History NightmareFuel / TheDisasterArtist

As ''Literature/TheDisasterArtist'' shows, some of the stuff behind-the-scenes of ''Film/TheRoom'' is [[NightmareFuel pretty scary]].

** The backstory also hints that a very young Tommy was either forced to turn to prostitution to survive or that he very narrowly escaped this fate.

** Amongst all of it, Greg finds an old picture of a young Tommy pinned to the fridge. He doesn't have the gaunt look, the sunken eyes, has natural chestnut brown hair, and is smiling a genuine smile. Compared to the mess Tommy is now, Greg aptly surmises: [[DarkAndTroubledPast "Something horrible happened to this man."]]
* The movie brings up a moment of FridgeHorror regarding Tommy's idea of how a director should behave. He believed that since Creator/AlfredHitchcock abused an actress on the set of ''Film/TheBirds'', it must be okay for him to do the same. Good thing he didn't use ''Film/LastTangoInParis'' as a standard, given that this was during ''The Room's'' infamous sex scene.

** Amongst all of it, Greg finds an old picture of a young Tommy pinned to the fridge. He doesn't have the gaunt look, the sunken eyes, has natural chestnut brown hair, and is smiling a genuine smile. Comparing to the mess Tommy is now, Greg aptly surmises: [[DarkAndTroubledPast "Something horrible happened to this man."]]

* Although not a heap load of time is spent on it, it's mentioned that a few years prior to him meeting Greg that one of Tommy's Street Fashions locations had caught on fire and that an unknown man had died, in Greg's words, ''gruesomely'' in the fire after it became so large that it spread to a couple of nearby buildings, including the poor man's residence.

-->Tommy believes this because, in his personal life, he has taped his own phone calls for years using similarly low-tech techniques. Whenever anyone called him—including me—he put the call on speaker and hit record on the same yard-sale tape recorder he now wanted to film. This was why he always said “I’m listening” whenever I called. [[ParanoiaFuel He was listening.]] He was also recording. I know all this because I [[OhCrap eventually found a huge cache of tapes with hours and hours of phone calls on them, some of which were ours.]] I confronted him. He denied it at first. When he realized he couldn’t deny it, he claimed he’d done this to study my accent, in order to lose his own. I told him that didn’t sound like a very plausible explanation, and from then on, I hung up on him if he ever put me on speaker. [[MoralMyopia Then he became paranoid that I was taping him.]] Whenever we were on the phone, he would repeatedly ask me, 'Does anybody listen this conversation?'"

* Tommy had a brief enthusiasm for setting up [[TheReveal a surprise reveal]] that his character Johnny was really a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]]. The crew managed to talk him down from this. However, considering how autobiographical the ''rest'' of the script was... and no one was ever able to figure out where he was getting [[VampiresAreRich all that money]]... and [[Really700YearsOld we still don't know how old he is]]... and he's got that [[UndeathlyPallor dead-white skin]] and [[VampireVords muddled Eastern European accent]]...

As the book shows, some of the stuff behind-the-scenes of ''Film/TheRoom'' is pretty scary. Like: