Using such first-person pronouns. YOU'RE TEARING THIS PAGE APART, TROPER!!!
But seriously, using first-person pronouns is not allowed.
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Johnny
Johnny can make unpleasant topics disappear by his mere presence.
This is why dramatic things like characters being diagnosed with breast cancer or owing money to drug dealers happen once and are never mentioned again — Johnny's mere presence can resolve them. During the Chris-R scene, this is why everyone calms down almost as soon as Johnny says he can deal with it, even though we never find out what specifically he's going to do. When Johnny kills himself, everyone is distraught because now everything he made go away will come back. Johnny's weirdness is the key to his success at the bank.
People are curious about this fascinating weirdo, and the bank uses this to draw in customers. His banking skills are decent enough, but not good enough to earn a promotion — that would put him in a position of responsibility.Alternatively, Johnny is kept at the bank because he sounds foreign.
It's not an uncommon practice at Japanese businesses — sometimes they'll keep a Token White around for the purpose of showing that they're global. Johnny might work for a Japanese bank with mostly Japanese employees and clients — possible in Asian-oriented San Francisco. Or he's a "foreigner" with respect to an American bank. Johnny could even have a natural American accent — his "foreign" accent is intentionally vague, allowing him to pose as any ethnicity. (He must take his job very seriously, though, if he keeps up the accent outside work.) Johnny is mentally handicapped, and Lisa is his caretaker.
Johnny is related to a wealthy banker — let's say, his uncle — who pays for his home, wardrobe, and a full-time caretaker, Lisa. His uncle is a bit of an eccentric himself, willing to spend lots of money on keeping Johnny happy, entertained, and oblivious to his situation. It explains a number of things about Johnny's situation:- Johnny thinks he works at the bank because he goes there several times a week to see his uncle. His uncle humors him by putting him in an empty office and giving him random papers to shuffle around. Johnny is so deep into the illusion that he's convinced he's earned a "promotion", and when nothing happens, he thinks he's been passed over and gets upset.
- People only ever call him "Johnny", never "John" or "Jonathan", as though he's a child.
- He has sexual feelings for his caretaker Lisa, which badly confuse him. He rationalizes his feelings by imagining himself as engaged to marry her. All the sex scenes are daydreams, and they also demonstrate how Johnny doesn't understand how sex works. It means that Johnny's suicide is also a daydream, which makes sense because his uncle would never allow his mentally ill nephew to have access to a firearm.
- Lisa, as explained, is Johnny's caretaker. And she's in way over her head — she got that job by seducing Johnny's uncle. But she doesn't have any qualifications that would allow her to get a job anywhere else. That's why Claudette tells her, "Honey, you can't take care of yourself."
- Denny is an actor whom Johnny's uncle pays to be his friend. Lisa doesn't like him, but she has to put up with him. Johnny's uncle is particularly nice to Denny, paying his rent and his college tuition. Denny is a shrewd character, though, and he might well be taking advantage of Johnny and his uncle. He's also deadly bored, hence why he ropes in Lisa and Chris-R (and Mark and Claudette) to enact their nonsensical scene. Or it's possible that he worked for Chris-R before landing the Johnny gig, and left with some of the dealer's money. The scene we saw was when Chris-R finally tracked him down, which might explain why he was so angry.
- The flower shop lady is almost certainly taking advantage of Johnny. She always has a bundle of day-old flowers that some customer forgot to pick up, ready to sell to Johnny as if they were fresh. No wonder he's her favorite customer.
- Mark was Lisa's boyfriend all along — perhaps even her husband. He's a pretty laid-back guy who doesn't want to do very much other than get stoned all day, which is why Lisa is so desperate for money. But he's also a nice guy, and feels sorry for Johnny, so he hangs out with Johnny more than anyone else. It's not that hard — you just sit on the roof and occasionally throw the football around. This is why Johnny thinks of Mark as his best friend. However, Johnny cannot reconcile his own feelings for Lisa and the obvious fact that she's with Mark. Johnny's obsession with Lisa is so blatant and awkward that even easygoing Mark eventually blows his top at the party.
- Speaking of which, everyone at the party is being paid like Denny. They're literal 24-Hour Party People, who Johnny's uncle keeps on standby for things like his nephew's birthday. This is why Johnny calls them "all of my friends."
- Stephen the son of Johnny's uncle. He's an Upper-Class Twit, and his trust fund is dependent on him hanging out with his cousin. He gets angry over Lisa and Mark's public displays of affection because he's worried it could ruin everything, and he'll have to find a real job.
Johnny is a Reality Warper who is losing his powers.
At the beginning he is a prosperous man with a well-paying job, he has many friends who adore him, and he's been in a seven-year relationship with a beautiful future wife who still looks 18. This is because he can warp reality to his specifications, though it is limited mostly to situations and personalities. Then his ability starts fading. He loses out on his promotion. His future wife realizes that she doesn't love him — and never has, only thinking she did because of the reality warping. His future wife and his best friend try to exert their newfound free will and have an affair. A series of Surprisingly Realistic Outcomes ensues — uncomfortable things like breast cancer and drug deals. Johnny desperately tries to fix everything, but his powers continue to fade. This is what causes many of the plot holes, dropped subplots, and inconsistencies (like the gun changing models between scenes). Seeing Mark and Lisa together at the party, now open about their affair, proves to him that his powers would soon disappear completely. Unable to handle it, he takes his life. The characters still behave oddly afterward, but this is the residual effect of his powers before reality finally fixes itself. Johnny kept a pistol in a box labeled "In Case of Betrayal, Open Box."
If you look closely at Johnny's gun, it's not the same model as Chris-R's gun. Johnny knew that his life may someday go to pot, so he bought a gun as a contingency plan.That, or it was meant to be the same gun as Chris-R's and Tommy Wiseau is incompetent at keeping continuity. Either explanation is equally plausible.
Johnny's ideas for the bank aren't as great as he thought they were.
Johnny has a very weak grasp of how banking works. As he slowly learns, he starts pitching basic banking concepts as if they're ideas he came up with himself. He might have told the bank manager, "I think it would be a good idea if the bank gave people money when they asked for it. They could pay us back later, and give us a little extra so we make money." Then the next day, he spots the loan department for the first time, asks what they did there, and says to himself, "Wow! They already put my ideas into practice, hah?" Johnny works at a bank, but he's not a banker.
