Tuesday, April 2, 2013

I ran into an interesting problem while working on a Q&A piece for The New Hampshire. The person I was interviewing, Tommy Wiseau, does not appear to be a native English speaker (he won't say where he's from, but his accent suggests eastern Europe). That's not to say he was difficult to understand, or that he had any difficulty understanding me, but a lot of his responses had a lot of incorrect grammar.

I wanted people to be able to read and understand the article, so some revision was necessary. In the end, I chose to edit his answers as little as possible, while adding or revising small passages (adding an article here, fixing past/present tense agreement there, etc). I tried as much as possible to keep his voice intact.

Here's an audio clip of Tommy answering one of my questions:

And here's how I chose to present it on the page:

TW:  Well, I’ll be honest with you – I did my own research based on taking to fans and everything, what I noticed when people enjoy it ... you know, it is my work. I took everything, you know? You know some of it – I don’t know if you or anyone reading this has done any research online, but some of the stuff is misleading, so I encourage everyone to come to the screening in New Hampshire and they can ask me personal questions, whatever they want to ask. Because some of the reviewers and some of the opinions are completely off the wall. I’m very proud of my project. I worked very hard on it. And we did submit it to the Academy Awards, I don’t know if you knew that. But long story short, to respond to your question, it comes from life, you know? It comes from relationships. I’ve been there. Issues with drugs, issues with different environments. I encourage people to compare the character of Lisa to Elizabeth Taylor in “Cleopatra.” Are you familiar with the movie? 
CS: Yes, I am. 
TW: So, you know, it’s manipulation, but by the same token it’s a woman in society, you know? And again, this is why people relate to it – because it’s real. Different people compare “The Room” to other projects, and I always say, “You cannot compare oranges to apples, thank you very much.” (Laughs)

1 comment:

  1. you cannot compare oranges to apples

    <3 tommys wise beyond his years

    ReplyDelete