Tommy Wiseau’s misguided feature film since the late 2000s The room has held a special place in the hearts of fans of cult films, as one midnight movie, collective interactive theater experience and conversation starter like no other. The film’s sheer extremity — its comedic line readings, its mind-boggling plot, its obnoxious sex scenes — disgraced it to such an extent that the story behind its creation eventually became an Oscar-nominated film, and one of the best films of 2017. Wiseau has spent a surprisingly large percentage of the past 15 years on tour chasing the film’s many tongue-in-cheek public screenings, in between making a TV seriesappearing in guest appearances on television and in films, and pursuing various small projects, from music videos to make short homelessness in America.
But he never made a second movie – until now. At least it looks like he made a movie. The trailer for his upcoming project Big shark debuted on Thursday, in his first online appearance after making the rounds on Room impressions. Thing is, the trailer is about 50 percent movie trailer and 50 percent stylized, black-and-white ad for the (very real) Tommy Wiseau underwear line TW underwear – or, as the logo seems to call it, TWUNDERWEAR.
The movie’s logline, according to the movie’s YouTube listing: “Three firefighters (George, Patrick & Tim) must save New Orleans from a giant shark. Can New Orleans Survive?” That doesn’t necessarily explain why half the movie trailer portion of the trailer focuses on boxing, with almost no fire in sight, let alone anyone fighting it. The boxers are also apparently named Jimmy and Tommy, suggesting they aren’t even the subjects of the film. There’s also a big CGI shark that gets smashed in the middle of it all and launches into the middle of the city streets in what looks like a lost scene from Sharknado.
Image: Wiseau-Films
And then the whole thing suddenly turns into a TWUNDERWEAR ad, in which several shirtless men throw a basketball around in slow motion, while Wiseau himself, in a particularly strange Andy Warhol-style wig, arrives to repeat “love is blind.” What does love have to do with men’s underwear, slo-mo basketball, or giant sharks threatening New Orleans? You might as well ask why there’s spoon art on any wall The room, or why Philip Haldiman’s character Denny graphically eats an apple in the film. Some things can only be explained with Tommy Wiseau logic.
It’s going to take audiences a while to figure out how it all fits together, or Big shark contains more graphically veined shots of Wiseau’s bare and flexed buttocks, and or Big shark is destined to be one Roomlevel interactive viewing experience. Variety says the film debuts April 2 in Portland, Oregonwith an eight-month tour of the United States, city by city.