Johnny's secretly a low-level janitor or custodial worker at the bank. That's why he's so vague about everything going on at the bank. His money-saving "ideas" for the bank were along the lines of buying off-brand floor cleaner, and he was hoping to get promoted to head custodian. He can't tell Mark about the "new client" because he knows nothing about the client; he just heard the actual bankers talking about it.It also explains why nobody at the bank seems to mind his disheveled appearance. When he gets to work, he takes off his wrinkly suit, puts on a jumpsuit, and gets to mopping. Or even better, he just puts the jumpsuit on over the suit, which is why it's so wrinkly.
His constant hangdog expression is because he's been living beyond his means for years, and the bill collectors have been hounding him for a while now. When Claudette asked him to loan her friend money for a down payment on a house, all he would say was, "It's an awkward situation." Obviously, it was an inappropriate request, and he was within his rights to refuse. But he didn't explain any of that because he was terrified of Claudette finding out that the real reason he couldn't loan the money is because he's up to his eyeballs in debt.
He'd been considering suicide for months now, and being betrayed was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Johnny is an alien.
He lacks social skills. He seems to be screwing Lisa's navel, not her vagina, showing a lack of understanding of human anatomy. His "out of town check" wasn't a check at all, but something else of value, possibly gold bars. When he says he's "fed up with this warruld", he meant it literally — and his suicide doesn't kill him, but returns him to his virtual reality station, where he's controlling the human body on Earth. Johnny's full name is Johnny Truant.
The mental trauma he endured while compiling Zampano's notes completely warped him, so he now speaks and acts with the same fractured, nonsensical mindset as the layout of the book. His seemingly inexplicable actions are a result of living in constant fear of the Minotaur, and the various subplots are dropped like hot rocks around him because he is too focused on what's coming after him to worry about the few real friends he has left. He hasn't stopped having lots of off-putting sex, though. Johnny is from the future, and he's trying to make sure the timeline stays in the balance.
He knows that bad things will happen in the future unless things happen in the present to his exact specifications. He's told all the main characters about this, and they believe him. When he calls Lisa his "future wife", he doesn't mean "fiancée", he means she's literally his wife in the future — they weren't even a couple before this. Problem is that Lisa doesn't want to marry Johnny, but Johnny insists on it because the timeline requires it. Lisa ignores him and decides to Screw Destiny by having an affair with Mark. This throws off the timeline so badly that Johnny, unable to handle the pressure, decides to kill himself. The others' reaction is not mourning a dear friend, but rather a realization that they've doomed their future. Also, in the future, breeding is through the belly button.Except he's just way more sociable than Francis Dolarhyde. Note how near the end of the film, Johnny smashes a mirror. Johnny faked his death at the end.
The "gun" he uses to "kill himself" is an airsoft replica of the Beretta 92FS Inox, and the film makes no effort to hide this fact from us aside from removing the orange tip. Maybe he and the undercover narcotics officer Mark decided to fake Johnny's death to get back at Lisa. Mark pulled strings in the police department to get realistic first-response and forensics guys to respond to the "suicide". Their hilariously bitchy fight in front of Lisa was simple misdirection. Johnny paid off Chris-R.
Every indication is that Johnny has no problem throwing money around; he pays for Denny's tuition and buys Lisa expensive presents. When he drags Chris-R off the roof, he realizes that the quickest way to get rid of him would be to give him his FUCKING MONEY. This would explain how he and Mark are back on the roof in minutes, with vague explanations of what happened like "it's clear" — Johnny didn't want Lisa to know that he'd given an unspecified amount of money to a drug dealer (especially if he did something real dumb like write him a check), so he lamely claimed that they "took him to jail".In fact, this may have been Denny's plan from the start. He's hanging out by himself on a rooftop that Johnny is known to frequent because he's hoping that Chris-R will choose that moment to demand payment. It would also explain why he told Chris-R that the money is "on the way". Maybe he was expecting Chris-R to mug Johnny instead of just getting paid off, but it worked out for him in the end.
Johnny and Claudette are cousins.
Claudette laments Johnny's refusal to pay for a friend's house. When Lisa points out that Johnny is not her husband yet, Claudette replies, "I know, but Johnny is a part of our family." And she meant it literally.Johnny has known Lisa since she was a child, and for years, Claudette has been attempting to set up an Arranged Marriage between the two, for her own financial gain. This would explain why Johnny claims to have given Lisa seven years of his life when she doesn't look much older than 18. Lisa never genuinely loved Johnny in the first place, but she was still hesitant to hurt him, if only because he was still a better parental figure to her than Claudette.
If we assume Johnny and Claudette are first cousins, that would make Johnny and Lisa first cousins once removed — pretty Squicky, but not illegal in California for them to get married.
Johnny is a vampire.
Hey, just because it didn't make it into the movie doesn't mean it can't be true. Johnny is a former football player, and his mannerisms are the result of repeated head trauma.
Johnny likes football a lot, as shown in the film. But he never exhibits much athleticism because his playing days are long behind him. He only really played college football, with maybe a brief stint in the NFL as a bit player,note and he was very injury prone. He suffered several concussions and perhaps Career-Ending Injury of a different kind, cutting short his playing career. Although he frequently reminisces about the career he could have had, he fell back on his accounting major and was able to make a decent enough living outside of football.Indeed, much of Johnny's behavior and mannerisms can be explained by Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, a progressive brain condition that's thought to result from repeated blows to the head — and known to happen to football players (Concussion's about the guy who discovered it). Symptoms include mood swings, slurred speech, increasing confusion, and eventually depression, all behaviors that Johnny experiences throughout the movie. Johnny's eventual decision to eat his gun means that his brain is no longer intact to allow doctors to determine whether or not he really had CTE — if he didn't want anyone to know he had it, maybe that's why he did what he did.
Other Characters
Mike and Michelle have a food fetish.
This would explain why they're always going on about chocolate, and why they're so sensually feeding each other cake at Johnny's birthday party.While everyone's aware that they're in a movie, only Mark exploits it. He comments on the soundtrack when Lisa seduces him. He's unsurprised when Johnny shows up on the roof and drops the bombshell that Lisa lied about an act of domestic violence. He vanishes from a frolic in the park with Johnny to get it on with Lisa, and comes back an hour later wearing different clothes.Indeed, the latter suggests that Mark is skilled enough in seeing through the Fourth Wall that he's manipulating the editing. If you watch the scene closely, you'll notice that after Mark leaves, Lisa says that the guests will be arriving soon, referring to Johnny's birthday party. Except that doesn't happen until the next day. The scene was probably originally going to happen later in the movie but was moved earlier. The discrepancy in the dialogue sure seems like Tommy Wiseau's sloppy editing, but it's actually Mark's. He doesn't particularly care about the inconsistencies, though; he'll ignore them if he gets what he wants.
