O HAI, TROPER. Can you keep down the "this troper" syndrome? It's very discourage to use that, you know?
- Johnny is referred to as the Gonk, but regardless of our opinion of his actor, wouldn't his character be closer to Informed Attractiveness?
- No, because no one ever claims that Johnny is handsome.
- Well, save for Denny when they’re in tuxes.
- No, because no one ever claims that Johnny is handsome.
- Twice in the movie, Lisa says "You owe me one." Once she says it to Mark, and once to Johnny. No one ever explains what Lisa did for either one of them that they owe her one. Was that supposed to be some kind of catchphrase for her, or what?
- In Johnny's case, it's supposed to be payback for her lifting his mood with pizza and alcohol after his disappointment at not getting his promotion. In Mark's case... um... it may be because she has wanted to talk to him before, but he has always blown her off because he's "too busy."
- What the hell does the 'R' in Chris R stand for?
- Tommy Wiseau said it is because Chris-R is a gang-member and wouldn't want to reveal his real name, which makes it strange why he doesn't just go for a pseudonym. It is unlikely Wiseau ever came up with a full surname.
- This probably wouldn't stand out so much if it wasn't for the fact that "R" is the closest anyone in the film gets to having a last name. Wiseau didn't even bother giving his own character a surname.
- Or maybe he just chose it because he thought it sounded cool.
- Maybe his name is Christopher and he omitted the “tophe”.
- In the scene where they all arrive in tuxes, Denny, Peter and Mark arrive in such quick succession that they must have seen each other coming up to the house - yet they act as if they've all just seen each other upon arriving at the house.
- Well, there's been times in real life when someone has approached a house at the same time as a friend, and called out to the first individual without being noticed, so they had to enter the house separately. So... maybe the characters are all just all idiots.
- Why is the television positioned in such a way that the furniture blocks the view?
- No one is ever seen actually watching it in the movie, even couch potato Lisa, so maybe it's just there in case someone wants to catch a game or something.
- The real answer is that Tommy Wiseau basically bought an entire furniture display, and arranged the set exactly as it had been in the store.
- HOW COULD YOU LOVE HIM?!
- Why does Mark act like he's completely innocent after Johnny's suicide? He puts all the blame on Lisa when he's just as guilty, if not more since he was completely capable of telling her to fuck off in the first place.
- He was probably overcome with grief.
- Plus, are you really expecting someone willing to sleep with his best friend's wife to be willing to take the blame for his best friend's suicide? Especially since he consistently blames his infidelities on Lisa, it's not like it's out of character for him to pass the buck.
- Also, this whole movie seems to be Tommy Wiseau venting his rage on some woman who was unfaithful to him. He probably doesn't see Mark's character as anything but a penis on life support.
- If you take the movie at face value, Mark is culpable but not nearly as guilty. Lisa is essentially freeloading while between jobs, she pushes for the affair, she fakes a pregnancy, and she gets increasingly flagrant in her disregard of Johnny. Mark displays at least a little reluctance about his involvement. Still, you're right. It is out of proportion.
- If you wanted to be really generous, you could interpret Mark's reaction as simply the denial/anger Stages of Grief. He was just flat-out being an unremarkable douche earlier in the film. It isn't until Johnny's suicide that he realises, on some level, just how far out of hand things have gotten, and he's understandably unable to fully process the situation in the minute or two he has left onscreen before the end of the film. His blaming Lisa is the beginning of a Villainous BSoD which could quickly shift to a more appropriate My God, What Have I Done? — he just doesn't have a chance to get that far before the credits roll.
- Why would Peter even bother hanging out with any of them? In fact, how did they even meet?
- Maybe he went to school with Mark? There are a lot of ways this is possible.
- Also note that he stops hanging out with them after the tuxedo football scene, so however they met (which, as the above troper noted, could be a lot of ways), it apparently didn't stick.
- That's more a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as the actor had told Wiseau he had another acting job he had to do, but they never bothered filming all his scenes.
- Maybe he's just pretending to be their friend to get material for a thesis he's writing? You probably wouldn't find so many clearly insane people in one social circle anywhere else.
- What could they possibly have needed six million dollars for in this movie?
- According Greg Sestero, buying camera equipment that would never be used, constantly hiring new actors, paying for that huge billboard in Hollywood for months longer than movie billboards are usually kept up for. So basically Wiseau being Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense in general.
- Buying cameras they never used was doubly bad financially, as unless you're a major studio (and sometimes not even then), most people rent cameras.
- Why exactly does Johnny just grab his gun and go for suicide like that? Many who are at risk of suicide don't just do it on the spur of the moment and typically put some thought and planning into it, which Johnny clearly doesn't do.
- Many who are making films typically put some thought and planning into it as well, which Tommy Wiseau clearly didn't do.
- He was having a total violent freakout, he probably didn't think about what he was doing at all.
