and a wonderful foil for the brooding, vampiric Wiseau.

But the most impressive thing to note about The Disaster Artist is how it’s able to reframe perceptions of The Room itself. This is an idealized, romanticized version of the making of that film, but it makes The Room feel like less of a bizarre train wreck, and more like the earnest effort of a would-be artist who just wasn’t good enough at realizing he wasn’t good enough. It’s the same trick Ed Wood pulled off. While The Disaster Artist never hits the highs of Tim Burton’s film, it nevertheless generates incredible goodwill toward The Room, and makes the prospect of watching it — even without that live audience — seem like a fun idea.

Business InsiderThe Disaster Artist is an extremely entertaining look at two friends (Franco playing Wiseau and Dave Franco as Sestero) who decide to make their own movie after the constant rejection at acting auditions. With incredible detail by James Franco of not just playing Wiseau, but making the reenactments of The Room — from the crappy set design and costumes to how awful lines were delivered — is incredible. And you don’t have to be a superfan of The Room to appreciate it.

I’m not even going to attempt to explain the plot of The Room, or what the heck Wiseau was trying to accomplish with it. All I can tell you is that if you are a superfan, Franco gives you a movie that in no way makes fun of it, but cherishes what it has become: a piece of entertainment that people come together in groups so they can collectively enjoy.

And that’s how The Disaster Artist should be experienced. There’s no better example of a movie coming out this year that should be seen with a full theater audience. The energy of the room just heightens the experience. And it doesn’t hurt that Franco brought along the talents of his brother and friends like Seth Rogen and Alison Brie to also star in the movie.

The WrapThe Disaster Artist is grand fun; it doesn’t try to explain Wiseau, because who would want to do that when you can just glory in his utter singularity and astounding ineptitude?

Franco’s brother Dave is along for the ride as Wiseau’s pal Greg Sestrero, who wrote the book of the same title. (Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber did the screenplay.) In a way, Greg is the lens through which we see Tommy, though there’s precious little evidence that he’s a good enough actor to be hurt by his association with the whole debacle. Seth Rogen and Paul Scheer, as a long-suffering script supervisor and DP, respectively, are necessary voices of reason with lots of the best lines.

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