Generally, I do not have any issue with "chilling out" in a normal situation. In a high-stress situation, however, such as crunch-time the night before the project, I find myself anything but chill.
Therefore, for this exercise I am going to endeavor to remain perfectly calm in one of the most stressful situations imaginable: watching The Room, one of the worst movies ever made.
The four basic parameters for relaxation are a quiet environment, a specific mental technique, a passive attitude, and a comfortable position.
Since I'm watching this in a room filled with about seven other people I can't really say I have the quiet environment bit available, but three out of four isn't bad. I'm quite comfortable in a wooden rocking-chair, and I have already emptied my mind in preparation for the aneurysm-inducing awfulness of this movie.
As for my relaxation technique, I am going to focus on breathing deeply and paying particular attention to said breathing.
Thus far, doing so has allowed me to avoid falling into endless paroxysms of laughter at the sheer awkwardness of this film.
The terrible dubbing combined with the fact that two out of three of the scenes this movie has slapped together thus far have been terrible sex scenes with loud, obnoxious music overlaid have already severely tried my Zen. I can feel the tension in my shoulders, every time the lead actor (and director) Tommy Wiseau opens his mouth and apparently fails at his lines, as his own voice with its indiscriminately annoying foreign accent is dubbed over top.
Alright. I'm breathing, slowly and deeply, attempting to focus myself. There's almost an hour and a half left in this movie, and I cannot imagine what horrors lie in wait. My only chance is to completely detach myself from what I am witnessing, transcend it if you will.
This random neighborhood kid that keeps intruding into the main character's home is incredibly creepy.
I don't think Tommy Wiseau is capable of displaying an emotion. He also does not have any idea what punctuation is, since the script for all of his lines must have completely omitted any commas or periods. Everything he says is just in one monotone stream.
"If you love me, you'll drink." What, did she poison it or something? One sip and he's slurring even worse than he usually does. Oh... no, God no. This is a segue into another sex scene, isn't it. I cannot fathom the horr-- breathe. Deep breath. I'm fine, I can handle this.
This man is akin to the Crypt Keeper, if the Crypt Keeper was unintelligible and also naked for half of his screen-time.
What is the point of these scenes with the female lead's mother? They talk about nothing interesting at all, except for when they randomly launch into topics such as the mother's breast cancer which they barely pay any attention to at all, more intent on moving into a discussion of how she needs to stay with Johnny (Tommy) because he's the best thing since sliced bread.
What? Two characters we've never seen before just randomly waltzed into the main character's house and appear to be launching into yet another sex scene. I am so confused. The mother just walked in with the female lead and actually said "What are these characters doing here?" I think she's as confused as the audience.
Apparently there was no outdoors available during the shooting of this movie, since this scene on a roof has a green-screen city behind the annoying kid from earlier and some sort of crazy thug with a gun.
Danny bought drugs? Drugs are bad for you, Danny!
Happily, this movie has gotten so incredibly ridiculous that it is easier and easier to dismiss every new strange happenstance and keep my gorge down. Of course, Johnny's voice is still incredibly grating on my ears.
Even when he's protesting that he did not abuse his spouse he is unable to rise above his monotone.
Is there anyone Danny isn't in love with? Actually, come to think of it, why do we care about any of this? Is there any point to all of these strange and isolated interactions?
Wow, all of a sudden he's trying really, really hard to display emotion, which I think is physically paining him. "You are tearing me apart, Lisa!"
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I should start counting the times the characters say "Oh hey" to each other. It's happened about eleven times so far.
Uh-oh, Johnny overheard her tell her mother that she'd cheated on him! And now he's busting out the tape recorder. This is not going to end well.
Three more "Oh heys" in a four-second span.
Two more "Oh heys," that's sixteen so far.
Oh darn, nothing much of anything happened for a long time, which was rather pleasant, and then all of a sudden there's another sex scene which I think happened in flashback, since the guy the female lead is cheating on Johnny with mysteriously lost his beard. Wait, this is definitely the present day, and he still has no beard, so perhaps it wasn't a flashback after all.
On the plus side, I hardly feel any maniacal rage at all by now. I think I'm becoming inured.
So much of this movie is stock footage of a bridge. Come on, now, this could be over a lot faster without that stock footage.
Two more "Oh heys," though I might have missed one or two when the music was playing so loudly it was impossible to hear the dialogue.
Johnny and Mark (the friend she was cheating with) have had it out, it's all out in the open now! There's only a couple minutes left in the movie, things are definitely going to come to a head now.
He's trying to have an emotion again-- oh, wait a minute. Spoiler alert: he kills himself.
Awesome! The movie is over. Well, after this I think I can say that I never have an excuse to get stressed again over something as trivial as anything that isn't this abomination.
Closing thoughts on this exercise:
I'm not sure I followed this chapter exactly as was intended, but it got me through "The Room" alive so I cannot think of a better purpose for it.
A short note about my creative environment:
I wrote this in a darkened room while watching the travesty of a movie "The Room." I watched it with a friend and a bunch of his friends, and the movie is so terrible that it provoked frequent outbursts. It's a little bit warm in the room, and I could probably do with some food and drink.
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