Why Is Some Art So Bad That It’s Good?

The Disaster Artist – which just earned James Franco a Golden Globe for his portrayal of director Tommy Wiseau – tells the story of the making of The Room, a film that’s been dubbed “the Citizen Kane” of bad movies. Not everyone likes The Room. (Critics certainly don’t – it has a 26 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) But lots of folks love it. It plays at midnight showings at theaters across North America, and it’s a testament to a movie’s awfulness (and popularity) that, years later, it became the subject of a different movie. In a new paper for an academic journal of philosophy, my colleague Matt Johnson and I explored these questions. A Hollywood outsider named Tommy Wiseau produced, directed and starred in The Room, which was released in 2003. Why Is Some Art So Bad That It’s Good?

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