When released in 2003, The Room, an obscure, self-financed relationship drama by an eccentric self-taught filmmaker named Tommy Wiseau, should have been completely forgotten. Yet nearly two decades later, the worst movie ever made -as many a critic would have it-has become the most popular cult film since The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
In You Are Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!, contributors explore this priceless cultural artifact, offering fans and film buffs critical insight into the movie's various meanings, historical context, and place in the cult canon. Even if by complete accident, The Room touches on many issues of modern concern, including sincerity, authenticity, badness, artistic value, gender relations, Americanness, Hollywood conventions, masculinity, and even the meaning of life.
Revealing the timeless, infamous power of Wiseau's The Room, You Are Tearing Me Apart, Lisa! is a deeply entertaining deconstruction of an original work of all-American failure.
Adam M. Rosen is a freelance book editor and writer in Asheville, North Carolina, and a former associate editor in the reference division of Oxford University Press. He has contributed to TheAtlantic.com, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Baltimore Sun, The Onion, and many other print and online outlets.
Title: You Are Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!: The Year's Work on The Room, the Worst Movie Ever Made (The Year's Work: Studies in Fan Culture and Cultural Theory)
Author: Adam M. Rosen,Landon Palmer,Nathan Abrams,Lenika Cruz,James Curnow,John Donegan,John Dyck,Ernest Mathijs,Matt Foy,Keith Kahn-Harris,Amanda Ann Klein,James MacDowell,Renee Middlemost,Ross Morin,Hario Satrio Priambodho,Carter Soles,Ellen Wright
ISBN: 9780253062727
Binding:
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Publication Date: 2022-11-08
Number of Pages: 238
Weight: 0.2651 kg
We enjoy laughing at The Room, but to stop there would reflect poorly on us as an audience. Something so singular and immense deserves loving attention and careful study, and that's what we find in this rich and delightful collection of essays.
-- Matthew Strohl, author of Why It's OK to Love Bad Movies, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana