Ari Graynor on 'The Disaster Artist'
If you're unfamiliar with the movie The Room, here's a quick explainer. Written, directed, and produced by mysterious, possibly European man Tommy Wiseau, The Room - which premiered in 2003 but looks like it was filmed in 1996 - is an astonishingly bad movie that has gained cult status for being astonishingly bad. In 2013, Greg Sestero, who played Mark in The Room, wrote a book about his experience titled The Disaster Artist, and now James Franco has turned that book into a movie, also called The Disaster Artist.
The Disaster Artist features a ton of hilarious famous people, including Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Paul Scheer, Charlyne Yi, Bob Odenkirk, Megan Mullally, and Ari Graynor, who plays Juliette Danielle (who in turn played Lisa in The Room). As Room fans know, the real Juliette had it harder than pretty much everyone, given that she had to film an excruciatingly long and terrible sex scene with Tommy. Here, Ari talks about recreating that scene for The Disaster Artist and shares her own experiences with the man who gave us "the Citizen Kane of bad movies."
Were you a fan of The Room before you signed on for The Disaster Artist?
I wasn’t. I had heard about it for years and had heard people talking about it, but it’s a very hard thing to conceptualize or understand through chatter. You’re sort of like, "I don’t get it, what happens? There’s a guy, there’s a what? Why is this such a big deal?" So I sort of missed the big craze and then I got a text from James about The Disaster Artist...he thought I might be a great Lisa and [said], "Go watch The Room and let’s talk." I immediately set out to get my hands on a copy, which part of the fun of it is that you can’t just go online and watch it immediately, which is so rare nowadays. I watched it alone in my apartment for the first time which is not the way you want to watch that movie. Paul Scheer keeps saying that watching the movie is like going on an ayahuasca trip, where you need to do it with a guide and a group of people that are experienced and know how to help you through it. I was literally just saying to the TV over and over and over again, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," and started looking through my phone for people to text that I knew had watched it because you want to share it. It’s just so hilarious and shocking and unlike anything you’ve ever seen. And then of course once I watched it I was like, "I have to play Lisa, this would be the greatest honor of my career."
In a movie full of extremely awkward scenes, you had to do maybe the most awkward one - the sex scene. What was shooting that like?
It was one of those days where you just think, "This is hilarious that this is my job. This is legitimately what I do for work as a professional adult human being - coming to set with my friends and reenacting the stupidest, weirdest, most ridiculous and uncomfortable sex scene that two people have ever had." It was just a very silly day at work. It was this long scene [in the Disaster Artist script], like six pages about the making of that sex scene. And out James came, basically completely naked except for this cock sock and was just like [in Tommy accent], "OK, let’s go." He always had the Tommy voice going on. It’s not like he was in character, like you had to call him Tommy or something, but he was in that hair and these very subtle prosthetics and the voice, so he just always sort of sounded like Tommy. So when we were shooting these meta scenes where you’re shooting the scene for The Room but you’re also shooting The Disaster Artist and James came out in all of his fearless conviction, you’re like, "Is this James talking? Is this Tommy talking?" I don’t know and then suddenly I’m in bed with James Franco’s cock sock on my belly button and you’re just trying not to laugh. It was very funny and very uncomfortable. Any kind of sex scene is so uncomfortable, but in a way I was like, "Maybe this is even less uncomfortable than having to do a really intense and real sex scene because this is just so obviously fake and ridiculous." It was uncomfortable but we could laugh about it.
How hard was it to keep a straight face as he’s walking around all the time doing the Tommy voice?
Well, the Tommy voice actually you sort of became accustomed to. And we all kind of start doing it so that became like the new normal. But this is an extraordinarily funny group of people and there was a lot of making each other laugh on camera and off camera. There’s that sick satisfaction if you make somebody break. You loved if you made James break character and laugh for a second or hearing Seth laugh in a scene. We all took turns breaking. It’s like when you get the giggles in school and you’re just trying to be really serious and you have to think of something terrible to take the smile off your face. There was a lot of that. The other thing that’s funny is that there were almost like three things being shot. There was The Disaster Artist, the recreation of The Room, and then there was this B-camera that’s around that Tommy had someone videotaping everyone on set and then he would watch the tapes to see what people were saying. So there’s also all of that footage that we shot when people were just kind of hanging around, where we would be improvising these things and talking about the shoot and Tommy. There’s so much footage from all of this stuff somewhere.
Which of Tommy’s terrible behaviors would be the most unforgivable for you if a real director tried them?
Oh god, there’s so many. I think the older I get the less patience I would have for any of them. It’s hard to refute not giving your cast and crew water as being the worst offense. That’s a tough pill to swallow. He really didn’t have water on the set! I think he made a change after the woman who played Lisa’s mom really did faint, but that’s crazy.
Did you get to meet the real Tommy?
Yeah, I’ve met him a bunch of times. Every time I meet him I still have to reintroduce myself which is hilarious. We were at the Toronto Film Festival and we had met before, but OK, that was a long time ago, it’s fine. So then he came and we were doing press together all day, we went to a screening, we were at the premiere together, watched the movie, and then after the movie I said hello to him and he was like, "Yeah, who are you?" I was like, "I’m Ari, I play Lisa!" He was like, "Oh yeah you did real good job, you did good job." I was like, "We’ve just been together all day, how do you not remember me?" But every time it happened. He’s a kooky guy, that’s for sure. And also has a surprising sweet side too!
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