Big Fan (2009)

Patton Oswalt's Paul Aufiero is a depressing character to focus on for a full eighty-six minutes. He's a lonely man in his late thirties, living with his mother, making end's meet as a parking garage attendant where he spends his time either sulking at the loneliness of it all or jotting down notes while listening to the broadcast of the New York Giants game so that he can read them aloud on a radio show later that night. Yes, Paul is a "big fan" of the New York Giants, and his devotion is incorruptible, even when the unthinkable happens.But before I blaze that trail, I return to my point about the notes, which Paul turns into a lengthy rant about how well the Giants played during the game. He will go on to read the rant live on his favorite radio program, hosted by "Sports Dogg," under the ambiguous name of "Paul from Staten Island," where he frequently exchanges punches with "Philadelphia Phil," a frequent caller into the sports station to praise the Philadelphia Eagles and slander the Giants. On the phone, Paul sounds like a totally different man. Not a depressed and listless man in his thirties who resides with his mother, and not a man of no further ambition. Just a passionate and quirky outsider who shows true commitment to what he loves, which is sports. He's the kind of guy you'd want on your side for moral support and a working set of ears.Paul's only friend is Sal (Kevin Corrigan), and the two show invaluable bonding when they tailgate during the Giants home games and run a long extension cord through their car in order to sit outside the stadium and watch the game happening feet away from them on a puny little antenna TV. One day, Paul and Sal spot Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm), the Giants quarterback, and his faithful entourage in Staten Island and, in a starstruck-haze, decide to follow him to see if they can snag an autograph or exchange some words. They drive through a bad neighborhood, where Bishop picks up something that likely isn't the most legal thing on the market, and they wind up at a strip club, where the two friends get the courage to walk over and talk to them.Bishop views them as two loner geeks interrupting his night, and things get rough when Paul accidentally brings up the part about him driving through a rough neighborhood. Bishop assumes they were being followed and, in a fit of rage, beats poor Paul to a pulp and is left unconscious for three days until he wakes up in a hospital bed. There, Paul is informed that his personal-injury lawyer brother (Gino Cafarelli) is ready and willing to cook up a lawsuit, and that an NYPD detective (Matt Servitto) wants to get all the details of what exactly happened the night of the altercation. The problem is that Paul doesn't want to remember what happened that night. To him, Quantrell, regardless of what he did to Paul and how badly he left him damaged, he just wants to move on with his life, unburdened by the incident, and not have his love for the New York Giants soiled by this one unfortunate mishap. Only the conflicts this poses on his family begin to come out of the woodwork. His mother begins to bring up the fact that he is a lonely man, desperately searching for companionship and his brother can not fathom the idea that Paul would not want to pursue a court case or a lawsuit against Quantrell.Patton Oswalt gives what I call a career making performance in Big Fan. A performance just subtle enough that you may overlook it, yet just powerful enough to you will remember it. Oswalt, rarely leaving frame at all here, is so deeply sympathetic and easy to feel for in this film. But why? The look in his eyes in numerous scenes (take the excitement and expression in his face when he's "Paul from Staten Island" for example, or even when he is being lectured by his mother in the car after his brother's party) often accentuates the feeling of misery or dim joy. He is a figure that we understand his moral position, but question his decision not to move forward with a lawsuit against Quantrell regardless of the "idol-status" he has obtained in Paul's heart.It is questions like this that are too psychologically complex to answer without oversimplifying and that is what makes Patton Oswalt's character and performance so memorable. We can side with him only to an extent before he makes the decision to move forward and move on from his current problem. I was stunned that director Robert D. Siegel (former editor in chief for the fake newspaper "The Onion") took this material with such depth, heart, and seriousness. Big Fan is a film detailing the dark side of spectator sports, a multi-billion dollar industry that focuses on those who put on a jersey to play and make millions and those who buy overpriced tickets to games in the exact same jerseys that were sold in order to continue fueling the pockets of those involved in the industry. It is arguably one of the finest dramas of the 2009 year, and one of the films Oswalt should view with great pride.Starring: Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Rapaport, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Matt Servitto, Serafina Fiore, Gino Cafarelli, Jonathan Hamm, Polly Humphreys, and Scott Ferrall. Directed by: Robert D. Siegel.

This is a very interesting tale, and you're not sure where the movie is going. Paul is obsessed with his Giants and happy with his mundane life working as a parking attendant. His Giants are his escape and what he roots for in his life. The acting is very good. Michael Rappaport is excellent as Philadelphia Phil and Paul's nemesis Robert Siegel does a good job as first time director. The story is funny but drags slightly at times. I got to see this movie at the AFI Dallas Film Festival and met Siegel there. Another movie Big Fan fans should enjoy is the upcoming "Pros and Cons: A Fantasy Football Movie" - a story about a guy obsessed with fantasy football.

