robynp

I think he understands on some level, but he's in pretty solid denial about it. Apparently, there was some person on Reddit leaving messages a few weeks ago about our Room Actors web series, saying it was mocking Tommy but the comments were very clearly coming from Tommy himself. (And have since been deleted). And if you watch the series, www.theroommockumentary.com - it's really about us not Tommy at all. So yeah, he is super happy that James Franco made a film about his movie - and with good reason. But there's a level of denial that's still there.

The first scene we did with me was the "chocolate is the symbol of love" scene. I got a call from Greg asking how fast I could get the set, within 45 minutes, we were shooting that scene. After we shot it, I looked around and was like, WTF is this?? But it was too late, my scene was in the can and I'd been raised to "stick with my commitments" - haha. Damn integrity. Guess the integrity didn't cover appearing in bad movies...oh well.

I'm no longer in contact with him. Any other Room actors here in contact with Tommy?

I got recognized around the time The Disaster Artist came out a few times, but truly not that often. When I'm in filmmaking circles, I get recognized more often because The Room is so popular amongst filmmakers. There are so many film schools that use it in their curriculum now - so crazy!

Struggling actor motto: take every role you get. If I had to offer advice to struggling actors now, I'd say: be discerning. It's a different world now though - you can pick up a good camera and create something amazing yourself that looks high quality. You couldn't do that back in 2003.