At Tommy Wiseau’s Big Shark, I watched a new cinematic ritual being born

29.01.2024 - 15:18 / polygon.com

Thirty minutes before a midnight screening of Tommy Wiseau’s Big Shark at Chicago’s Music Box Theater, the man sitting in front of me and my husband turned around with a sly grin and asked us “Are you cowboys?” I immediately guessed where this was going, so I played along and told him, straight-faced, that no, we were not cowboys. “OK, then. You might need these,” he said, offering me a box of tissues.

I had no idea what he was referencing, but I got the vibe immediately. It was the equivalent of a Rocky Horror Picture Show veteran asking a newbie “Are you a virgin?” Clearly, this man was in the know about a Big Shark gag I wasn’t in on yet. But just as clearly, he had a plan involving some sequence in the movie, and he wanted us to be ready to participate.

Of course we were in. I grabbed a tissue and braced myself for impact. Big Shark is clearly Wiseau’s riff on “huge predator menaces small town” movies like Jaws or The Meg,though tonally, it’s closer to Syfy originals like Sharktopus. But I wasn’t really there for the shark attacks. I’d showed up to see whether Big Shark was already turning into the new edition of Wiseau’s infamous movie The Room. This invitation to participate in some unknown gag made it clear that I was about to get exactly the experience I’d been hoping for.

Tommy Wiseau’s first movie, The Room, is one of the most baffling pieces of outsider art ever made, and its success story is equally baffling. The narrative is incoherent. The script is full of non sequiturs. Characters and plot points are introduced, then disappear forever without comment. An excruciating sex scene is shown twice. The cast offers up some of the most awkward line readings and physical blocking known to mankind.

Wiseau stars in the film, and his half-mumbled, half-shouted performance and periodically mangled English are so mesmerizingly weird that many of his line readings — “Oh hai, Mark!” “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” “Everybody betray me! I fed up with this world!” — have become memes, merch, and instant shibboleths, traded around to identify those who have experienced The Room in all its confusing glory.

Theatrical showings of The Room quickly became focused on audience participation and engagement. An entire Rocky Horror-esque ritual has grown up around the movie. Participants throw plastic spoons, recite along with some lines and respond to others, and run down to the screen to imitate the movie’s phenomenally clumsy football-tossing scene or to interact with Wiseau’s on-screen character. The routine is part mockery, part celebration, part ego-driven public performance, as participants compete to come up with the cleverest new quip or get the biggest laugh.

Big Shark is not much better as a movie.