Sestero (the only source Wiseau is alleged to have told this to) asserts that after Wiseau had lived in Louisiana for some amount of time, he subsequently moved to San Francisco, California, where he worked as a street vendor selling toys to tourists near Fisherman's Wharf. Wiseau supposedly gained the nickname "The Birdman" for his bird toys, which were only popular in Europe at the time; this led him to legally change his name when he became a U.S. citizen to Thomas Pierre Wiseau, taking the French word for "bird" (oiseau) and replacing the O with the W of his birth name. Around this time, Wiseau also claims to have obtained a degree in psychology from Laney Community College in Oakland, asserting that he had graduated on the honor roll. According to Sestero, Wiseau claims to have worked a variety of jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area, including restaurant busboy and hospital worker, and ran a business called Street Fashions USA that sold irregular blue jeans at discounted prices. He then claims to have eventually purchased and rented out large retail spaces in and around San Francisco and Los Angeles, making him independently wealthy. Sestero states that the idea of Wiseau becoming wealthy so quickly via the jobs he claims to have had is so unlikely that he himself finds it impossible to believe. Sestero suggests on several occasions that many people involved with the creation of The Room believed the film to be part of some money laundering scheme for organized crime, but Sestero himself considers this unlikely. Wiseau claims to have been involved in a near-fatal car crash in California after another driver ran a red light and struck Wiseau's vehicle; as a result, Wiseau was hospitalized for several weeks. Sestero suggests that this incident was the turning point in Wiseau's life that led him to pursue his dreams of becoming an actor and director, ambitions that he had long neglected while pursuing financial security. Career Film Influences and early work Wiseau has stated that he has been influenced by the films The Guns of Navarone and Citizen Kane, and specifically the actors James Dean and Marlon Brando. According to Sestero, Wiseau's obsession with James Dean was so intense that he often visited a Los Angeles restaurant owned by a former acquaintance of Dean, and that several lines of dialogue in The Room (including the infamous cry