His ultimate goal is to take Johnny's place as Lisa's future husband. And he also plans to have Denny as a little bit on the side. When he, Johnny, and Peter are talking and Lisa shows up with Denny, Mark reveals his intentions by giving Denny one of the most brutal eye-rapings ever, mirroring the one Denny gave Lisa at the beginning.
And Mark's not above violence to achieve his goals. He's willing to throw a friend off a building while incredibly high. The characters' refusal to specify Chris-R's fate is to cover for Mark taking him to the basement and blowing his brains out (possibly because he's competition for Denny). And of course, he maneuvers Johnny into committing suicide — and he can edit in a different gun than he used to kill Chris-R to deflect suspicion. This leaves him the de facto owner of a piece of prime San Francisco real estate, a monopoly on the local drug trade, and a college-aged sex slave.
Denny is prostituting himself to pay for college.
And Chris-R is his pimp. Their whole exchange is reminiscent of what you'd expect between a prostitute and pimp. Chris-R may even have called him "Baby" (or perhaps "Danny Boy" — it's hard to tell from all the screaming — but either way, it's a weird term of endearment). Denny may even be a bisexual (he certainly shows signs with his apparent attraction to both Lisa and Johnny) and be leveraging it for more clients. Once Chris-R is taken to jail, Johnny figures out the truth and decides to pay for Denny's tuition so that he wouldn't prostitute himself anymore. Claudette has Alzheimer's.
This is why she seems to forget everything. Lisa constantly has to remind her that she's fallen out of love with Johnny, and Claudette's always surprised when she hears it. You can even see Lisa's exasperation as she has to tell her mother this over and over again. It also explains why after the fight at Johnny's birthday party, Claudette goes upstairs and calmly talks to Lisa as if nothing happened. It even explains why everyone's so nonchalant about the breast cancer — she was misdiagnosed with it once, and she doesn't remember that she doesn't actually have it. People have just given up trying to explain this to her. Helping engaged women cheat on their fiancés is a hobby of Mark's.
Notice the best man in this video
. Coincidence? This is WMG, and There Are No Coincidences! Claudette is fully aware that Lisa is a lying, conniving bitch.
And she's no slouch herself. Her reactions to Lisa's admissions of her infidelity are disappointment that Lisa's not doing a good enough job at it. In particular, it explains her nonchalance when Lisa claims Johnny got drunk and hit her; her response, "Johnny doesn't drink!", is frustration at Lisa that her lie isn't good enough. Everyone in the movie is just bilking Johnny for money and gifts.
The characters have all seen how generous Johnny is, and they're merely pretending to like him so that he'll buy them stuff. Claudette expects Johnny to pay for her friend's house and is angry when he doesn't. Denny fakes being a socially awkward Manchild to make Johnny think he's like a father figure and stoke his generosity. Mark and Lisa are tired of pretending, hence their affair (and the whole movie). Denny accidentally breaks character during the Chris-R scene and shows his true personality, when he takes a break from crying to scream at Claudette, "You're not my fucking mother!" Denny's extreme reaction to Johnny's suicide is from his realization that he's lost his gravy train. Lisa was a late-life child.
Lisa's in her twenties, and Claudette looks to be in her sixties. She probably had Lisa when she was in her forties. Claudette even has a line suggesting that Lisa's father wasn't her first husband. Chris-R is a Troubleshooter.
He's come back in time from Alpha Complex. He's still got his name and he's obviously RED clearance; he just doesn't use his housing sector or clone number on his name anymore. Mark and Lisa were already having an affair before the movie began.
Note that when Lisa calls Mark at the beginning of the movie, before the affair supposedly begins, she calls him "baby", and he doesn't react at all, as though that's nothing new to him. Granted, he seems confused as to whether or not Lisa is trying to seduce him the first time they have sex on film, but he's that way every other time, too. Lisa's job in the "computer business" is at a retail place like Best Buy.
This is how she can technically be in the "computer business" but still be home all day and dependent on Johnny for cash. The film wants you to think that she's a programmer or something, but if she were really a computer programmer in San Francisco, (a) she would spend all her time commuting to Palo Alto or somewhere else in Silicon Valley, (b) she would be making more than enough to live without Johnny, and (c) Johnny wouldn't have to fend off just Mark, but probably Lisa's lecherous, socially awkward, Tech Bro coworkers as well. Instead, she can work part-time for a pittance and spend the rest of her time at home.She's technically not lying when she says she's in the "computer business", in the sense that a job at McDonald's is a job in the "culinary business". She's probably lying when she tells Claudette she's expecting a client.
Lisa is a Veela.
Everyone wants her. Everyone points out how beautiful she is. But the illusion doesn't carry over to film, so the audience doesn't see her as particularly beautiful. This is also why Mark is portrayed as blameless in the affair; he doesn't want to betray Johnny, but he's powerless against Lisa's advances. Lisa is actually Nomi Malone.
After Johnny dies, Denny inherits all his money and Lisa is bankrupt, so she changes her name to Polly Anne Costello, gives herself a fake backstory, and moves out of San Francisco. But she's unable to support herself (as Claudette predicted), so she turns to prostitution, eventually ending up with a bad rap sheet. She changes her name again and decides to move to Las Vegas, and the rest is history. They have a lot of similar traits (everyone finding them desirable, acting like a bitch, being a gold digger, blonde hair). Since The Room never really specifies when it takes place, it could easily take place before the Stardust went under. Denny didn't really want sugar, butter, et al.
He knew Chris-R was gonna be coming by pretty soon for his FUCKING MONEY. He figured he'd root through Johnny's sock drawer for cash, thinking Lisa was out shopping with Claudette. When he found them at home, he came up with something on the spot to try and get rid of her for a couple minutes. Denny needed sugar to make pot brownies.
And he makes some seriously kick-ass pot brownies. Indeed, this is why everyone hangs around him so much. The characters have come to a sort of agreement over the years; Denny makes brownies for everyone, but everyone reimburses his expenses, hence why he so freely mooches the ingredients off everyone else. Claudette is out of the loop, hence why she's thinking he forgot to go shopping; he actually doesn't need to. Lisa and Johnny have been sexually molesting Denny for years.
Denny sees nothing wrong with jumping into bed with Lisa and Johnny because that's the way their relationship has always worked; they had no problem with threesomes, at least not until recently. Denny's line "I just like to watch you guys" strongly implies that he has watched Lisa and Johnny have sex before, and Lisa and Johnny are unfazed because this isn't news to them. Johnny wouldn't mind continuing, except he's caught the eye of child protection services. He and Lisa agree that they have to stop involving Denny in their debauchery, but they don't know how to break it to Denny. Poor Denny, suddenly locked out of the relationship with no explanation, grows increasingly desperate for their attention. With their sudden withdrawal of sex, Denny starts feeling unwanted and fears that Johnny will stop paying his college tuition. Johnny groomed Lisa from a young age.
