I’ve never seen The Room but I’ve seen enough youtube clips to get what it’s all about. I’m familiar with the performance of Tommy Wiseau, the film’s indeterminately aged, vaguely Eastern European (by way of New Orleans?) writer, director, and star. The Room is the best worst movie ever made whose special blend of awful has gained it a cult following.

When I heard that James Franco was making a movie about the making of it, it sounded like a mean spirited hipster vanity project meant to pile more derision on some people who had probably had enough.

I was wrong. The Disaster Artist was great.

I read the book over the summer. It’s told from the point of view of Greg Sestero, one of the stars of The Room. There’s an earnestness and self awareness to the story and Greg’s experience that I wasn’t expecting and that quality comes across in the movie.

Greg isn’t deluded. He knows how strange Tommy is but he is drawn to him for his fearlessness. Despite Tommy’s flaws – and there are many – he is unapologetically himself. We heap praise on individuals and mavericks but how many of them actually went it alone, completely focused on their goal no matter how incorrectly they were pursuing it?

I always assumed – again, never having seen it – that the people in The Room didn’t know how bad it was. It appears, though, that Greg and everyone involved (save Tommy) knew how bad The Room was likely to be. But they pushed through anyway. In one scene, Carolyn Minnott (the actress playing Claudette in The Room, played by Jacki Weaver in The Disaster Artist) says, “we’re actors, a day spent on a set is better than a day spent anywhere else.”

And James Franco was great. I truly forgot he was James Franco. His Wiseau was spot on but also sympathetic. His childish jealousy seems deeper than simple pettiness, as if he was wounded by a past that never gets revealed.

Having the phenomenon of The Room happen is actually my worst nightmare. Putting something out there that you think is great only to have it become a joke to everyone else. These days Wiseau claims that The Room was intended as a comedy all along, a face saving spin at best. But who am I to talk? At the end of the day, he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a movie that’s entertained millions of people. What have I done?