James Franco's 'The Disaster Artist' is a hilarious, heartening celebration of failure

LOS ANGELES - Sometime in 2003, a billboard sprang up over Highland Avenue advertising a new movie called "The Room," adorned with a screening RSVP hotline and the strange, looming mug of its writer, director, producer and star, Tommy Wiseau.

Unlike some of my more adventurous colleagues, I never called the number or attended a screening, not even after the movie - a work of reportedly transcendent, Olympian awfulness - went from indie curio to cult phenomenon, driven by some of the strongest so-bad-it's-good reactions since "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "Troll 2."

But I still remember the billboard (it stayed up for years) and Wiseau's comically sinister expression, his left eye frozen mid-blink, as if he were both the teller and the butt of his own joke. That's as good