The film tells us that Johnny and Lisa have been together for seven years, but Lisa doesn't look much older than 18. Even if she were 25 and older than she looks, she would have started dating Johnny when she was barely an adult. But if she's still financially dependent on Johnny, she's probably only got an entry-level job in the "computer business" and would have just finished her education, making her around 22 or 23 if she even went to college to begin with. And he's considerably older than she is, no matter which way you slice it. Johnny leveraged that age difference, and Lisa's relative powerlessness, to make an obedient wife for himself. They couldn't get married until now because Johnny has to keep things legal.Claudette knew about the whole thing. She's more or less okay with it (if it wasn't her idea to begin with), but she's not above exploiting the situation for her own gain. She seems certain that she can get financial assistance from Johnny, because she can blackmail him and threaten to explain the whole relationship to the police — even if, in some scenarios, it isn't strictly illegal or prosecutable, Johnny is an immigrant and wouldn't know U.S. law very well.
Right before the film starts, Lisa comes to realize that what Johnny did to her was wrong. This is what inspires her to have an affair with Mark. Indeed, her actions are colored by her experience and her feeling that she was robbed of any chance at a normal romantic relationship in her adolescence. That's why she lies about being pregnant and Johnny hitting her.
She specifically has an affair with Mark for a couple of reasons. First, she wants to hurt Johnny back, so she goes after his best friend. Second, she's afraid that Johnny will do the same thing to Mark (who's around her age) as he did to her. After all, she can see how Johnny treats Denny — perhaps they did have a relationship similar to what Johnny and Lisa have. It ties in with the WMG of Denny joining Johnny and Lisa for threesomes. However, Lisa sees from the outside what such a relationship looks like and only then realizes how wrong Johnny's actions are. She then convinces Mark that he could be Johnny's next victim, and the two decide to get back at him together.
Claudette is a habitual liar, and Lisa picked up the habit from her.
This obviously explains the breast cancer; Claudette's lying, and Lisa's so used to her mother lying about these things that she just dismisses it. Lisa, meanwhile, has it ingrained in her that it's acceptable behavior. When she tells Johnny she's pregnant, apparently just to fuck with him, and Michelle and Steven call her out, she seems genuinely baffled. Mark never shaved his beard.
Lisa ate it off his face. Just look at their first sex scene and picture that several times over. Denny has a crush on Johnny, not Lisa. Johnny is aware of this and is using it as a Secret Test of Character for Denny.
Denny is sexually attracted to Johnny. Afraid of what Johnny would think of him, however, Denny pretends that it's Lisa he's crushing on. Johnny sees through this almost immediately and is perfectly happy to take his and Denny's relationship to the next level, but he wants Denny to overcome his fears and come out to him first. This reaches a head during the rooftop scene, where Johnny and Denny discuss his "crush" on Lisa. Johnny seems oddly calm and serene about the whole thing because he knows Denny's lying and is waiting for him to come clean. But Denny never does come clean, and in the end, after Johnny's suicide, he never can. Mark is at least partially how Tommy Wiseau views Greg Sestero.
The Disaster Artist would bear it out — while Tommy and Greg are close friends, Tommy is deeply jealous of Greg's comparative talent, success, charisma, and looks. The movie seems similarly conflicted about how to portray Mark; he has an affair with Johnny's future wife and Johnny resents him for it, but the film paints him in a more positive light than it does Lisa, and he seems to regret the whole affair after Johnny's suicide. Greg also mentions that Tommy had always intended for him to play Mark. Johnny and Mark didn't take Chris-R to the cops; they executed him with his own gun and kept it.
This explains how the gun stays in their possession; if the police arrived at the scene, they would have seized the gun as evidence. It also explains how they got back up to the roof so quickly; it's not like they could just drop Chris-R off at the police station and leave. Michelle is an exhibitionist who likes living vicariously.
Why else would she decide to have sex with her boyfriend in Johnny and Lisa's living room? She was hoping she'd get caught. Considering the way she and Mike were feeding each other at Johnny's party, she might have dragged him into the bedroom or started dry humping him in front of everyone if Johnny and Mark hadn't started fighting. This is why she seems to flip-flop on her stance regarding Lisa's affair; on the one hand, she knows it's wrong, but on the other hand, she can't help but get excited hearing about her friend's indiscretion. Maybe she's even hoping to walk in on the two of them. It'd certainly be preferable to walking in on Lisa and Johnny. She only starts telling Lisa to knock it off when Lisa goes off the deep end and does things like lie about being pregnant. Mark is an undercover narcotics officer.
This is how Mark is sure the situation with Chris-R is "clear" despite his being gone for only a few minutes; either Chris-R is an informant and Mark let him off so that he'd keep snitching, or he called in a couple of nearby uniforms to arrest him. It also explains why he has to sneak up to the roof to smoke pot; he risks suspension if he gets caught. And it explains why he tells Lisa he's "busy" when he's just sitting in a car; he's on a stakeout. It even explains his oblivious attitude toward Lisa throughout the film; he's trying to maneuver her into a more incriminating position.Bonus: it's semi-canon, as it's part of the backstory Greg Sestero created for the character.
Denny is a cat
Based on a theory on Reddit — Denny's behavior is best explained by his being a cat.- Lisa and Johnny let Denny in and then leave him alone to go have sex because that's normal with a cat. When he tries to butt in when they're in bed together, they're amused and unsurprised — cats crave attention, and they have a knack for trying to get it exactly when you're trying to have a private moment.
- He stops by randomly uninvited for an extremely brief visit. Randomly shows up, then randomly leaves. Like a cat.
- He wants to kiss his friend's "future wife". It's how a cat would express affection — it's normal behavior.
- He likes to hang out in high places because he's a cat.
- In one scene he enters the room, and for no reason sits on the floor, in a pool of sunlight streaming from a window. Just like a cat would.
- He doesn't want to admit which specific drugs he's using because he thinks he's people, and he doesn't want to admit to his human friends that he's been High on Catnip.
- Johnny insists on taking care of Denny, paying for his every whim. Cats can't pay for themselves; someone has to do it.
- Tommy Wiseau's description of Denny as "retarded, a little bit", could just be Johnny's perception of his cat; many cat owners think their cat is particularly dim, especially if they're the needy, clingy type that Denny seems to be. Even a talking cat who says the sort of stupid shit Denny says probably wouldn't win any prizes for intelligence.
