10 Directors Who Didn't Understand Their Own Movies

9. Tommy Wiseau - The Room

Tommy Wiseau may be no Ridley Scott, but he's certainly (in)famous in his own right, having become an all-timer poster boy for filmmakers who categorically didn't realise the type of movie they were making.

Though Wiseau doesn't like to admit it, it's clear his 2003 disaster-piece The Room was created as an earnest dramatic movie, even marketing it with the tagline, "a film with the passion of Tennessee Williams."

Wiseau was entirely out of touch with the overwrought, scarcely coherent nature of his script, and things only got worse when he actually started shooting the thing.

The end result was, of course, a trainwreck, but picked up an unexpected second life through cult film fandom, where it's endured ever since as a so-bad-it's-good classic.

And of course, Wiseau fully leaned into the irony, hosting midnight screenings, cameoing in James Franco's biopic The Disaster Artist, and even using his unexpected clout to bankroll other "passion projects."

Wiseau generally insists he knew what he was making with The Room, yet virtually every member of the cast and crew to talk about the film's production has suggested otherwise.

It's great that things worked out for Wiseau, and you can't really blame him for cashing in so aggressively on his surprise fame, but back when he was shooting the film, he evidently thought he was making a character drama on par with Citizen Kane.

It's all-too-apt, then, that The Room is often called "the Citizen Kane of bad movies."