User:Firstindependent/Big Fan (film)

Big Fan
Big Fan
Directed by	Robert D. Siegel
Written by	Robert D. Siegel
Produced by	Jean Kouremetis; Elan Bogarin
Starring	Patton Oswalt; Kevin Corrigan; Michael Rapaport; Marcia Jean Kurtz; Matt Servitto; Serafina Fiore; Gino Cafarelli; Jonathan Hamm; Polly Humphreys; Scott Ferrall
Cinematography	Michael Simmonds
Edited by	Joshua Trank
Music by	Philip Watts
Distributed by	First Independent Pictures
Release date	August 28, 2009
Running time	91 min.
Country	United States
Language	English

Big Fan is a 2009 independent dark drama written and directed by Robert D. Siegel and starring Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Michael Rapaport, and Scott Ferrall. The story revolves around the bleak yet amiable life of the self-described “world’s biggest New York Giants fan,”^[1] Paul Aufiero (Oswalt). Big Fan won rave reviews at this year’s 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and is expected to be released on August 28, 2009 in New York City.

Premise

Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt), a 35-year-old parking garage attendant from Staten Island, is the self-described "world's biggest New York Giants fan."^[2] He lives at home with his mother (Marcia Jean Kurtz), spending his off hours calling in to local sports-radio station 760 The Zone, where he rants in support of his beloved team, often against his mysterious on-air rival, Eagles fan Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport). His family berates him for doing nothing with his life, but they don't understand the depth of his love of the Giants or the responsibility his fandom carries.

One night, Paul and his best friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan) spot Giants star linebacker Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) at a gas station in their neighborhood.^[3] They impulsively follow his limo into Manhattan, to a strip club, where they hang in the background, agog at their hero.^[4] Paul cautiously decides to approach him, stepping into the rarefied air of football stardom -- and things do not go as planned.

The fallout of this chance encounter brings Paul's world crashing down around him as his family, the team, the media and the authorities engage in a tug of war over Paul, testing his allegiances and calling into question everything he believes in. Meanwhile, the Giants march toward a late-season showdown with the Eagles, unaware that sometimes the most brutal struggles take place far from the field of play.

Following up his first filmed screenplay The Wrestler, writer-director Robert D. Siegel once again demonstrates a unique and potent vision of the human experience, in all of it its harsh truths and hopeful humanity.

Cast

Patton Oswalt as Paul Aufiero
Kevin Corrigan as Sal
Michael Rapaport as Philadelphia Phil
Marcia Jean Kurtz as Theresa Aufiero
Matt Servitto as Detective Velarde
Serafina Fiore as Gina
Gino Cafarelli as Jeff
Jonathan Hamm as Quantrell Bishop
Polly Humphreys as Christine
Scott Ferrall as Sports Dogg

Production

Everybody knows someone like Paul Aufiero, the central character in Robert D. Siegel’s unique drama Big Fan. Most Americans might confess to being a fan of a particular sport or a particular team, but superfans like Paul live their life with a religious devotion to sport. For Paul, it’s football and the New York Giants. For a 35-year-old parking garage attendant living with his mother, the Giants give Paul’s life meaning. Every home game, he and his buddy Sal bundle up and journey across the river to Giants Stadium – where they watch the game in the parking lot on a small TV set plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter.

Such characters might inspire a chuckle or make for a good sketch comedy bit, but screenwriter and first-time director Robert Siegel, who grew up among the rabid sports fans of the tri-state area, saw a bit more. Siegel, who had demonstrated his ability with unconventional dramatic heroes in last year’s sleeper hit The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei, first started thinking about people like Paul listening to the passionate fans who liked to argue with each other via the sports talk shows on New York’s WFAN, a pioneer in the now-ubiquitous realm of sports chatter.

Finding a feature film story meant that Siegel would have to take an unconventional approach to the character. “Maybe I’m not a strong enough writer yet,” he says half-jokingly, “but I find it’s difficult enough in 90 minutes just to get inside one person’s head. In that sense, the movie is a character study, and this one happens to have a character who is lonely, and really only connects to the world through his fanaticism for the Giants.” Indeed, aside from the excursions with Sal, Paul doesn’t seem to have much social interaction, except for the energy and effort he puts into regularly calling a local sports-radio show. Since the Giants are locked into a race to the playoffs with the hated Philadelphia Eagles, Paul (as “Paul from Staten Island”) often mixes it up on the air with brash “Philadelphia Phil,” who seems to take extra delight in rubbing salt in the wounds of Giants fans.