Mark's last name is Damon.
This is based on a story Greg told in The Disaster Artist. After he and Tommy saw The Talented Mr. Ripley, the latter told the former he was going to name a character after "Mark Damon". Plot
The sex scenes are POV shots.
- Denny: I just like to watch you guys.
- The RiffTrax for the movie jokes that Denny is outside the window filming Mark and Lisa's first sex scene;
- Obscurus Lupa noted a Plot Hole — that Denny is clearly already crying before he sees Johnny's corpse — which would be explained by Denny having seen this beforehand on film (he probably was too stunned at what he was seeing to intervene earlier); and
- In The Room: The Game, you can stumble in on Denny's secret camera room, in which he's watching all parts of the hotel.
Denny is a secret agent, and almost the entire movie is shot from cameras Denny has installed.
Denny is Older Than They Look,note a policeman or FBI agent who's investigating Johnny for embezzlement from his bank. He's working with other agents, at least one of whom is seen on screen — Chris-R. Denny poses as a neighbor kid to gain Johnny's trust, and he plants cameras in and outside their home to collect evidence. Most of the scenes in the film are taken from these cameras; the only ones which aren't are in the flower shop (which has CCTV footage) and the park scenes (probably a bystander's cell phone video or another cop collecting evidence). The scene with Chris-R was a setup, designed to throw Johnny and company off the scent (not that it's any less ridiculous). This scenario has three possible branches:- No one else is in on it. Out of those we see on screen, only Denny and Chris-R are involved.
- Mark is also an agent. Like Denny, he befriends Johnny and Lisa to find out what Johnny's up to. Unlike Denny, Mark has to deal with Lisa unexpectedly coming on to him. Mark is unnerved, but he goes along with it thinking that she might know something and be more talkative post-coital. Mark's outburst at Lisa at the end might be due to his frustration at her audacity ("I lost him, but I still have you, right?"), or it might be from his frustration at the suspect committing suicide. If Lisa was an accomplice, Mark probably arrested her right after this.
- Lisa becomes The Mole. Soon after Denny installs the cameras, he correctly identifies Lisa as the weakest link (probably from her first conversation with Claudette). Off-camera, he and Chris-R approach Lisa, share their suspicions, and offer her protection if she works with them. Lisa agrees — either she didn't know what Johnny was up to and is disgusted, or she did but was willing to throw him under the bus to save her own ass. She discovers that Mark is Johnny's accomplice, and then she goes off the deep end and pulls a Dirty Harriet on him. It works initially — Mark gets cocky thinking that he's getting the money and the girl, and even starts thinking of how to frame Johnny and get off scot-free. When Johnny offs himself, Lisa realizes that she's gone too far and breaks down.
Every character in the movie has a two-minute memory span.
The film's bizarre repetition of certain details is not just because the film thinks Viewers Are Goldfish. It's because the characters literally can't remember otherwise; it's a cast of people like Leonard from Memento. Johnny and friends constantly remind each other of things they should already know — Lisa is hot, Johnny and Lisa are engaged, Mark is Johnny's best friend, Lisa is hot. Mark is shocked every time Lisa puts the moves on him. Subplots like Chris-R's drug deal and Claudette's cancer vanish into thin air because the characters have all forgotten about them. Well, Chris-R didn't — Denny forgot to pay him, so Chris-R goes to violently extract the money from him.A corollary to this theory is that Claudette does have a working memory (an irony from the oldest character in the film), and being the Only Sane Woman frustrates her to no end. She's particularly disgusted by her daughter Lisa and plays up Johnny to her because she's getting revenge by forcing Lisa into a toxic relationship.
Johnny was actually murdered by Denny.
Denny was a Stalker with a Crush on Lisa, and he killed Johnny so that he could have her for himself. The whole movie is a story Denny made up on the spot to cover up the truth. He gets really carried away with it, acting it out as he narrates it. Johnny's accent and dialogue comes from Denny's poor imitation of an actual French accent. Johnny is suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder, and much of The Room takes place in his imagination.
Johnny suffers from crippling low self-esteem. He makes up for what he thinks is his "unlovableness" by playing Santa Claus with his wealth. But he really doesn't feel equal to their love or friendship, because he "knows" deep inside he isn't worthy of it. Images of how they talk about him when he's not there constantly play in his mind.- Lisa is actually completely faithful to Johnny. But Johnny thinks she's way out of his league, and he becomes consumed with the idea that she must be cheating on him. He also imagines that everyone else thinks she's as hot as he does, which is why everyone remarks conspicuously on her beauty.
- Claudette is always cordial to Johnny, but behind the scenes doesn't like him and thinks he's just a meal ticket for her daughter. This is also in Johnny's imagination; he can't accept that his future wife's mother would like him. He not only imagines that she must disapprove of him behind the scenes, but also creates an explanation for why Lisa would stay with him.
- Peter isn't Johnny's friend who's a psychologist, he's actually Johnny's psychologist. Johnny thinks of him as a friend because it's too threatening to imagine himself as the kind of person who needs psychological help.
- Denny isn't "slightly retarded", Johnny is. Johnny's in denial about his problem and projects it onto Denny. Denny is actually a fairly crafty teenager who's taking advantage of the slightly slow but wealthy weird guy. Johnny relates to Denny's innocence ploy, and his generosity leads him to bankroll Denny's tuition.
- Mark isn't just Johnny's best friend, he's his only friend. But Johnny resents him because he's so handsome and socially adept, like Johnny wishes he was.
This theory can explain other plot weirdness, too:
- Johnny's Make-Out Palace: Johnny likes to imagine his friends coming over to make out at his place. He likes thinking he's just that generous, and he... well... enjoys imagining what they do.
- Toss the Football: Johnny thinks this is the way guys should behave, so he inserts the football-tossing into a lot of imagined conversations.
- A Wild Drug Dealer Suddenly Appears: The Chris-R subplot is Johnny's daydream. Johnny wants to feel like a hero, so he concocts a crisis he can help solve. Once it's "solved", it's never mentioned again.
- The Breast Cancer: Johnny resents Claudette for what he imagines is her real attitude toward him, and her "breast cancer" line is just Johnny's wishful thinking.
- Denny's Creepiness: Denny actually does have the hots for Lisa and takes advantage of his "innocent kid" persona to express it. He vaguely hopes that someday Johnny might be "generous" enough to offer to share even his girlfriend.