Everyone obsesses about something. Whether we admit it or not, there's a super fan buried in all of us. Hobbies fill our lives with something other than bills, weather and being on time for work. Yet, as they say, too much of anything is a bad thing, and it is possible to garner an obsession with anything: movies, sports, television, comic books, pornography, shopping, your job, your kids, your religious beliefs. Even personal obsessions like rage, self-pity, gossip or just simply complaining. However, I think most of us have a filter. We know when to turn it off before it tips over into darkness.Paul, the central figure of Big Fan, has a filter with a lining that is dangerously thin. His whole existence is so wrapped up in his love for the New York Giants that all the other things in his life have been thinned down to make room for his favorite team. He is 35, chubby, lives in Staten Island with his mother and works as a parking garage attendant, where he spends his nights writing himself a script for what he is going to say on the Sports Dogg radio program where is a minor celebrity. He has no social life to speak of and his mother comments that is only romantic attachment is with his right hand. She's wrong, of course.It can be said that there are two sides to Paul's life, an inner circle and an outer circle. The inner circle contains his love of The Giants, the outer circle contains a void in which resides everything else: family, work, the future. That shows up on his face where his face lights up when he is in the throws of the game and grow dark and frustrated when he has to deal with real life. His mother nags him mercilessly that he needs to find a nice girl and have a family. "I don't want any of that!" he shouts - he already has a family. She dotes on her other son, Jeff (Gino Cafarelli) who is an ambulance- chasing lawyer who appears in daytime television commercial asking "Have you been injured?" and promises "I will fight for you!" Paul's best (and apparently only) friend is Sal (Kevin Corrigan) who joins him in his love of the team, even when the two sit in the cold in the parking lot of Giants stadium watching the game on a portable television set. They talk about nothing else. Their rapture is the thrill of fandom, even in the off-season.A test of Paul's faith and loyalty begins one night when he is out driving around with Sal and spots Giants quarterback Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) at a gas station. They follow him into a rough neighborhood where they don't make the connection that he and his entourage have come to buy drugs. Later at a strip club they introduce themselves. Bishop suspects that they are cops about to bust him and he beats Paul into unconsciousness.Where Big Fan really comes to its crossroads is what happens next. Paul wakes up in a hospital with brain injury and a room full of people urging him to sue Bishop. He learns that Bishop might not be able to play in the next game and decides not to sue or to turn over any information to the cops. This is, of course, baffling to those around him but to Paul it would upset the balance of his world. Bishop is a personal hero and Paul wrestles with this soul over whether or not to give him up.The events that take place with Bishop only make up the framework for Big Fan which is more about the turmoil of Paul's conscience. His hero failed and he has him in the cross-hairs to get him in a lot of trouble. His depression and frustration pull him in both directions, but for him it is all about not upsetting the balance. Giants football isn't a game, it is a conduit of his life and his self-worth. Anything outside that sphere is, for him, meaningless.Big Fan was written and directed by Robert Siegel, a former editor of The Onion and screenwriter of The Wrestler, also about a man and the sport he loves. I was fascinated by the fact that his screenplay keeps the story at a realistic level. Even when it approaches the bizarre at the end, we can still believe what we are seeing. It might be easy for this screenplay to become a stalker film or to cross over into the level of Taxi Driver. It comes close to that, but it stays mostly at ground level. What happens to Paul in the end isn't far from the truth.What makes Big Fan really work though is the performance of Patton Oswald as Paul. Oswalt is a stand-up comedian best known to most movie fans as the voice of Remey in Pixar's Ratatouille. Here he creates a character that looks like your average sports fan. He is short, overweight, with a bad haircut and an otherwise not-too-extraordinary appearance. Even in the darkest moments, Paul is someone that we can't help but like.

As an obsessive-compulsive New York Giants fan myself this one hits rather close to home. I can see a lot of myself in Paul Aufiero, the main character in this film. And that's somewhat scary because Paul Aufiero is unquestionably a complete and total loser. And probably at least a little bit deranged. OK, in all truth probably more than a little bit deranged. But you can relate to the guy, identify with him. Well I can at least. Your mileage may vary.Paul Aufiero is in his mid-30s, works a dead-end job as a parking-lot attendant, lives with his mother and has no apparent goals or ambition in life. He lives for his football team. If the Giants win, he's happy. As "Paul from Staten Island" he calls sports-talk radio shows in the middle of the night, with his mother shushing him from the other room. He carefully scripts his phone calls down to the smallest detail, writing the whole thing down on legal pads while he works. It's all rather pathetic. But Paul of course doesn't see it that way. As Paul from Staten Island he's important, he has a voice. He sees his painstakingly thought-out radio speeches as being in fact quite brilliant. He has the unique, so he thinks, ability to explain to the world why the Giants are like totally freaking awesome and why the hated Eagles and his radio call-in rival Philadelphia Phil are total losers. So maybe his life's going nowhere but the Giants are winning, everything is good in Paul Aufiero's little world. And then it all goes horribly wrong.While Big Fan is by no means a spectacular film it definitely works, thanks almost entirely to the performance of Patton Oswalt who plays Paul. There are supporting players sprinkled throughout but it's largely left to Oswalt to carry the film on his own and he succeeds. The film takes us inside the head of this strange little man. And being inside that head is a scary place to be. It's a great performance. In spite of the character's obvious failings you can't help but root for Paul. Unless maybe you're an Eagles fan but we all know Eagles fans aren't quite human so they don't really count. As Paul's obsession takes him into dark, dangerous territory there's a sense that we may see this guy just totally lose it. Whatever little grasp of "it" he had to begin with anyway. But the story has some final surprises in store for us and things wrap up happily enough. Happy for us anyway. Happy for Paul? How do the Giants look this season? That's all that matters. That's all that ever matters. I can relate.