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  • The Disaster Artist

  • My Life inside 'The Room', the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made
  • Written by: Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell
  • Narrated by: Greg Sestero
  • Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (367 ratings)

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The Disaster Artist cover art

The Disaster Artist

Written by: Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell
Narrated by: Greg Sestero
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Publisher's Summary

Nineteen-year-old Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at an acting school in San Francisco. Wiseau's scenes were rivetingly wrong, yet Sestero, hypnotized by such uninhibited acting, thought, "I have to do a scene with this guy." That impulse changed both of their lives. Wiseau seemed never to have read the rule book on interpersonal relationships (or the instructions on a bottle of black hair dye), yet he generously offered to put the aspiring actor up in his LA apartment. Sestero's nascent acting career first sizzled, then fizzled, resulting in Wiseau's last-second offer to Sestero of co-starring with him in The Room, a movie Wiseau wrote and planned to finance, produce, and direct - in the parking lot of a Hollywood equipment-rental shop.

Wiseau spent $6 million of his own money on his film, but despite the efforts of the disbelieving (and frequently fired) crew and embarrassed (and frequently fired) actors, the movie made no sense. Nevertheless, Wiseau rented a Hollywood billboard featuring his alarming headshot and staged a red carpet premiere. The Room made $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. One reviewer said that watching The Room was like "getting stabbed in the head".

The Disaster Artist is Greg Sestero's laugh-out-loud funny account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and friendship to make "the Citizen Kane of bad movies" (Entertainment Weekly), which is now an international phenomenon, with Wiseau himself beloved as an oddball celebrity. Written with award-winning journalist Tom Bissell, The Disaster Artist is an inspiring tour de force, an open-hearted portrait of an enigmatic man who will improbably capture your heart.

©2013 Greg Sestero and Thomas Carlisle Bissell (P)2014 Tantor

What the critics say

"This downright thrilling book is a lot like watching Tim Burton's Ed Wood: it's sometimes infuriating, often excruciating, usually very funny, and occasionally horribly uncomfortable, but it's also impossible to look away from." ( Booklist, Starred Review)

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What listeners say about The Disaster Artist

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    5 out of 5 stars

Equal parts baffling, incredible and touching

My headline refers to "incredible" in both it's colloquial sense as a statement of quality, and in it's literal sense as 'defying credulity or belief'. I constantly had to remind myself that these events actually took place, that Tommy isn't some poorly-written caricature of an over-ambitious filmmaker, but a living, breathing, deeply-flawed, yet strangely sympathetic and desperately lonely man. I found myself swinging back and forth between wanting to buy the man a beer, give him a hug and punch him almost on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

As to the book itself. Sestero and Bissell do an excellent job of making sense of the supremely troubled production of this legendarily bad film. From the revolving door cast and crew, to Tommy's wildly inconsistent financial priorities (example: Purchases filming equipment outright - something multi-billion dollar production companies don't do, but balks at replacing an 80 dollar pair of boots that he personally damaged). The stories of the production and filming process are intercut nicely with Sestero's memoirs on his friendship with Wiseau and his fledgling acting career.
Sestero's narration is excellent, keeping the listener engaged and doing a good job of imitating Wiseau's unique accent and speech mannerisms.

Overall, I'd very highly recommend this book as it's not just a memoir of a troubled film production, the history of an eccentric filmmaker, or an attempt by Sestero to set any type of record straight in regards to his history with Wiseau but a story of a man's quest for acceptance and vindication of his life-long dream.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

fantastic

If youve seen The Room, youll love it. If you havent, youll still love it.

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Best Narration!!!

This is a must for anyone that may be interested in the Making of "The Room" or a great way to prep yourself before watching the movie. Greg's impersonation of Tommy makes everything so much better. It's a great story, funny and surprisingly filled with a lot of heart.

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Best Book I’ve Read in a Long Time

You’ll laugh, and you’ll cry. It’s an amazing story about achieving your dream at any cost.

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excellent listen

this is worth listening to just for the perfect way Sestero does Tommy's voice. it's such a kind and hilarious story. really impressed.

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Entertaining and insightful

I loved giggling all the way through this book and getting some insight into the weirdness that is Tommy Wiseau. I also liked how the book was narrated by the author, I feel like that gives any audio book a more authentic feel. I listened after watching both The Room and The Disaster Artist movie and I am glad I did. 10/10 would recommend.

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Even better than the Oscar winning movie

I first saw the room and was excited to see the excellent movie starring James Franco in 2017. I recently started listening on Audible and this book is 10x better than the movie. Greg does a perfect imitation of Tommy Wiseau and I laughed out loud more times than I could count. Definitely worth the credit.

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Humorous and entertaining

I hadn’t heard about The Room prior to listening to this book. But after I’m more intrigued than ever about this movie and also about the Talented Mr. Ripley that this book references every so often. The performance by Greg Sestero is absolutely amazing. He does accent, intonations and adds flavour to the narration. The story itself is very entertaining. Highly recommend for some easy listening that will leave you in splits.

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Greg’s Impression is Incredibly Entertaining

Greg’s impression of Tommy is worth the listen alone. Great story, couldn’t put it down.

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The only issue with is that I want SO MUCH MORE!!

Greg's impression of Tommy is amazing. Let's just get that out of the way first. It's so good, that it'd leave me craving the next impression the whole way through. I was addicted to the impression of that infamous Eastern European Cajun(?) accent. But while the impression was a nice carrot on a stick, underneath that Sestero spins a detailed and amazingly thorough recollection of events so entertaining in it's own merits that I'm sure this book is just as good not narrated. It's so good, once this book was done, I was jonesin' for more just like it, but you see the problem is that no other Hollywood biography, autobiography, and memoir reading is nearly this entertaining. I am now spoiled. This is one I will listen too again, likely repeatedly.

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