It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie The Week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts in a recent release. I'm Keith Phipps here again with... Tasha Robinson. Genevieve Kosky. And Scott Tobias. On the first half of this episode, we discussed Ed Wood, Tim Burton, salutes to the director of what are widely considered to be some of the worst movies ever made, starring Johnny Depp and Martin Landau. In this episode, we'll take a look at the disaster artist, James Franco's film about the making of The Room, which has found a cult following among those drawn to what can politely be described as its rough edges and odd choices. James Franco's brother, Dave Franco, plays Greg Sesterro, a baby-faced San Francisco actor with Dreams of Hollywood

stardom, who, in the late 1990s, meets Tommy Wiesot, played by James Franco, at an acting class.

Tommy is, to say the least, an unusual man. He claims to be for New Orleans, but speaks in an

impossible to pin down accent that suggests Eastern Europe. He's coy about his age,

drinks Red Bull by the case, and lives in a cluttered apartment. He's coy about his age, drinks Red Bull by the case,

and lives in a cluttered apartment. He also seems to be rich, which allows him to propose that he

and Greg moved to Los Angeles after they become scene partners and unlikely friends. And it's

this wealth also of undetermined origin that allows him to suggest that when Hollywood seems

not to want to make a movie with them, that they just make their own movie. And so they come to make The Room, a kind of overheated, contemporary

Tennessee Williams-inspired drama, written, directed, starring, and financed by Tommy, who plays

Johnny, a man torn apart by his girlfriend Lisa's infidelity with Mark, played by Greg. Johnny

also has a hard time throwing and catching a football and enjoys saying hi to doggies.

Most of the film's second half involves the shooting of the film.

A torturous process that goes way over schedule, finds Tommy clashing with his more experienced

crew and beleaguered actors as he struggles to complete even the simplest scene.

But in the end, he does complete it and screams it. And the response to the audience is not what Tommy anticipates. Was it worth it? That's a question that's kind of left dangling by the end of the movie, which does little to unravel the vagaries in Tommy's history, but ends up revealing a little bit of his soul anyway. You know, we both have this dream. Yeah, I guess we do.

Ha ha ha ha.

That we'll be famous.

We'll show them.

...