From a distance, with the benefit of a little squinting, it almost makes sense. Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film The Room and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s current Broadway smasheroo Hamilton are both supremely auteurist works, each one expressing an individual’s unique perspective and strong creative drive. Wiseau and Miranda both managed to give themselves career-defining roles with their respective efforts, and both found themselves attracting sizable cult followings, particularly on the internet. From that perspective, something like “Oh Hi Hamilton” makes sense—it almost seems inevitable, really. Written by Jeremy Fassler and Zach Spound, this five-and-a-half-minute miniature musical splices the DNA of Hamilton and The Room to create an oddly malformed, mutated child.
The plot of “Oh Hi” hews closely to that of The Room, while the gratifyingly catchy music is written in the unmistakable, hip-hop-influenced Hamilton style. Spound, a Los Angeles actor, plays the title role, a man who dresses like Hamilton (except for the sunglasses) but talks and acts like Wiseau, complete with an accent that no one else in the cast seems able to identify. (Sample lyrics: “What country are you from? / France?”) No one else here dresses like a Founding Father, so it’s like the central character has just beamed in from another century and become an egotistical, whiny douche-chill magnet overnight. All the drinking, fighting, football tossing, infidelity, and false accusations of domestic abuse of The Room are captured here, only set to music. Fortunately, The Room’s anti-erotic sex scenes are glossed over by the benign pillow fight.
