Question: The producer in the restaurant scene, played by Judd Apatow, who rudely tells Tommy that he's never going to make it big - was he a real person? If so, did he ever see "The Room" and bump into Tommy since?
Question: Did people actually care about figure skating? I wasn't alive when this happened, but apparently it was one of the biggest sporting controversies of all time. Well I find that quite hard to believe, since before this movie came out, I'd never heard anyone talk about figure skating, I barely even knew what it was. Was figure skating ever actually a big thing, or do people just like controversy?
Answer: It used to be a lot more popular. The Harding/Kerrigan Winter Olympic figure skating competition was the 6th highest rated program in TV history as of 1994, with 48.5 million viewers, no doubt helped by the controversy. It's slowly declined over time - from 1998 to 2018 viewing figures for the US championships declined by 1/3. Opinions about its loss of appeal range from a change in the scoring (used to be judges rating out of 6.0, now it's a more complicated points system), to a lack of "star power", with recognisable names grabbing people's attention. In the UK at least, skater team Torville and Dean were household names for a long time, but I'd imagine a lot of people would struggle to think of skaters with that level of popular recognition nowadays. That said, viewing figures for the 2018 US championships were 60% up on 2017, and membership of the US figure skating organization has risen for the last four years - these things wax and wane like any other.
Question: As a non-native English speaker, I ask: At the dinner, Jim says to his boss, "I was thinking, with the numbers so high, maybe it's time I get off the road and take an office position." What occupation did he have? And what does he mean "get off the road" here?
Chosen answer: I don't know what his specific occupation was, but the term to "get off the road" would refer to someone who constantly travels, either domestically or internationally, for their job, but they now want to work in their company office every day. The most common trope would be the "traveling salesperson" who was constantly "on the road," going town to town, selling their product.
Question: Why did Niander Wallace kill the female replicant right after creating her? I get that he's crazy, but was there any other reason?
Answer: Think of any manufacturing process. Samples of new products are frequently created and then immediately destroyed. Also, the new replicant would require processing, training, etc. It was simpler for him to just dispose of the test.
Answer: He was being violently petulant at the moment, angry that he couldn't create and control the birth that he just learned occurred with older-model replicants and seeing his new creation as "flawed" by design. Pretty villainous, he cares nothing for the replicants.
Answer: He was a fictional character. However, Apatow says he was playing a version of himself, though he didn't initially realise that when being cast. He claims he is not that bad in real life; his character is also an amalgam of other producers.
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