Alternative Character Interpretation / The Room (2003)

The uneven moods, non-sequiturs and inconsistencies leave The Room wide open for most of the characters.

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• Johnny is actually a pretty decent (though almost certainly unintentional) depiction of somebody on the autistic spectrum — laughing at inappropriate moments, naïvely trusting of those around him, No Social Skills but having compassion, nice but boring to be around, messily dressed, doesn't have a clue how to deal with liars... The more unusual thing is that nobody in the film comments on it, though granted they would have known him for a while by now.
  • Johnny acts like he's completely surprised by Mark and Lisa's affair but he put a tape recorder on his phone and clearly suspects something is going on. It's possible he's putting on a big show or there is a serious difference between suspecting something versus having it confirmed.
  • There's a good argument that everyone around Johnny is just using him for his money. Denny is waiting on Johnny's rooftop and tries to convince his dealer he'll have the money in five minutes. It's very likely he hopes Johnny will pay him back. Claudette brings up Lisa has no skills and is dependent on Johnny. Also, his friends use his house for hookups.
• Denny is, supposedly, an intelligent if slightly naïve boy about to head off to university but given his actual behaviour — following a couple upstairs and jumping into their bed mid-foreplay, hitting on Johnny's fiancée and then telling Johnny, buying drugs when he's the surrogate son of a banker — even Wiseau himself admits the film makes more sense if you assume Denny has quite severe socialization and learning difficulties.
  • Alternatively, it also makes sense if you consider Denny to be a budding, manipulative sociopath taking advantage of the kindness of two naïve older friends (who, it should be noted, don't seem to mind things like Denny jumping into their bed mid-foreplay) and stirring up trouble for fun and profit.
  • Depending on how you interpret Denny's line "I just like to watch you guys", it could be taken as an indication that he has, in fact, watched Johnny and Lisa have sex at some point and that Johnny and Lisa were previously okay with this. If this is the case, it goes a long way toward explaining why Denny doesn't hesitate to follow Johnny and Lisa into their bedroom and why they don't bat an eye at him doing this.
• Since Lisa keeps switching between intended sympathy and total bitchiness, one is left to wonder whether she actually might have a legitimate reason to cheat on Johnny with Mark that she hides behind the For the Evulz reasoning, or if she's just The Sociopath some other characters accuse her of being, especially since Johnny is the textbook case of a "nice guy".
• Mark seems to change his personality during the pot-smoking scene as often as the man who is alternately rude and polite from Monty Python's Flying Circus. A lot of Mark's behavior seems to make more sense if you assume that the rooftop confrontation with Peter is not the only time he's high onscreen.
  • The scene in which Mark tells Johnny a story about a woman that was physically assaulted by one of the "many" men she was seeing seems oddly sketchy if you pay close attention to Mark's facial expressions as he tells the story. Mark can clearly be seen slightly smiling after saying "she ended up in a hospital on Guerrero Street". His situation behind the break-up with the unseen Betty character also seems to be very suspicious after hearing this story out. Lastly, when Mark tells Lisa to get out of his life following Johnny's suicide he proceeds to hit her in a far harder fashion than Johnny is accused of.
    • Greg's book makes clear that the bit about "Guerrero Street" was improvised because it's where Tommy Wiseau lived at the time (he didn't want anyone to know). Greg is laughing because of how he's pissing Tommy off. As he further goes on to point out, Tommy actually used this take in the movie because he couldn't be bothered to do another.
  • When Johnny laughs at Mark's story, it might not be because he thinks it's funny, but because he thinks Mark is making it up, hence him saying, "What a story, Mark!"
    • It could also be the part about a girl having affairs with a dozen guys at once that he finds funny.
• Claudette's dialogue makes much more sense if you assume she's a drama queen and an Attention Whore - traits that clearly run in the family. If, as she claims, "nobody listens" to her, this is probably not the first time she's made up something like breast cancer, hence Lisa's calm reaction.
  • When Lisa tells Claudette that Johnny got drunk and hit her, her mother's first response is "Johnny doesn't drink!" making it seem like she's Comically Missing the Point and under-reacting to the news that her daughter is allegedly being abused. But since the audience knows Lisa is lying about this to justify her desire to leave Johnny, Claudette is possibly aware of this and her pointing out that Johnny doesn't drink is her calling out Lisa's lie.
    • Claudette's insistence on Lisa staying with Tommy makes a lot more sense if you assume it's financially motivated. Claudette not only is 'looking out for her daughter' but given she mentions breast cancer, it's probable that she expects or needs Tommy to pay for her treatments due to the nature of the American Health Care system. She might have expected she had before it was confirmed by her doctor.
• When Johnny bluntly asks Mark about his sex life, it tends to be written off as him being socially inept. However, since this happens right after Mark asks him to spill the beans about workplace information that he's not at liberty to disclose, some have interpreted it as Johnny trying to prove a point to Mark about overly invasive questions. This is hinted at when Mark responds that he likewise can’t talk about it.
• Some fans have a rather dark interpretation of Johnny and Denny's relationship, specifically pointing out Denny's rather odd choice of words after Johnny's suicide. After he, Lisa and Mark all find out what happened, Denny immediately turns to them and yells "Leave us!"... even though he's a guest in someone else's house. Um... why was he so eager to be left alone with Johnny's corpse?
• Since Steven's name is never mentioned in the film and he's never given any notable character traits to set him apart, some fans interpret him as simply being Peter played by a different actor rather than an actual individual.