In earlier drafts of the story, Siegel admits, he tried to follow a more traditional narrative form. “When I first wrote the script there was a girl that could have developed into a love interest for Paul,” he says today. “But it never really rang true. Taking that element out really opened up the story for me and allowed me to really consider the character. A lot of people don’t have love interests in their lives, and Paul is one of them.”

Which is not to say that Paul is unhappy or unfulfilled. As played by Patton Oswalt, Paul is affable, fun-loving, and reasonably content, even though his family (including his brother Jeff, a lawyer) urge him to find something more meaningful to do with his life. “In this way he’s a lot like Randy in ‘The Wrestler,’” says Siegel. “Everyone else wants him to change, but he’s happy with his life. He wants to be left alone in his weird little corner of the world. The rule in most movies is that the hero has to pursue change or want to change, but with both Randy and Paul, the drama comes out of their resistance to change.”

However, the fates aren’t so kind to Paul. When he and Sal spot Paul’s favorite player, Giants All-Pro defender Quantrell Bishop, filling up his SUV at a Staten Island gas station, Paul’s fandom kicks in and changes his life forever. Following Bishop and his entourage through Staten Island, and then into Manhattan and an upscale strip club, Paul and Sal hover on the fringes of celebrity power. After several false starts, they finally approach Bishop and his friends, all drunk from a long night of partying, and not immediately amenable to two out-of-place fans. A misunderstanding grows out of control, and before anyone realizes it, Quantrell has taken Paul down to the floor. Beaten senseless, Paul awakens nearly 72 hours later to discover that the incident is a huge public scandal and the Giants’ star defender has been suspended indefinitely.

The rest of the film finds Paul trying to retreat into his previous life of solitude, only to find that the rest of the world won’t let him. “Paul ends up resisting the world around him – which is a very weird way of taking action,” says Patton Oswalt. As Paul’s family sees an opportunity for him to sue for millions and better his life, Paul can’t imagine doing something that would hurt his team by pressing charges against Bishop. He avoids the media and plays dumb with the legal investigation, hoping that Bishop will be allowed to return to the field of play in time to hold of Philadelphia for a spot in the playoffs. “He’s got to get out of the situation with his dignity intact,” explains Robert Siegel, “but he has no idea what to do. This thing he loves has literally and figuratively has just punched him in the face.” Though the situation is unusual and life-changing to say the least, the story allows Paul’s inner character to develop and emerge in a way that is surprisingly universal. “We all resist facing the things we don’t want to face,” Siegel concludes. “It’s hard to come down on him too hard, because I think most of us might end up doing exactly the same thing – just try to get back to normal and hope it all blows over.”

Telling Paul’s story meant taking a leap of faith with Patton Oswalt. Most fans know Oswalt from his years on television and his off-the-wall stand-up comedy, but he had revealed great depth in bringing to life the character of Remy the Mouse in the Academy Award-winning Ratatouille (film). After meeting Oswalt and discussing the script with him, Siegel knew that Oswalt would be able to bring the same soulful care to the decidedly ordinary Paul Aufiero. “I never had any concerns about Patton’s acting ability,” says Siegel today. “A lot of his stand-up comedy is very dark. I didn’t think it’d take too much for him to unleash his inner, angry nerd.” That meant channeling Patton Oswalt’s energy towards football – a sport about which he admits to knowing nothing. “I have no idea about football,” Oswalt confesses. “But I just imagined I was cheering and talking about things I’m a little nerdy about.” But dressed in Giants gear from head to toe and wandering among real Giants fans before a game, Oswalt and Kevin Corrigan both fit right in, as both Paul and Sal are much more ruled by their passions than by any deep understanding of the game itself.

For the scenes unrelated to football, Oswalt was confident enough in the script and Siegel’s abilities so as to not worry too much about his acting style. “I figured if he had confidence in me to do the part, I’d have confidence in him to get what he needed. The script was so well-written, and having done a lot of writing myself, I didn’t feel like I needed to get my big peanut-butter fingerprints all over it.” Siegel admits that part of the process was finding the more subtle possibilities in each scene after a series of takes. “In early takes, Patton was usually a little too big, but by the fifth take or so, he was really nailing it. Most of the film is made up of fifth and sixth takes.” Oswalt wasn’t the only one a bit out of his element: a number of supporting roles were filled by non-professionals making their first screen appearance, though others are filled with seasoned veterans like Marcia Jean Kurtz (as Paul’s mother), Michael Rapaport, and Kevin Corrigan. “It was very satisfying to get those performances, to help the actors build them and perfect their roles, something a lot of them had never done before,” admits Siegel. “That was probably the nicest surprise of production.”

