According to The Disaster Artist (Greg Sestero's book based on the making of The Room), Wiseau was already independently wealthy at the time production began. Over several years, he claims to have amassed a fortune through entrepreneurship and real estate development in Los Angeles and San Francisco, a story Sestero found impossible to believe. Although many of the people involved with the project feared that the film was part of a money laundering scheme for organized crime, Sestero also found this possibility unlikely. Wiseau spent the entire budget for The Room on production and marketing; Wiseau stated that the film was relatively expensive because many members of the cast and crew had to be replaced. According to Sestero, Wiseau made numerous poor decisions during filming that unnecessarily inflated the film's budget, such as building sets for sequences that could have been filmed on location, purchasing production equipment rather than renting it, and filming scenes multiple times using different sets. Wiseau also forgot his lines and place on camera, resulting in minutes-long dialogue sequences taking hours or days to shoot. Wiseau's antics on the set further caused the film's cost to skyrocket, according to Sestero. According to Sestero and Greg Ellery, Wiseau rented a studio at the Birns & Sawyer film lot and bought a "complete Beginning Director package", which included two film and HD cameras; Wiseau was confused about the differences between 35 mm film and high-definition video, yet he wanted to be the first director to film an entire movie simultaneously in two formats. He achieved this by using a custom-built apparatus that housed both cameras side by side and required two crews to operate. Despite this, only the 35 mm film footage was used in the final cut. Casting Wiseau selected actors from thousands of head shots, although most of the cast had never been in a feature film prior to The Room. Sestero had limited film experience and agreed to work as part of the production crew only as a favor to Wiseau, with whom he had been friends for some time before production began. Sestero then agreed to play the Mark character after Wiseau fired the original actor on the first day of filming. Sestero was uncomfortable filming his sex scenes and was allowed to keep his jeans on while shooting them. According to Greg Ellery, Juliette Danielle had "just gotten off the bus from Texas"