Director Rick Harper’s documentary A Room Full Of Spoons can now be seen again thanks to a Canadian judge lifting an injuction that was prohibiting the film’s exhibition.
The injunction came this past June at the request of the film’s subject, filmmaker Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau, who originally was cooperative with the project that explores the cult around Wiseau’s notoriously bad film The Room, asked for the injunction, claiming that Room Full Of Spoons infringed on his copyrights.
According to the Hollywood Reporter –
Wiseau sought an injunction against showing the doc, forcing Harper to suspend digital pre-sales and remove its presence from the internet.
But Ontario Superior Court judge Markus Koehnen last week dismissed all complaints, which also included claims that Room Full of Spoons mocked The Room and invaded Wiseau’s privacy.
The injunction request came after a long period of Wiseau trying to stop Harper from screening the documentary at a number of film festivals. When Room Full Of Spoons would be announced at various festivals, programmers were almost immediately hit with emails threatening lawsuits if the screening were to go forward. It should be noted that the emails were riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, which, while they were reportedly from someone named “Raul,” led many to believe they came from Wiseau.
In an interview with FilmBuffOnline last September, Harper stated –
So far he’s stopped at least a dozen venues from screening Room Full of Spoons citing everything from copyright infringement, illegally downloaded material to wiretapping and defamation of character… It’s all bullshit of course but I can’t blame programmers from being afraid to screen my film… These are scary claims.
Harper stated that while Wiseau was initially cooperative with the filmmaker on the documentary, his interest and participation waned. It was only after four years of work when Harper showed Wiseau a cut of the film did the acrimony begin.
The lifting of the injunction comes just as interest in The Room could be rocketing to a new high. James Franco’s film The Disaster Artist, in which he stars as Wiseau in a dramatization of the events surrounding the creation of The Room, set to hit theaters starting December 1.
