James Franco on Re-Creating a Bad Movie in ‘The Disaster Artist’: ‘The Upside Down of ‘La La Land” (Video)

“There were so many meta levels,” co-star Alison Brie says

“The Disaster Artist” director James Franco jumped at the chance to make a movie about the making of one of the most notoriously bad movies of all time, Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult hit “The Room.”

“We like to say that this is the upside down of ‘La La Land,’” Franco told TheWrap’s Matt Donnelly in a video interview.

Franco, who stars as Wiseau in the film, notoriously stayed in character — including facial prosthetics and an imitation of Wiseau’s peculiar accent — while he was overseeing the shoot.

“It’s a movie about the making of a movie and I am directing it, playing a guy that acted and directed in the thing,” Franco said. “It just makes it a lot simpler to just stay one thing.”

“There were so many meta levels,” noted Alison Brie, whose co-stars also included Ari Graynor, Paul Scheer and Dave Franco.

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“There was a getting-used-to-it period for every actor who came on set,” James Franco conceded.

“The Disaster Artist” is currently in theaters.

Watch the video above.

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