Since the late 2000s, Tommy Wiseau’s misbegotten feature film The Room has held a special place in the hearts of cult-movie fans, as a midnight movie, collective interactive theater experience, and conversation-starter like no other. The film’s sheer extremity — its comical line readings, its baffling plot, its off-putting sex scenes — propelled it to such infamy that the story behind its creation eventually became an Oscar-nominated movie, and one of the best films of 2017. Wiseau has spent a surprisingly large percentage of the last 15 years or so on tour behind the movie’s many ironic public screenings, in between creating a TV series, appearing in guest spots on television and in films, and pursuing various minor projects, from music videos to making a short about homelessness in America.
But he never made a second movie — until now. At least, it seems like he may have made a movie. The trailer for his upcoming project Big Shark debuted on Thursday, in its first online appearance after making the rounds at Room screenings. The thing is, the trailer is roughly 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 appears to call it, TWUNDERWEAR.
The movie’s logline, according to the film’s YouTube listing: “Three firefighters /George, Patrick & Tim) must save New Orleans from a gigantic shark. Can New Orleans survive?” That doesn’t necessarily explain why half the movie-trailer part of the trailer is focused on boxing, with nary a fire in sight, much less anyone fighting it. The boxers are also apparently named Jimmy and Tommy, which suggests they aren’t even the subjects of the movie. Also, there’s a big CGI shark slapped in the middle of it all, launching 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 cuts to a TWUNDERWEAR ad, featuring various shirtless men tossing a basketball around in slow motion, as 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? Might as well ask why there’s spoon art on a random wall in The Room, or why Philip Haldiman’s character Denny graphically eats an apple in the movie. Some things can only be explained with Tommy Wiseau logic.
It’s going to take audiences a while to find out how it all fits together, whether Big Shark features more graphically veiny shots of Wiseau’s bared and flexing buttocks, and whether Big Shark is destined to become a Room-level interactive viewing experience. Variety says the film will debut in Portland, Oregon on April 2, with an eight-month tour of the United States to follow, one city at a time.
