Tipping its hat to the dark, obsessive, loner milieu of the ’70s, Robert Siegel’s directorial debut might have strong influential echoes of “Taxi Driver,” and other films like “Scarecrow,” and “King of Comedy,” but it’s much more a mild homage than a derivative exercise as Siegel thankfully continues to prove he owns a distinctive voice.
Having already dazzled with “The Wrestler” script, which carefully calibrated the pathos to humor ratio successfully and surprisingly (that painful story was funnier and more enjoyable than it probably had any right to be), Siegel furthers his examination of characters on the fringes without feeling like he’s repeating himself too much.
Patton Oswalt, in his first, largely/mostly successful, dramatic turn, plays Paul Aufiero, a late 30-something arrested in development adult who still lives at home, holds a dead end job whose one true enjoyment out of life seems to be his dogmatic allegiance to the New York Giants football team and its lead dominating linebacker Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm).
His one true friend is the equally inept and loser-ish nobody played winningly (and amusingly) by Kevin Corrigan, and Aufiero’s one ambition in life, or at least the highlight of his otherwise dismal parking lot attendant day, seems to be trash-talking the opposing team on a nightly radio sports talk show. It brings him attention and joy, and from his friend at least, some marginal admiration.
It’s his outlet to shine. The sports jock knows him by name, the listeners feel his biting comments (scripted, but of course he always pretends he freestyles them) and it’s when he seems genuinely animated. Of course his mother (great character actress Marcia Jean Kurtz, whose room is next door, is always hilarious yelling at him to quiet down as the sports show is late and she’s trying to sleep. The only, ahem, release after that are his nightly ejaculatory moments, which his mother, of course, embarrassingly berates him for; that and having zero life and zero chances of ever getting laid, let alone married.
It’s a sad and miserable existence and it’s really no wonder Oswalt’s character finds joy in trivial things to counter the frustrations of his ineffectual life. Incarcerated in Staten Island, he lives around family stugats-like yobs like his brother, a successful ambulance-chasing lawyer that Paul despises, but is favored by the family because he’s wealthy and married (to perhaps one of the most hideous, bronzer-tanned, breast-inflated guidette ever seen on screen).
The other main pleasure is of course, the football games themselves. Oswalt and Corrigan’s characters make a huge to-do preparing for games, getting tail-gate party fans all pumped up and slapping fives, yet we painfully watch as the two broke-ass friends have to enjoy the game in the parking lot of Giants stadium, listening closely to the radio and huddling together for pathetic warmth.
By luck or fate, one night the two pals happen to spot their hero Bishop’s SUV and, thrilled by the prospect of meeting him, stalk tail him all the way to a strip club in Manhattan (a nicely written touch of this sadsack football fanatic is Oswalt blanching at the $10 a beer price tag; clearly he’s too broke and too enamored with pigskin to ever have bothered entering the peelers).
What begins as a fortuitous dream come true — meeting their hero — soon takes a turn for a worse as their awkward introduction strikes a misunderstanding which leads to a serious beatdown. Oswalt is hospitalized and unconscious for three days. Of course, for him the worst of all of this is that it means Quantrell is suspended from action and this causes the Giants to lose. Exacerbating his pain to near apoplectic levels is the rival sports-show caller Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport) who gloats and all but does an audible victory dance after every game the Giants lose in Quantrell’s absence.
A police detective comes sniffing around trying to put the football star behind bars (the always serviceable Matt Servitto) and the money-grubbing lawyer brother tries to put the squeeze on the multi-million dollar player with a lawsuit. As these tensions begin to surmount, Oswalt’s obsessive character’s devotion to his team and Quantrell are severely tested.
While many have called the film a compelling portrait of obsession, a more accurate description might be an engaging and heartbreaking look at loneliness. While Siegel is a Football fan and knows his stuff, it’s just a device to convey the emptiness of Oswalt’s life. The sport is a manifestation of displacement, a fulfillment surrogate for everything else the character doesn’t have, which is pretty much everything. Siegel however, knows the harmony in humor and pain and wisely the film is not a miserablist slog and quite hilarious at times, but don’t mistake it for a comedy.
The biggest deficiencies shown are in the directing. Siegel demonstrates his inexperience around the camera in the awkward “action sequence,” the far fetched, not-totally-buyable ending, a pace that occasionally sags, and a few moments that probably felt right on paper, but just don’t play onscreen. It also makes us want to campaign against films ever being shot digitally [sometimes the butt-ugly filter doesn’t help the amateur-ish look] but we won’t hold that against it.
“Big Fan” is a strong debut, if a little rough around the edges, and most of the shortcomings are made up for in the capable acting and the sharp writing which has a deep understanding of the socially-inept, marginalized character with a downtrodden soul that perhaps just needs a little nurturing [B or B+ when we’re feeling a bit more generous].
– This review originally ran during the Independent Film Festival of Boston on May 1st, 2009.