- Tape Recorders Don't Work That Way: Johnny wants to tape Lisa's calls, but he has no idea how. He clumsily imagines hooking up an old-style tape recorder. This is why it comes out of nowhere and never runs out of tape.
- Peter, Called Steven: Peter goes on vacation partway through the movie, and Johnny starts seeing another psychologist, Steven, in the interim. He clumsily "edits" Steven into his imagined scenes.
- Reefer Madness: Johnny doesn't really know how drugs work, and he resents Peter for "abandoning" him. He therefore imagines that he and Mark get so high, they almost kill Peter.
- Baby Surprise: Lisa really is pregnant, and she tells Johnny just before the party as a birthday present. Outwardly, Johnny is happy, but inwardly, he panics — he can't possibly take care of a child! And now he'd be a real monster if he broke off their engagement. Johnny fantasizes that she lied about the baby, which would relieve him of his responsibilities and give him the excuse he needs to break up with her. But inside, he knows it isn't true.
- Ballroom Blitz: Johnny has a panic attack that leads to him accusing Lisa and Mark of having an affair, causing a big scene at his own birthday party. The first confrontation with Mark is real — notice how Mark's side of the argument is vague, like "You don't know shit!", suggesting Mark doesn't understand what Johnny's on about.note The second confrontation with Mark, where he openly admits to having an affair with Lisa, is in Johnny's head. When he goes outside on the balcony, Lisa follows him and tearfully insists that she's not having an affair and she still loves him.
- Bathroom Betrayal: When Johnny locks himself in the bathroom, Lisa isn't talking on the phone to Mark, but to emergency services — she fears for Johnny's well-being. When Johnny flips out and uses this conversation as "proof" of her betrayal, a frightened Lisa sensibly escapes from the apartment until help arrives. After all, she has the baby to protect.
- The Dénouement: Johnny then goes on his rampage, weakly imitating what he thinks a furious rampage must be. Then he imagines that he kills himself, along with everyone's reaction. Johnny is now free of his problems, free of guilt because Lisa is to blame for everything, and gets to hear everyone say how much they'll miss him and what a good person he is. It's not Mark and Lisa who find Johnny, it's the paramedics, who find him lying on the floor wishing he actually had a gun to do it.
The plot of the film (sex scenes aside) is kids play-acting their interpretation of a "grown-up" movie.
- Johnny talks about his job in an extremely vague fashion, as if he is a young child trying to explain what his father does for a living.
- When Johnny and Mark apprehend Chris-R, they say that they're going to "take him to jail", which is a very simplistic view of the legal system. "Jail" might as well just be "time-out".
- The swearing in the movie is very stilted and awkward, like preteens attempting to use curse words they have heard before, but are not quite sure how to use naturally.
- Mike flatly states that he's "going to go make out" with Michelle, and Johnny abruptly asks Mark about his sex life. A child or preteen who has seen a movie or television show with sexual content or simply heard about sex from their peers may believe that adults talk about sex so openly and casually.
- Johnny's tantrum resembles a young child's, not an angry adult's. His suicide at the end is a means of getting attention and making everyone feel sorry for how they "wronged" him.
- Even the sex scenes make a kind of sense. Children wouldn't be expected to know how sex works, which is why Johnny is doing it wrong.
Betty and Elizabeth aren't examples of breaking the One-Steve Limit.
Rather, they are actually the same person. Elizabeth's dozen guys included both Denny and Mark; when Mark found out through Johnny that Elizabeth was cheating, he beat her up so bad she ended up in a hospital in Guerrero Street. Your love is what I need to set me free.
The Movie
The Room, either deliberately or coincidentally, is the anti-Citizen Kane.
This goes beyond the common appellation of The Room as "the Citizen Kane of bad movies" — there are a lot of parallels:- Both films had a single person as the director, producer, and lead actor.
- Both feature new actors in leading roles who had never been in a movie before.
- Both are considered the pinnacle of their level of quality — The Room being So Bad, It's Good, and Citizen Kane being actually good.
- Both include a scene where the main character's love interest leaves them, and they respond by trashing their room. Tommy Wiseau was explicit that his version was a Shout-Out to Citizen Kane.
- Both have an affair as part of the plot, although this is pushing it a bit.
- Both films' protagonists are betrayed by their best friend in some way, although this is also pushing it a bit.
- Both films' protagonists end up dead by the end of the movie.
, explicitly compared The Room to Citizen Kane. That's about as confirmed as this is going to get. The Room is Tommy Wiseau's Springtime for Hitler.
The film's budget was $6 million. And the image quality is poor, there is a dearth of locations and set construction, there's no continuity editing, the costumes are ill-fitting, and a lead actor has to be line producer and assistant to the director. Even with Tommy Wiseau's poor purchasing decisions vis-Ã -vis side-by-side cameras and the rights to birthday songs, is there any way $6 million could have gone into the production?Furthermore, Tommy won't even hint at where the money came from. Not that it's anyone's business but his investors' (possibly nefarious, possibly vampiric), but it's still awfully suspect. And even furthermore, once the film tanked at the box office, Wiseau repurchased the exclusive rights to the film from the investors for pennies on the dollar, which is why he's free to profit from it by screening it at midnight and selling DVDs to fans of So Bad, It's Good movies.
The plan is obvious. Tommy makes a hilariously awful movie that's sure to tank, especially with its extremely limited release, but still conveniently way under budget. Once the movie failed, and it was clear that none of his investors were getting their FUCKING MONEY! back, Wiseau would be free to leave the U.S. with the rest of the budget for... wherever the hell he's from.
The Room is a Sims movie.
Consider the repetitive and irrelevant conversations, limited leisure activities, the excessively brief time spent in shops, and all the actions with little to no motivations behind them — the unseen player is controlling all the Sims in the room. Johnny's weird accent is because his first language is Simlish. And Johnny's suicide was only possible through a third-party mod. The Room really was supposed to be a dark comedy.
However, Wiseau's script supervisor, the above-mentioned Sandy Schklair, didn't see it that way. Either he didn't understand the comedy, understood it but didn't find it funny, or thought that the comedy got in the way of what he saw as a great story. Regardless, Schklair rewrote the script and instructed the actors to treat it as a drama, which Wiseau either begrudgingly allowed or didn't notice. However, Schklair did a real lousy job covering his tracks; he basically got rid of some scenes, added some new ones, and left the rest completely intact. This explains tons:- Denny's creepy behavior was supposed to be a lot more obvious, but the really questionable stuff was cut out.
- Claudette's breast cancer was a subplot that was completely removed. Much like Chris-R's scene, it was inserted to add more drama, but they forgot about it. Alternatively, it was meant to be a comedy bit; no one's sure what jokes you could make out of breast cancer, but there you go.
