The word 'weird' is practically Tommy Wiseau's middle name these days, what with his infamous disaster-piece The Room being immortalized in this year's James Franco-directed film The Disaster Artist. Both the film and the biopic based on the memoir of its making have helped craft the image of a Tommy that's as ambitious as he is hard headed. And now, Wiseau fan-turned-director Justin MacGregor knows that first hand, as he's seen the infamous actor's stubborn nature when it came to a simple scene in his current film Best F(r)iends; a scene that involved Tommy Wiseau being strangled by a clown.
MacGregor recently told HuffPost the story of how Wiseau's character, Harvey, was supposed to be throttled by an undead circus performer. With the eccentric co-star of Best F(r)iends expressing resistance against his director's commands, a compromise was seemingly reached. The initially more intense version of the scene was dialed down to something Tommy Wiseau would be more comfortable with. Unfortunately for Tommy, that version of the scene was sub-par. So Justin MacGregor had his clown amp their performance back to the original, more intense version by surprise. And, as one would predict, Tommy was not happy about it one bit, as MacGregor recalls below:
We have behind-the-scenes footage of it, too. He rained down on the clown-man actor, not on me, because as far as Tommy was concerned, I had given the direction to do it softly, and the clown man ignored me. Basically, we got the shot, it's amazing, and it plays so well in the film. I threw the clown under the bus that day, but I would do it again. That happened a few times, where I had to be sneaky and creative to get something out of Tommy that he wasn't going to do.
A project that stemmed from The Disaster Artist inspiring Greg Sestero to pen a film that he and Tommy Wiseau could make together, after almost two decades of The Room in the books, Best F(r)iends sees Wiseau playing an enigmatic mortician who befriends Sestero's random L.A. drifter. Much like the trajectory of their friendship as struggling actors, the weird stuff happens after this partnership is struck, hence why there's a really handsy clown. Completing the trifecta in charge of Best F(r)iends' fate was Justin MacGregor, a fan of The Room-turned-colleague after a meeting with Sestero through a mutual friend.
The result of these three men putting their talents together can be seen in the concept trailer for the film, which helped MacGregor secure the director's chair after he acted as the trailer's cinematographer.
Best F(r)iends' first of two volumes will open at some point in 2018, though no release date or distributor have been locked in just yet. If you're curious what it will give the re-teaming of Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero a run for its money, you can find that information in our 2018 release schedule.