- His last words are "God forgive me." He must have been considering at least the spiritual implications of what he was doing.
- Perhaps the shock that the life he'd lived with Lisa, at least the most recent parts of it, were a total lie. Except maybe for the part where he still thought she was pregnant because she had told everyone but him at that point (chalk that up to clumsy plotting), it must have completely wrecked his worldview - he simply couldn't imagine what he would do now if he continued living, since nothing was what he thought it was so he has no idea what to expect going forward. It's also rather clumsily foreshadowed earlier in the movie during the "tearing me apart" scene when he says he couldn't live without her, implying he's felt this way all along - and is now acting on those feelings, since she has effectively left him.
- So, did Johnny hit Lisa, or what? Granted, Lisa is hardly averse to lying to "make things interesting." But Johnny's loud denials fall a bit flat when, while yelling at Lisa that he would never hit her, he pushes her violently to the couch. Also, he's been known to laugh at the thought of women being hospitalised by a jealous boyfriend.
- He did naht hit her, it's naht true! It's bullshit, he did naht hit her! He did naaaaaaaaaht.
- Oh hai Mark!
- Given how he's basically the Golden Child of the film and all of a sudden he's getting problems like the bank cheating him out of a promotion, Denny possibly using his loaned money to buy drugs and Lisa slandering him, his angry outbursts make some sense as he's not used to this amount of stress.
- Plus, we see quite a bit of the night in question. The most violent thing he does is let a glass shatter on the floor.
- To actually try to answer the question, it's obvious that Wiseau simply doesn't know how to keep a consistent character. Sure, Johnny might not have hit Lisa before, but regardless of whether what he did qualifies as an actual hit per se, it does seem very reminiscent of actual domestic abuse situations, rendering the question of whether it were actually a hit moot. Keep in mind he did this more than once in the same damn scene. But again, that has more to do with Wiseau being unable to keep a character consistent with himself - Johnny gets outraged in an abusive way when being accused of getting outraged in an abusive way. That's clearly not the character Wiseau intended to write, it's Wiseau not realising this is contradictory with Johnny's established persona.
- Arguably it may not be contradictory, or at least again in a better written film. Johnny may have been smarting from other passive aggressive actions from Lisa, building up over time, and basically putting up with them because he's a doormat. But to take all that, then to be told he hit her when he didn't? For a character who isn't very emotionally intelligent (as much as he'd like to think he is), it makes sense why he would lash out with a shove (even though the conversation was initially about other subjects e.g. "girl talk"). Not to hurt her, but to tell her "wait a minute, you're out of line, we need to talk this out". It was a shove onto a soft couch, unlikely to hurt her at all. This isn't to excuse his actions, but there is a kind of logical throughline, it's just crudely sketched out.
- He did naht hit her, it's naht true! It's bullshit, he did naht hit her! He did naaaaaaaaaht.
- WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY DENNY?
- Who owns the football? Mark is holding it the first time we see it on the rooftop, then Johnny takes it, and then Denny arrives with it in both football-playing scenes.
- Maybe they all have a similar football as a sign of friendship.
- If Denny comes over to Johnny's apartment all the time, why has Lisa's mom never met him before the events of the movie?
- Maybe that was Denny's first scene in an earlier cut of the film, but then there's how seldom characters get introductions in this movie.
- Maybe Claudette has only recently started coming over often in the recent months leading up to the wedding.
- How did Johnny know Lisa said he hit her? She told her mom and Michelle, but Johnny wasn't there. However, when he overhears Lisa and Claudette talking about her having sex with someone else, he says "How can they say this about me?" when they leave. Which might suggest he was supposed to overhear the accusation that he hit her, and they moved the line to another scene.
- That doesn't really work either, however, as immediately after he says, "I show them. I will record everything." Lisa and her mother were also talking under the staircase when she mentioned that Johnny hit her, whereas Johnny seems to be looking at the doorway. So to sum it all up, no matter how this movie is edited it will never make sense.
- The tribute game patches this particular plot hole by having Claudette mention it to Johnny one of the times they meet outside his door.
- That doesn't really work either, however, as immediately after he says, "I show them. I will record everything." Lisa and her mother were also talking under the staircase when she mentioned that Johnny hit her, whereas Johnny seems to be looking at the doorway. So to sum it all up, no matter how this movie is edited it will never make sense.
- Why does Johnny need audio evidence that Lisa and Mark are having an affair? They were pawing each other in front of birthday party guests, and Mark flat out tells him that she wouldn't need him if Johnny were satisfying her sexually. Johnny and Lisa aren't married, so who needs proof, and for what?
- The tapes prove that the affair has been going on for a while now, and wasn’t simply a one-time instance of "just having fun" Lisa tried to play it off as.
- Where does the "outside" part of the party take place, exactly? It doesn't look like the roof or the alley where the characters play football.
