The calm before the storm has long since come and gone.

The Disaster Artist has landed a successful opening campaign that has left me in a bit of a whirlwind over the last month or so. I was lucky enough to have a friend’s dad who is a local film critic here in Arizona who was able to get me into a pre-screening of the move back on Nov. 9. No real qualms about the movie. The story and cast members were treated well in their telling and portrayals. As it was in the book, the relationship between Greg and Tommy was paramount, and the essence of Greg’s story as well as the dream of making it in Hollywood were done well.

But it took me a while to come to these conclusions.

It was certainly surreal watching Josh Hutcherson portray me. Every time he had a line or was featured on screen, people in the theater looked over at me to get my reaction. Wild!!

After watching the movie and making my way out of the theater, fans lined up for photos and it was all too close to the bone at that point.

Now that I’ve had some time with the whole thing, one of the take-aways for me was what “based on a true story” really means. Liberties are often taken when filmmakers choose a real life story for their subject matter. It’s why historians tend to not like movie portrayals of historic events. But the idea is to capture the essence of what happened, and I felt The Disaster Artist did that. My biggest fear when I heard that James Franco was doing a movie based on Greg’s book was that it would turn into a funny “ha-ha” story. But they stuck to the relationship between Tommy and Greg and that is why the movie, to me, is a success. The other part important to capture was this idea of struggling to find success in Hollywood. And what happens when you do find success, but it’s not necessarily the success you were looking for. The movie almost got me there, but left me hanging. But hey, sequel? I’m sure The Room fans would eat that up.

I delve a little more into this and my Room journey in the newest episode of my podcast On the Grid PHX. Listen to it here OntheGridphx.com, and follow us at @OntheGridPHX and facebook.com/onthegridphx.

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