‘The Room’ Filmmakers ‘Would Not Change Anything’ About Their Filming Experience

The story of The Room, starring Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero, was such an unbelievable journey that Sestero turned the adventure into the book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made. The exploits in the book were the thing of legend, inspiring the film The Disaster Artist starring James and Dave Franco, with James earning a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Wiseau. Despite The Room being critically panned and a financial disaster, neither Wiseau nor Sestero would change anything about their experiences.

“I wouldn’t really change anything. Because I realized the results were born out of all these experiences, strange, funny, all the … If you change something, I think it alters what the story is about,” Sestero told PopCulture.com. “And I think if you’re gonna get the reward in the end of the story, then you had to have endured everything that came with it. And I think … I’m big on taking things and seeing them in the positive or turning them into a positive, and it’s just a great learning experience. It had everything to teach you about life.”

The journey began with Sestero and Wiseau becoming friends in an acting class, with their friendship inspiring Wiseau to write, direct, produce, and star in The Room. Debuting in 2003, audiences continue to attend sold out screenings of this “best worst movie” that needs to be seen to be believed.

The film might not have gotten the reaction the duo wanted at the time, but they claim their friendship has been the biggest reward.

“And me, it’s the same thing. I would not change anything, except certain … I would adjust, for example, using music to camera in The Room,” Wiseau confessed. “My experience and friendship with Greg remains.”

Sestero did admit that, given Wiseau’s former profession of selling birds, he does regret not being able to use his original title for the book.

“When I was working on the book, one of the titles that I had chosen was ‘The Birdman,’” Sestero pointed out. “And then I saw a trailer with the movie starring Michael Keaton, called Birdman. And I’m like, ‘Damn it.’ But I was always struck by a lot of things like some of those Tommy stories that I thought would be an interesting character. So the title obviously would have to be played with.”

You can watch Wiseau and Sestero’s story unfold in The Disaster Artist when it hits Blu-ray on March 13th.