A couple of weekends ago, I witnessed a fascinating merging of viral videos and cult film culture.

It was a collision of the individual experience of being blown away by the outlandish, random absurdity of a YouTube viral video (think about the first time you saw The Shining Recut) and the communal experience of attending an audience-participation movie event, such as a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It was deliriously fun. And it was all thanks to one man’s artistic vision and determination.

A San Franciscan of obscure European origins, Tommy Wiseau raised six million dollars and hired a cast of 400 to realize his 2003 movie The Room, which is billed as a “black comedy.” Since then, the film has become a cult phenomenon of Horror-ific proportions. Cult status notwithstanding, I would think any indie filmmaker would kill to have his movie on an underground screening circuit six years after its making.

The Room’s viral success, however, is not due to quality of content. Staged like a soap opera and revolving around a seriously undercooked love triangle, the film is a smorgasbord of unintentionally bizarre dialogue, plot twists that make no sense, characters appearing without introduction and leaving without explanation, jarring editing choices and, ultimately, people behaving in ways that no one ever behaves. In one scene, the male actors are inexplicably wearing tuxedos and tossing a football — one of them trips and is never seen again. In another scene, the female lead’s elderly mother announces that she is dying of breast cancer, then shrugs it off. That, too, is never mentioned again.

If an eight-year-old ESL student were tasked with writing a psychodrama, The Room wouldn’t be far off from the end result.

Today’s ultra-discerning cult audiences are loving it. But probably not as the film’s creator intended.

At the screening, which was held in a downtown Kansas City bar, a kid wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a mashup of the Three Wolf Moon design and Keyboard Cat kicked things off by show a couple of classic viral vids through a projector hooked to his laptop.

Then, to much cheering from the audience, The Room began with a panoramic vista of the San Francisco Bay (a view repeated many times throughout the film) and then things rapidly descended into Wiseau’s badly contrived and innocently narcissistic parlor drama.

Several people at the screening came in costume: there were three black-wigged, tuxedo-clad Wiseau impersonators; there was also a guy dressed as the gun-toting drug dealer who shows up randomly in the plot to menace a neighborhood kid.

Throughout the screening, people cheered, laughed and shouted out lines along with the characters. It was a lot like this London premiere, only smaller.

In the end, I left thinking about how cult phenoms like The Room are inherently viral.

After all, it was through word of mouth that I heard about the film screening. Someone sent me a text, then I got online and learned more about the showing from its Facebook event page. From there, I did some research on The Room itself (I hadn’t heard of the film) and came across the film’s loving yet facetious fansite. Soon, I was posting updates to Facebook and Twitter, trying to get my friends to join me for what looked like a riotous night out.

Harnessing the power of virality is a big subject in business and marketing right now. Brands would love to see the kind of word-of-mouth spread Wiseau has gotten, but many are terrified that the word-of-mouth will be in the form of ridicule, not evangelism.

In fact, as Wiseau himself as learned (or not, as the guy seems to have a healthy case of denial going), you no longer control your brand. Once you place your product before the online masses, you essentially surrender it to people to do whatever they want with it: praise it, parodize it, remix it, rip it to shreds.

In the case of The Room, the crowd that gravitated to it branded it as a cult artifact. And ultimately, this works in Wiseau’s favor. Though he may never be taken for a serious director, when he shows up at screenings, is he ridiculed? No! He’s adored. And if he’d appeared at that downtown KC bar and passed the hat around, would I have thrown in a fiver? You betcha. I’d love to see more from this guy.

Ed Wood is applauding in his grave.

If you haven’t seen The Room, I recommend you seek out the nearest screening — or hold one of your own. Your friends will thank you.

And if any brands out there are looking to capitalize on The Room phenomenon, I’m sure Wiseau could use the sponsor dollars for his next film.

Looking at you, Jiffy Pop.

Update: Thanks Chris for directing us to Videogum’s great coverage of The Room, much of which was spearheaded by Wiseau scholar Lindsay Robertson. We are the better for it.