Patton Oswalt in Robert Siegel’s Big Fan
“Hey Paul, how does it feel to get beat up by your hero?”
Most will never have to contemplate the most literal interpretation of the question, but Big Fan’s Paul Aufiero has indeed received hospitalizing blows from his idol, New York Giants Linebacker Quantrell Bishop. Played by a remarkable Patton Oswalt, Paul is among the most devoted of sports fanatics, the type obsessively rehearsing and rewriting talk radio tirades while struggling to slough off the quotidian aspects of life unrelated to their beloved teams. In the late 19th century, baseball enthusiasts shortened “fanatic” (from the Latin for maniacally zealous) to “fan” in order to describe their passion for the burgeoning pastime; 20th century guys like Paul and his sycophantic buddy Sal (the brilliant Kevin Corrigan) reinstated the moniker’s original berserker connotation (1). They and their ilk are full-time fanatics moonlighting as functioning human beings. But the arrangement between the worshiping and the worshiped is more fragile than it appears, and in Big Fan first-time director Robert Siegel documents the steadfastness of The Faithful as it’s shaken to the core.
After trailing Bishop’s envoy into a Manhattan strip club following a chance sighting in his native Staten Island (where "QB" and his posse go to score blow), Paul obliviously pushes the wrong buttons and receives the superstar’s coked-out wrath. Emerging from a three-day coma, Paul’s crisis of self breaks out when Bishop’s consequent suspension puts the team in danger of missing the playoffs. The carefully-composed structure of Paul’s life crumbles: His ambulance-chasing brother files a $77M lawsuit without his consent; he’s pursued by a detective seeking to prosecute Bishop; and he’s continuously heckled over the radio by archrival Philadelphia Phil (the hilariously caustic Michael Rapaport), whose Eagles are inching closer to supplanting the beleaguered Giants as division leaders.
Siegel wisely restrains Paul from literally voicing his misery via ponderous, Travis Bickle-like narration or overwrought dialogue. Instead, the director rivetingly spends the film’s midsection perusing Oswalt’s agonized face in various states of disrepair. It’s a striking subtlety and confidence in his lead actor that Darren Aronofsky lacked while filming Siegel’s screenplay for The Wrestler. Those familiar with the short film “Untitled Patton/Byrne Piece” are acutely aware of the possibilities available to the comedian’s face, and Big Fan captures some of Oswalt’s most indelible visages (2). Audiences could reasonably anticipate a breakout comic role for Oswalt in Big Fan, but Siegel keeps him entirely in character, never chucking superfluous guffaws or misplaced Pattonisms into the mix. The disparity between the fastidiousness of his stand-up routine and the dim graveness of Paul illustrates Oswalt’s range as a performer, heralding great things to come.
Even if Aronofsky’s leaden direction undermined the egregiously overrated The Wrestler, Siegel’s maudlin screenplay contributed to that film’s failure in establishing a plausible emotional landscape. Big Fan, however, bears none of The Wrestler's flaws but exhibits many of its virtues: both share a keen sense of milieu and are most effective when observing their characters in authentic environments from an impartial distance. Mickey Rourke’s blubbering performance in The Wrestler is here replaced by Oswalt’s dumbfounded expression of helplessness as his world rapidly expands beyond understanding. There is a clear kinship between the films -- a fascination with the gaudier underbellies of American sport as well as the big dreams of the working poor -- but ambiguity and tone mark the difference between the juvenile The Wrestler and the more thoughtful Big Fan.
Our popular understanding of fandom has been reshaped the past few decades from an emphasis on athletics to an emphasis on culture and subcultures. Sporting events were the accepted locus of unbridled (secular) communal passion until the ascendency of geekdom during the 1990s and 2000s. The New Geekdom encompasses everything from comic book conventions and cartoons to science fiction and video games and it’s become a billion dollar business. The Geeks (Enthusiasts, Conventioneers, Devotees, Nerds) themselves had been around for decades, but until recently they’d never been catered to seriously as a market, and their habits were viewed with satirical derision by the mainstream. This isn’t to say that sports have been eclipsed by popular culture, but that culture industries have managed to catch up in terms of visibility in mainstream channels and the fealty they've inspired. They’ve done so by discovering and cleverly exploiting the economic potential of fostering a certain kind of uncritical enthusiasm in their target demographics, and it’s the largely uncritical devotion to sports teams and comic book characters that invites analogies between modern fandom and religious experience. Fandom often turns irrational allegiance into a virtue and adds a competitive, quantitative edge to obsession (i.e. “I’m more of a fan than you because I’ve XYZ’d more times than you have.”) The central pickle of Paul’s crisis is how he can reconcile the agony and ecstasy of his intense fidelity. He initially avoids cognitive dissonance by chalking the altercation up to a misunderstanding (he claims the media is “blowing this out of proportion”), but there is soon no escape from the fact that his most cherished (though illusory) relationship nearly killed him. As the beset Job had it, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.” Paul’s deity is both Old Testament and New (3).
Fan culture, especially as it centers on athletics, has a shadow regard for its object as well. As much as athletes are valorized for superhuman prowess, they’re disdained and vilified for their greed and immodesty. After Paul’s assault, Quantrell Bishop is repeatedly referred to as “an animal.” This is common language used by dismayed sports fans when athletes are implicated in off-field acts of violence or impropriety and there’s always a racial undercurrent to the epithet. Having refused the distance between his own person and Quantrell, Paul is incapable of identifying his attacker as something less than himself. He just wants his hero back in the lineup so that the Giants can make the playoffs.
In this formulation rests the film’s surprisingly heartfelt appreciation for Paul’s devotion that counterbalances its bleak depiction of his alienation. Siegel and Oswalt never play Paul for cheap laughs or pat messages; the conflicted portrait of attachment and loneliness, proximity and distance, in simultaneous extremes is as irresolvable as its central character’s existential quandary. As Job described his persecution and unyielding faith: “He broke me in two... He set me up as His target… and my prayer is pure.”(4)
Big Fan / USA / 2009 / Color / 86 min. / Written and Directed by Robert Siegel / Starring: Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Rapaport, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Gino Cafarelli and Matt Servito / First Independent Pictures
NOTES:
1 – The etymology of “fanatic” can be found here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fanatic, and, if memory serves, its potential genesis is also discussed in Ken Burns’ documentary Baseball.
2 – The film was first made available as the title menu of Wholphin, No. 1, a DVD magazine of short films distributed by McSweeney’s. It can also be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwaujgtW47M
3 -- Job 1:21
4 – Job 16:12-17
