The production sound mixer and boom operator on Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” trade war stories from their time in the trenches alongside the man, the myth, the legend.

“The Room,” and its auteur Tommy Wiseau, have reached mythical status in the independent filmmaking community, predominantly for all the wrong reasons – the utter disorganization and lack of professionalism of the shoot, the sheer amount of money spent on it, Tommy’s bizarre and often-confusing behavior throughout it. It also has become a cult classic for all those same wrong reasons, and that defying of all filmmaking and industry logic is likely a large part of the how and why Greg Sestero’s book, “The Disaster Artist,” and the film adaption that followed came to be. A filmmaker friend of mine adamantly insisted the read to me a few summers back and, despite never having seen the film itself and not being much of a fan of “it’s so bad it’s good” movies, I caved and downloaded the book. I spent the next 48 hours completely entranced by the words therein, utterly incapable of putting my iPad down. Upon realizing that the Zsolt pictured in a couple of Greg’s production stills in the book was the same Zsolt I had worked with on a film the year prior, I was immediately on my phone badgering him about sitting down for an in-depth chat about this piece of filmmaking lore.

Zsolt and his boom op, Tim, were on a very short list of crew members that did not either quit or end up fired in one of Tommy’s tirades and worked the duration of the show. Zsolt was also part of the skeleton crew that went up to San Francisco for the pickup shooting, so his insight into the full scope of the production is second only to Tommy and Greg themselves. And while there are certainly many tales told of Tommy in the film that are in line with the caricature he’s portrayed to be in the book, there are also stories in this film – including one yet to be told publicly – that demonstrates a humanity in him that need be shared.

– Josh Folan