Room, Slug, Bone, Twitter, Headphones

How The Worst Movie Of All Time Was Made

In Depth Cine | YouTube | 10th October 2020

Tommy Wiseau, the "unlikely auteur" of The Room, is already a mystery: an inexplicably wealthy man with a Polish accent claiming to be from New Orleans. But his film is even weirder. Its executive producers are Wiseau, Wiseau's old English teacher, and a dead man. Despite being set in generic locations (on a low budget), he decided to shoot entirely on expensive studio sets (14m 29s)

Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Forty, Fifty Miles a Day

Mathieu Georis | Vimeo | 1st October 2021

A boy scout with shy bladder syndrome has strange encounters with a forest slug. Doesn't sound like the most engaging premise, but it's all in the method: this is some of the most gorgeous animation in recent years, its hand-painted earthy tones perfectly evoking a disturbing pastoral dreamscape. You'll never look at a flashlight the same way again (11m 11s)

Gone Viral

Savannah O'Leary | Vimeo | 10th October 2021

Checking in with Ken Bone, a lovable Illinois power-plant worker who went mega-viral after asking a question at a 2016 presidential debate. "I'd get up and I'd start doin' media at about five o'clock every morning, and I'd be so anxious about the day ahead that I'd be shaking. My wife would have to help me towel off so I could get dressed." Touching and surprisingly existential (7m 30s)

One Gotta Go

Benjamin Flores | YouTube | 18th November 2020

Comedy horror short. After responding to a benign prompt ("Seinfeld, Frasier, The Office, Friends: one gotta go"), a Twitter user finds himself terrorized by an unknown aggressor who insists that he must keep picking between four things. He soon realizes that his choices have terrifying real-world consequences. (Warning: this one gets weird) (8m 47s)

Browser Video Of The Week

Product executive and filmmaker Eugene Wei—whose writing occasionally graces our recommendations—talks to Baiqu about how we often misclassify choices led by intuition as luck, the benefits of always being a beginner at something, and thinking in infinite timescales despite our finite human lives. Wei is known for his considered writing on tech, but here he speaks lithely on the philosophy of film and mortality (33m 16s)

Illuminating Video Of The Week

Headphone-wearing New York pedestrians reveal what they're listening to; a cultural cross-section

Watch The Viewer's recommendations each week as a handy YouTube Playlist.

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Editor: Abe Callard. Comments? Suggestions? Write to us at editors@theviewer.is