With a limited budget and a scant 23 days of location shooting in and around Staten Island, much of the production process was not quite as pleasing. In addition to helming his first movie with a very small crew, Siegel was also facing the additional stress of the final weeks of his wife’s first pregnancy. “I made a promise to myself that I would finish the movie before the baby came, because afterwards I knew I’d have absolutely no time or energy,” Siegel says – a promise he kept, but just barely. “Overall, I’d say it was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life, but also one of the most painful and stressful; once I was done with the movie and the baby was here, everything else seemed very easy.”

In the tradition of great films about “loser” characters like Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, and Punch Drunk Love, Big Fan uses an unexpectedly rich central performance of a surprisingly complex everyman to explore one person’s connection to a world of heroes and glamour that lies just beyond his reach. Though his path is unpredictable – and unlikely to result in a traditional happy ending – Paul still manages to remain exactly what he is from the start: a big fan.

Director's Statement

“As a kid growing up on Long Island, every night, I would crawl into bed, turn out the lights and turn on WFAN, the local sports-radio station. There in the dark, I would listen in on the lives and obsessions of an exotic cast of characters… Massapequa Mark, Frank from Flushing, Doris from Piscataway. I loved hearing them rant about the New York Jets' inexcusable loss to the Miami Dolphins, or Davey Johnson’s idiotic decision to pull Doc Gooden after the walk to Van Slyke. I was captivated by their strange accents, native to far-flung corners of the New York area like Yonkers or Kew Gardens. I wondered who they were, what their lives were like. Years later, when I got interested in movies, I gravitated toward films that were about people like the ones I heard on that little alarm-clock radio in my childhood bedroom. Midnight Cowboy. Saturday Night Fever. Mean Streets. Stories of scruffy, outerborough strivers with strange obsessions. To my mind, there’s no real difference between Massapequa Mark and Ratso Rizzo, or Frank from Flushing and Tony Manero. To me, they’re all just Big Fans.”

— Robert D. Siegel

Release

Big Fan is expected to be released on August 28, 2009 in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the 11th of September in Los Angeles at the Nuart Theatre.

Reception

"Straight out of Staten Island comes the aggressively grubby, darkly funny Big Fan, the very fine feature directing debut from Robert Siegel, who wrote The Wrestler and was an editor at The Onion. A cautionary tale about the limits and perils of love, Big Fan centers on Paul (Patton Oswalt, terrific and fearless), a 35-year-old parking lot attendant who lives with his mother and whose every waking hour is devoted to his beloved New York Giants."^[5] —MANOHLA DARGIS, NEW YORK TIMES

"Big Fan, a poignant examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants fans... Aside from looking like an obsessive fan, Oswalt had another key quality. As Siegel explains, “He's inherently sweet-natured. Paul has a cranky, curmudgeonly aspect, but he couldn't be just that, he couldn't project unlikable creepitude. I wanted somebody who had a liability factor. I wanted people to feel affection for him.” It's a tribute to the skill with which Big Fan has been made that that's what you feel."^[6] —KENNETH TURAN, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Usually, it takes a while for a screenwriter to get a shot at becoming a director, but Robert Siegel has wasted no time. The new-kid-on-the-block scribe who created a splash by writing The Wrestler has a movie at Sundance that he directed as well as wrote, and he turns out to be the real McCoy: a shrewd and confident filmmaker. Big Fan, starring Patton Oswalt as a 36-year-old Staten Island parking-garage attendant who has no life apart from his fervid devotion to the New York Giants, leads you to expect an over-the-top stalker comedy, but here, as in The Wrestler, nothing is hyperbolic or overstated. The movie is an unblinking look at the hidden (or maybe not so hidden) pathology of American sports mania, but it's also a crafty study of a specific human being."^[7] —OWEN GLEIBERMAN, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"How far will Paul go to sacrifice for his “team”? That's the nightmarish game plan for this dark and chilling film. Siegel has crafted a mesmerizing peek into the dark side of sports fans. He etches the "fanatic" to full and pathetic dimension. Befitting his stint as a former editor for The Onion, Siegel deftly mixes his bleak story line with telling humor."^[8] —DUANE BYRGE, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

"The gifted Wrestler screenwriter Robert Siegel, in a directing debut of potent promise, turns Big Fan into something funny, touching and vital without ever resorting to snark or condescension. And Oswalt delivers a portrait in full of a life in which fandom is one man's personal defense against loneliness. This one's a keeper."^[9] —PETER TRAVERS, ROLLING STONE