- We were supposed to be disturbed by Johnny's nonchalant "what a story, Mark!" That's the joke. Ditto for "anyway, how's your sex life?" and "I did not hit her, I did naaght! Oh hai Mark!"
- Mark's obliviousness to Lisa's advances was meant to be clearer, but since the actors were told to play it serious, that didn't come across.
- The endless number of football scenes would have had even more examples, as an Overly Long Running Gag.
- "Oh hai!" was also a Running Gag.
- The huge number of overdubbed lines is a result of Schklair making post-production edits of lines he considered too funny.
The Room is a sequel to Plumbers Don't Wear Ties.
- The two Johnnys are the exact same character — both of them are
Marty Stus who command everyone's respect and cause Love at First Sight. At some point between the two works, Johnny's face was horribly scarred. - Jane is Lisa. She finds herself caught between two men, and her love for both is completely superficial. She was a little younger in Plumbers Don't Wear Ties and therefore went a little further.
- The boss, Thresher, is Denny, who's a time traveler. In both stories, he's a sexually aggressive and possibly mentally disabled person who gets into something illegal.
- Even other characters with show up, although the connection is more tenuous. Claudette is the Straw Feminist second narrator, and Mark is the man with the upside-down fucking chicken mask.
The Room is a sequel to 10 Things I Hate About You.
In Ten Things, Heath Ledger's character, Patrick, has long curly black hair and speaks with an accent — not nearly as weird as Johnny's, but he's still noted as having one. Sound familiar? Obviously, he didn't age well. Lisa is an older Kat. The Room, whether intentionally or otherwise, is told from the perspective of an Unreliable Narrator with a serious mental disability.
Nothing makes sense to a normal person. People come and go through Johnny's house for no explained reason; they wear clothes that make no sense for the occasion; their emotions and tone of voice don't match the situation. But Johnny doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary (and perhaps neither does Tommy). It ties in with several of the WMGs elsewhere on the page that suggests that Tommy Wiseau has a mental issue of some sort, and The Room is what it is because it's Tommy's perspective on things. Things just happen because, in Tommy's mind, they happen. Whether or not Tommy is aware of this is a different story. The Rooms is a film about the monuments and buildings of San Francisco.
It has a ton of Establishing Shots of the city, some even within the same scene. But these are not establishing shots — they're the action of the movie, and the human scenes are the establishing shots! The film only makes sense to inanimate objects, which is part of why the human characters don't do anything we can understand. The Golden Gate Bridge is the film's star — San Francisco's most visible landmark, generally happy to survive the film intact. But the protagonists are the innocuous apartments in Johnny's building. And the lead is the room in which everything happens — it's a Character Title. The Room is Ben and Arthur with straight people.
Ben and Arthur is a 2002 film, also considered So Bad, It's Good, that follows a gay couple who try to legally consummate their relationship while trying to dodge the evil machinations of the protagonist's hyper-religious brother. Most comparisons between the two films tend to refer to their mutual incompetence and Anviliciousness, but they have a surprising amount in common:- Both have a Copiously Credited Creator — in Ben and Arthur's case, Sam Mraovich.
- Both take place in one of the biggest cities in California — San Francisco in The Room, Los Angeles in Ben and Arthur. Both are also largely set in the lead character's apartment.
- Both films depict every male as a total bastard except for the leading guy and one other character (Ben in Ben and Arthur, Peter in The Room).
- Both feature a wedding as an important plot point. In The Room, the wedding never actually happens. In Ben and Arthur, it technically happens, but is not recognized by the state of California.
- Both films have a Downer Ending, in which the saintly protagonist meets his untimely demise at the hands of a gun. And in both films, the firearm in question is obtained during a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
The Room is a high-class piece of film by the standards of the Spoon World.
On the Spoon World, critics prefer films where character motivations and development do not exist, and drama is resolved quickly. The Room was a critically acclaimed, award-winning movie, considered one of the finest pieces of Spoon-made drama. It encapsulated everything the Spoon Worlders thought was important in a dramatic movie. But it didn't actually make any money, so the producers exported it to Earth, knowing that they wouldn't understand it but hoping that they'd find it so funny, they'd watch it. The Room is at least semi-autobiographical.
The Disaster Artist seems to think so — some elements of the film are so specific that they seem to draw on an actual sour relationship Tommy Wiseau had once had. He's still fuming about it by the time he makes the movie, hence all the dialogue about how all women are crazy and out to get you. Lisa seems to cheat on Johnny For the Evulz, suggesting that Johnny can't figure out why his actual girlfriend did it and concluded it was just something women did. Everybody holds the men blameless — not just Johnny, but also Mark. Mark's character's existence doesn't make sense outside the context of Lisa needing someone with whom to cheat on Johnny. Johnny, meanwhile, is presented as a Love Martyr, a selfless, brilliant, inspiring person who has been needlessly wronged and is Too Good for This Sinful Earth. In fact, Johnny's suicide and the ensuing fallout is almost a dead giveaway — Tommy Wiseau wrote into the film a childish fantasy where he kills himself, and now everyone is sorry for treating him the way they did! He couldn't do it in real life, but he also couldn't stop himself from imagining it.Lisa is the One Ring in human form — everyone lusts after her. The other characters are loosely based on Lord of the Rings characters:- Johnny is Frodo, tasked with destroying the Ring but struggling to resist its allure. Johnny volunteers to take on the responsibility of Ring-bearer, and he proposes to Lisa, taking her all for himself and shielding everyone else from the temptation. Lisa, upon realizing that Johnny is actually trying to destroy her, starts cheating on him as a way of driving him to madness.
- Mark is Sam, Frodo's faithful companion. He finds it easier to resist Lisa's charms than other characters, demonstrated by Mark's constant confusion every time Lisa comes on to him — he's so disinterested in power that Lisa has little to offer him. But like his book counterpart, he has to briefly take on the role of Ring-bearer while Johnny/Frodo is out of commission. The Room is a loose interpretation of this part of The Lord of the Rings, with Johnny/Frodo struggling to understand that Mark/Sam is just helping. Lisa makes it look like an affair to mess with Johnny, but that's not really the case.
- Denny is Gollum, the previous owner of the Ring, who still lusts after it. Lisa only half-heartedly dismisses Denny's attempts to win her back; she's just busy working on Johnny. This would imply that Denny and Lisa had been in a relationship before, but Lisa's closer in age to Denny than to Johnny, so it's less creepy than it sounds. The Room kind of mangles The Lord of the Rings' ending, in that it's Johnny/Frodo who is destroyed instead of Lisa, but Denny's reaction is as if he knows the Ring will never choose him.
