Star of ‘The Room’ and the New York Times best-selling author behind A24’s Oscar-nominated ‘The Disaster Artist’ Greg Sestero will be coming to Savannah on Wednesday, April 13 for a stop at the Lucas Theatre.
The stop is a part of his ‘The Room with Greg Sestero Live!’ tour.
‘Savannah is one of my favorite cities in the U.S. I think it’s absolutely beautiful, unique, historic, and the food is great. It’s such a great vibe. I’ve always said I love to do something down there and I’m so excited to come back and be down there,” said Sestero.
“I’ve been doing some touring and some screenings. There’s a dream list of places to go to that I want to visit. The Lucas Theatre, obviously, it’s such a great theater. I thought, what a great way to talk about the new film show a private teaser,” said Sestero.
Sestero is known for his role as Mark, the best friend to Tommy Wiseau’s character Johnny, in the 2003 cult film ‘The Room.’ Sestero arrived on set, only agreeing to work behind the scenes and help Wiseau with auditions and casting.
However, Wiseau wanted the original actor cast as Mark out of the film, and formulated an intricate plan to replace him with Sestero.
Sestero has said that he made the film assuming no one would see it and that it would go direct to video.
“It was sort of like agreeing to help a friend make their dream project and not expecting anything from it or just kind of going along with it. I expected really nothing from it but I expected it just to be an experience. I just move on. Then all of a sudden, little by little, people started seeing it and talking about it,” said Sestero.
The film was harshly criticized by critics and fared very poorly at the box office. However, the film quickly began to receive attention from audience members because of its poor production values and it soon became a cult classic with late-night showings at theaters around the country.
This attention grew into what was dubbed “The Room’s 2010–2011 ‘Love is Blind’ International Tour,” and the film was screened in the UK, Germany, Denmark, Australia, France, and India, among other locations.
Sestero appeared at many of these events, posing for photographs with fans and often addressing them before the screenings.
“All of a sudden, movie lovers and cult fans discovered the movie. They found sort of this love and obsession of how insane the film is and started participating. It was really entertaining because I was like, here’s this movie that obviously is so unorthodox and incomprehensible, yet people were flipping for it,” said Sestero.
Sestero wrote a book based on his experiences making the film, Tommy Wiseau, and his experience of trying to become an actor.
The book, titled ‘The Disaster Artist’, was released in 2013. In 2014, The Disaster Artist won the Best Non-Fiction award at the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards ceremony.
“I knew the story behind the making of ‘The Room’ was something that was really fascinating and sort of my journey going to LA. That’s where I got the idea to write the book I thought this story could make a great film in itself. That’s what I set out to do, write a book that could become a movie, a good movie about a bad movie,” said Sestero.
In 2014, Seth Rogen’s production company, Point Grey Pictures, acquired the rights to a film adaptation of Sestero’s book. In the film, also titled ‘The Disaster Artist’, Dave Franco played Sestero, and James Franco starred as Wiseau and directed, for which he won a Golden Globe award.
The film premiered at South by Southwest in 2017, and began a wide theatrical release. The film earned a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 90th Academy Awards.
Sestero also recently wrote and produced ‘Best F(r)iends’ Volume 1 and Volume 2 (Lionsgate) and was recently seen in Netflix’s popular gothic-drama mini-series ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor.’ His directorial/ horror genre debut, ‘Miracle Valley’, is slated for release in 2022. It is the first very first film to ever shoot at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water.
“I wanted to get into making horror movies. There was a fan who lived in the desert in Arizona, and they’re like, hey, we have this amazing location. It’s a private range with a house up on a hill and its perfect location for your next movie,” recalled Sestero..
Sestero moved to Arizona, wrote the film, and filmed it there. After the viewing of the trailer Sestero will talk about filming ‘Miracle Valley’ and the process of filming it during the pandemic.
Sestero will be screening the movie ‘The Room.’ There will be a meet & greet with him, starting at 7 p.m. and the film starts at 8 p.m. There will also be a post screening Q & A. He will also show the trailer for his latest film ‘Miracle Valley’. Visit lucastheatre.com for tickets and information.
