Can We Please Talk About How the Trailer for Tommy Wiseau’s ‘Big Shark’ Turns Into an Underwear Ad?

The first time I ever saw Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic film The Room was in its natural habitat: a college town movie theater at midnight. Like so many across the country and the world, I was confounded, stupefied, and very deeply entertained. So when the news broke that Wiseau is releasing his second-ever film, and it is a disaster film simply called Big Shark, it was like all my friends and I all had our birthdays changed to the same day and got the best present ever.

The trailer is jaw-dropping, logic-obscuring, and excellent. So many words that are so dramatically landing meticulously, one at a time, to synthesized drum hits. I clearly need Tommy Wiseau’s take on the animal disaster flick yesterday. And it’s about … a big shark? He’s big. He’s shark. He’s HERE. Amazing.

But the trailer only takes up half of its video’s prescribed YouTube video runtime. “Wait, was that really two minutes?” I thought to myself in the split second after a second shark had come up from behind to gobble more the end-of-trailer announcement text. Friends, it was not. The best part, the most brain-shattering turn I’ve ever seen a trailer take, the peak Wiseau vintage, comes after.

Love is blind

It’s not at all clear what the hell is going on at first. A third, but even less polished, shark arises to devour a camera. The shark screams, someone else (suspiciously Wiseau-like) screams. And then—we’re suddenly in black and white. Surprisingly catchy synth funk begins to play. Two men are playing basketball shirtless, their boxers peaking out above their low-hanging pants.

Wiseau appears, wearing Almost Famous-style sunglasses and a blonde bobbed wig in the style of classic Friends-era Jennifer Aniston. He is holding a basketball. As he tosses it; he offers his wisdom. “Love is blind,” he states. Is he asking as these guys’ coach? Are any of them related to the boxers from the Big Shark trailer? Where am I?

A picture of a bunch of people holding up boxers appears and leaves so quickly that you can’t properly absorb it. Because now, a lady I have never seen before in my life and will probably never see again has appeared in the center of the frame. “Love is dangerous,” she smolders.

At this point, my jaw is somewhere even more on the ground than it was after the Big Shark trailer. It has now defied physics and the floor-plan of my building to sink into the basement. As we get our second fleeting closeup of one of our basketball-playing leads’ boxers, I finally begin to realize this could be an underwear commercial.

“Do those boxers say ‘Tommy Wiseau’?” I begin to think, as Wiseau appears once again to tell me that love is blind. This time, I notice that appearing and disintegrating with Wiseau’s shot, there is a random man who does nothing. Who is he? Why is he there? He looks kind of sad. Did Wiseau not give him underwear? He looks kind of like a guy from my high school. Is he a guy from my high school? What was that guy’s name, again?

But I don’t have much time for these thoughts. “Love is awesome,” chuckles one of the basketball men, as if fresh from his first kiss, surprised by how true this statement is.

The torsos and upper bottoms of our basketball stars finally turn towards the camera. Instead of confirming that the boxers’ elastic band does, indeed, say “Tommy Wiseau,” I’m staring confoundedly at one of their tattoos. “Casino Goals,” read the letters vertically descending the left man’s torso. Casino? Goals??

It is simply too much unexpected text to take in at once. But it cannot prepare for the next screen: “TWUNDERWEAR.”

To be fair, I think it’s supposed to be TW Underwear. But that will never be true in my heart. It’s Twunderwear.

I try to go to Wiseau’s website. I’m hypnotized, searching for answers. Is this what he’s been pushing during all those tours to screenings of The Room? But beyond the homepage, all the the underwear pages have a data error. I cannot view the TW collection. The server is down.

So, too, are my basic faculties of comprehension, because even when the website comes back up, I discover a free pair of Twunderwear comes with a Blu-Ray of The Room.

(featured image: Tommy Wiseau)