The Disaster Artist doesn’t have a shared universe to set up, but it still has a pretty awesome post-credits scene that’s well worth waiting for. The Room has finally come full circle, with the “Citizen Kane of so-bad-it’s-good movies” leading to a serious Oscar contender. The story of The Disaster Artist takes us from the meeting of Tommy Wiseau (James Franco, who also directs) and Greg Sestero (Dave Franco), through their move to L.A. and production of the “worst movie ever made” to its world premiere, which in this version is met with raucous laughter and leads to Tommy facing up to the notion of artistic intent (in reality, the turn from waylaid passion project to underground classic took years, but we’ll allow some degree of creative license).
We leave the Francos’ versions of the duo here, with a brief coda highlighting the insane cult afterlife of the film and a side-by-side showcase of how accurate the filmmakers’ recreations of The Room really are. However, there’s more to come.
The post-credits scene comes after all that, picking up an undisclosed number of years later with Tommy (still played by James) at a rooftop party, standing by himself. Then comes the movie’s best cameo: Tommy Wiseau himself. He plays Henry, an equally weird guy who comes up to Franco and introduces himself. The pair immediately bicker, each out faux-aloofing each other before Tommy asks Henry about his accent, asking “Where are you from, New Orleans?” Henry affirms then the pair part angrily.
The Post-Credits Scene and Tommy Wiseau’s Cameo Explained
What The Post-Credits Scene Means
One of the biggest running gags about Wiseau - both in the movie and real life - is that despite being of clear Eastern European descent and speaking in a thick accent with somewhat broken English, he maintains he was born and grew up in New Orleans. Quite why he repeats this is unclear although, given his obsession with Tennesse Williams, we’d suggest some form of creative inspiration. Franco never tries to explain but instead goes all in with both a pitch-perfect recreation and complete devotion to The Big Easy origin. Thus it only makes sense that movie Tommy would recognize Henry’s accent being similar to his own and conclude he too was “from” New Orleans.
So, this isn’t just a neat little appearance from Wiseau in a film that, for all the laughs, has real empathy for The Room’s mastermind, but the ultimate payoff to Franco’s biggest joke. He worked so hard on the accent, making sure it was evoking rather than imitation, and hilariously kept it up while directing (meaning, at points, he was directing a scene of Tommy directing with Tommy’s voice), so giving it a showdown with the man himself is only fitting.
Although that’s nice enough, the stinger has gained extra meaning with the release of The Disaster Artist as the whole accent fiasco has actually been put to rest! Even though he’d been keeping up the facade all the way from his emergence with The Room to the present, Tommy actually admitted on Jimmy Kimmel that - much to the shock of James Franco - while he has become “all-American guy”, he is indeed from Eastern Europe.
If that all reads like a weird fever dream, just you wait: the reason this scene exists in the first place, and why it’s at the very end of the credits, is even more bizarre…
Why Tommy Wiseau Had To Cameo in The Disaster Artist
The Disaster Artist is based on Greg Sestero’s co-authored book of the same name about the making of The Room. However, to actually produce the movie, Franco needed to get Tommy Wiseau’s life rights. Typical of the New Orlean’s eccentricity, Tommy agreed but with some conditions. The first was that a producer would listen to his notes after seeing a rough cut, easy enough when there was no obligation to follow his feedback. The second, however, posed an issue: Tommy wanted a cameo in the film alongside James Franco’s version of him.
Plenty of funny ideas for how to integrate Tommy into the film were brainstormed (per The Wrap, who interviewed screenwriter Scott Neustadter, they considered having him a friend of Greg’s) but eventually, it was realized there was no way to fulfill the contractual obligation in the narrative of the film itself. So, the filmmakers instead opted for a standalone scene after the credits where the two Tommy’s would engage in what was known on set as “dueling Wiseaus”. That way, Franco could break the fourth wall without making the for-the-most-part-grounded movie struggle.
Ultimately, it’s a funny scene and one that feels like a special reward for long-standing fans of The Room: for those who’ve been to the regular screenings around the world, there’s little difference to seeing Tommy meet Tommy than there was Tony Stark meeting Nick Fury back in 2008’s Iron Man. That’s not to say there weren’t stronger alternatives; some would have definitely liked to have Tommy playing James Franco in a recreation of the rights deal that led to the scene, an unparalleled meta gag. However, with Wiseau reportedly also getting refusal on the character and choice of costume, that simply wouldn’t have been logistically possible.
As for Wiseau’s other part of the deal, it seems like he didn’t have many objections to the frank movie on his folly-turned-masterwork. He didn’t see the completed picture until it screened at TIFF, by which point Sestero had given it his approval and critics were already praising it as one of the year’s best. Nevertheless, this was a nervewracking experience for James and Dave; Wiseau had previously claimed the book was only partially true, and with that having been their blueprint the brothers were expecting the worse. However, Wiseau didn’t have any major complaints with the film (publicly at least) bar some critiquing of how Franco lit some of the earlier scenes, a complaint he’s since doubled back on and replaced with an issue about how James throws the football.
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That anecdote, of course, is rather tongue-in-cheek, but then again so is the entire post-credits ephemera and, if we’re being honest, the entirety of The Disaster Artist. It’s a love letter to something so awful it provides ironic joy, done with all the sincerity of a biopic of a true great.
