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GQ: Switching gears, are you guys still working on a project with Tommy Wiseau from The Room?
Tim Heidecker: No, we’re not working with him at the moment.GQ: What happened?
Tim Heidecker: We tried to produce his sitcom, The Neighbors, which is one of the great unseen projects that you need to know someone to see. And we couldn’t get it to work. We couldn’t get it to happen.GQ: You mean you couldn’t sell it?
Tim Heidecker: Tommy wanted more help to make it and we wanted him to do what he does in a vacuum without any assistance from professionals. We wanted him to make the show without being influenced by anybody that’s ever made a show before. And there was sort of an impasse there.GQ: But that’s what made The Room so ridiculously great. Everyone always says it feels like a movie made by someone who’d never seen a movie.
Tim Heidecker: He really wanted to make something like Friends—a really broad sitcom. So he realized that he needed somebody who knew how to do that and we said, “No, we’ll sort of be the middle man and help with the business end of getting the show made. But we’re not going to help you write it or edit it or shoot it. That has to come from you, Tommy.”Eric Wareheim: He refused to budge.
-Live From Sundance: Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and Will Forte | GQ
You’re tearing me apart, Tommy.
For a look at the wonder of what could have been, see the trailer for Tommy Wiseau’s “theoretically upcoming” Friends-inspired sitcom “The Neighhors”.
