How Tommy Wiseau Blew Through $6 Million Making The Room

Tommy Wiseau spent 6 million dollars making The Room, and the decisions behind that number are almost impossible to defend. After seeing The The Talented Mr. Ripley. Ripley with his friend and aspiring actor Greg Sestero, Wiseau was moved enough to write a play, which he then expanded into a 600 page book. No publisher would touch it, so he decided to turn it into a film himself and finance the entire production out of his own pocket.

How he could afford that in the first place is not something I can explain. As I put it, nobody knows. What is clear is that once he had the money, Wiseau made a series of choices that inflated the budget far beyond what the finished film would suggest.

Tommy Wiseau bought camera equipment instead of renting it for The Room

Every other production rents the cameras and gear it needs for a shoot. Wiseau instead chose to buy all of the camera equipment outright for The Room, a decision that added enormous unnecessary cost to a film that did not require owning that hardware once shooting wrapped.

On top of that, digital cameras were still relatively new at the time, and Wiseau did not understand the difference between shooting on digital versus film. Rather than pick one format, he decided to shoot on both simultaneously, running film and digital cameras side by side for the entire production.

That choice required additional equipment, more crew members to operate the second camera setup, and extra time spent aligning both cameras before every single shot. After all of that money and effort, Wiseau then threw away the digital footage entirely and used only the film version in the finished movie, meaning the digital shoot contributed nothing to what audiences actually see.

Sets were built from scratch instead of using cheap, real locations

Locations that could have easily been sourced for very little money were instead constructed on a sound stage. The alleyway and the rooftop seen in the film are both examples of sets that were built rather than shot on location, adding construction costs to scenes that did not need them.

The rooftop set became a particular problem. After it was filmed and the set was dismantled, Wiseau suddenly decided he wanted additional shots on the rooftop, so he ordered the carpenter to return and rebuild the entire set from the ground up a second time.

Once that rebuild was finished, Wiseau refused to pay the carpenter the amount they had originally agreed upon. He would not even reimburse her for the nails she had purchased for the job, leaving her out of pocket for work she had already completed on his instructions.

What did you find most baffling about how Tommy Wiseau spent his money on The Room?