- Claudette is Sauron — she created Lisa, in the way Sauron created the Ring. She even calls Lisa "my precious" at one point (yes, Gollum made the line famous, but other Ring-bearers have been known to use the term).
- Peter is Gandalf, who is resurrected as Steven after his battle with the Balrog, here portrayed by Chris-R. They didn't show that part, unfortunately. They may have foreshadowed it, though, with Peter being dangled off the roof — he and Chris-R both fell from that roof. Chris-R may be high a lot, but he can't fly (at least in this version).
- Mike is Pippin, and Michelle is a gender-bent Merry.
The Room is a loose retelling of The Apartment.
Aside from the similarities in the title, which derive from the similarities in the setting (Baxter's apartment, wherever the hell Johnny lives), they've got other things in common. Both characters allow others to have sex in their apartment — that's the only way Mike and Michelle's subplot even makes sense. Both characters are also seeking a promotion at work and are using their place to allow a co-worker to have an affair — in The Room, that part of the film doesn't go anywhere, but neither does anything else. The Room was set in the early to mid-1990s.
Although Tommy Wiseau ostensibly wrote it in the late 90s to early 2000s, it still has many elements of the earlier part of the decade:- Look at the characters' hairstyles — not just Johnny himself, but Claudette and Denny, too. Lisa's thick eyebrows, Claudette's outfits, and Chris-R's generic drug dealer get-up also scream early 90s.
- Look at the Ikea-inspired sets, in particular Johnny and Lisa's living room and bedroom.
- Look at the Cinemax-style love scenes, reminiscent of Red Shoe Diaries, and the generic 90s-style R&B love songs like "I Will" and "Crazy".
- It's set in San Francisco to appeal to fans of Full House, which was popular in the early 1990s and set in that city.
- Lisa's vague talk of being in the "computer business" makes more sense if it's set in the early 90s, an era when people still considered computers to be magical unworkable machines and Lisa could plausibly be exhausted trying to explain to everyone what she actually does for a living.
The Room is actually a fairly good European film that was given a horrible dub.
Like many European movies, there's a lot of sex — more than Americans are used to. The Room is a sendup of a Soap Opera.
It's all about the personal problems and relationships of rich people and their friends. It's set mostly indoors and shot rather economically, usually bouncing between conversations involving two people. Said conversations have a lot of repetitive dialogue, a staple of soap operas to catch up the viewers on the Continuity Snarl. It has lots of gratuitous sex. And it has loads and loads of subplots that make no sense other than to comply with the Rule of Drama. It's set up like a soap opera.Whether or not this was deliberate, though, is an unsettled point. Tommy may have done it to lampoon the soap opera. Or he may just have done it that way because living in Europe, American soap operas were his only exposure to American culture, and he figured that all American stories were like that.
Other
The Room is the fever dream of another Johnny.
Nny gets the flu, feels crappy, and accidentally falls asleep. He has a dream about what his life would be like if he were a normal guy and not a crazy serial killer, but because he's sick and doesn't really understand normal people to begin with, all the conversations and events are extremely weird and stilted, his sick, delusional mind creating the many non-sequiturs in the dialogue and storyline. The sex scenes depict how he imagines sex, which is why they're all so disturbing and nasty. Johnny is now his idea of what sociable and friendly must be like — petting doggies, tossing footballs, and doing "nice" things for his friends. Denny is an aged-up stand-in for Squee, to whom he can be a father figure in the dream. The dream ends when Johnny commits suicide; his fever breaks, and he starts to remember who he is again. The "bank" Johnny works for is, or is affiliated with, the Bluth Company.
They've exhausted all sources of funding in Southern California, so they begrudgingly went further north. This bank is much more receptive to the family's ideas, and Johnny is shown exhibiting one of them — terrible chicken impressions. How the film got its name:
Someone looked at the first page of Tommy's untitled script and said, "Be sure to leave room for the title." Tommy's mind is so scrambled that he thought the were telling him to make sure The Room was the title.Jossed, though — the film started life as a play which would have taken place in a single room. But Tommy hasn't always been consistent about it, at other points explaining the film's title as referring to a person's Happy Place. Maybe he gave it the Parody Retcon like everything else.
Most of the characters have serious mental problems.
As other guesses on this page have speculated, Johnny (and possibly Tommy Wiseau) is mentally handicapped, and the film seems random and senseless because it's told from his point of view. But certain plot points regarding other characters seem strange. Some theories explain this by showing that these interactions are taking place inside Johnny's head. But it's possible that the other characters also have mental problems:- Denny, like Johnny, is mentally disabled. This is actually how they met — families with seriously disabled kinds tend to socialize with each other. Johnny and Denny's other "friends" might be relatives or family friends looking out for them.
- Mark may be mentally disabled, in a similar situation to Denny and Johnny. He seems to be more socially adept than the other two, but he's still got his share of slowness. Notice how slow he is to figure out what Lisa wants, how easily he lets himself be seduced by his friend's future wife, and how often he blurts out nonsensical lines like "Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!" It's hard to assess Mark, though, because of his drug habit.
- Lisa is not intellectually disabled, but she does have a mood disorder (e.g. Borderline, Bipolar, Histrionic). This is why, as her mother says, she can't support herself — her disability is so severe that even meds and therapy can't help her live a normal life. Her only hope of surviving outside a group home is marrying Johnny, living on a combination of Johnny's well-off family, disability checks from the government, and a paycheck as Johnny's nominal caregiver. Her disorder is the source of her pervasive lying and nymphomania.
- Claudette could go either way. She might have the same mood disorder Lisa does, making it hereditary — it would explain why she lied about the breast cancer. Or, she might not be disabled at all, and she really does have breast cancer, but she doesn't want to talk about it with all the crazy people who would never understand what she's going through. She tries to tell her own daughter, who just brushes her off, which discourages her further.
The building where Johnny and Lisa live is a community for perverts.
Kind of like a nudist colony, except for people with loose sexual boundaries. Notice, for instance:- Denny wanders in and out as he pleases with no regard for other's privacy. He walks in on Lisa and Johnny getting ready to have sex like it's something normal people do. When they ask what he's doing, he says he "just like(s) to watch."
- Lisa doesn't seem at all surprised to find two people having sex on her couch when she comes home with her mom.
- There's the guy at the party whose only line, to his girlfriend, is "Lisa looks hot tonight." He may have thought he was at a swinger's party, or he and his girlfriend may even have had something planned with Lisa and Johnny later that night.
