People don't tend to think of sports fanatics to be the same, in any way, to comic book fans or science fiction fanatics or hardcore gamers. In fact, anything grouped together under the umbrella term "geek" is meant to suggest an unhealthy obsession with something. While there is one critical difference between the average "geek" and the average "sports nut", people who come to Big Fan based on Patton Oswalt will nevertheless see a lot of themselves in the film.
The biggest difference between a fanatic of sports and the "typical" geek is that the objects of their obsession are flesh and blood. Teams are comprised of real players who perform every week during the season, and don't have the luxury of saying "well, I'm not really Batman. That's just a character in a film." More importantly, this plants the sports fanatic's heroes and villains in the same world they occupy, particularly if you live in a city with a football, baseball, basketball, or hockey team. Despite the rarefied air they breath, the sports fanatic always has a better chance of running into the cornerback for their favorite football team than the geek will of meeting Green Lantern.
And that's exactly what happens to Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt) one night. Paul is a huge NY Giants fan; he spends his days composing carefully worded diatribes to call into radio sports shows with that night. Paul and Sal (Kevin Corrigan) tailgate every home game, talk the scores, the schedule, and what needs to happen to make the playoffs. He idolizes Quantrell Bishop (Johnathan Hamm), a defensive... well, I'm not sure. He sounds like a pass rusher, but I missed Bishop's actual position. When Paul from Staten Island is on the air, his love for the Giants reigns supreme, even against the disembodied voice of Phil from Philadelphia (Michael Rapaport).
But Paul is also a loser: he's somewhere between late thirties and mid forties, lives at home with his mother in a tiny room crammed with memorabilia. He works in a parking garage, has one friend, and as best as one can tell, no prospects whatsoever. His brother is a lawyer and his sister a dental assistant, and he chides them (and his mother) for bothering him about his arrested development. For Paul, the Giants are everything. There is no life worth living beyond that. I can imagine some of you can replace the word "Giants" for something "geekier" and see the parallel.
Everything changes when Paul and Sal see Bishop and his entourage at a gas station. Starstruck, they follow him to Manhattan and into a strip club. So disconnected with reality, they have no idea how to approach Quantrell, and when a chance bathroom encounter and a drink offer amount to nothing, the twosome decide to take the direct approach. Bishop and his boys are amused, to say the least, that two disheveled losers would walk up to their VIP booth, but things go well until Paul lets slip that they followed him. For that, Bishop savagely beats Paul, leaving him in the hospital for three days.
Big Fan is a character study of a man so devoted to his team that he, despite lingering head trauma, refuses to cooperate with the police investigation. Aufiero feels guilty for making Bishop angry, and blames himself for the Giants subsequent losses as their star defensive player is suspended. This would be akin, I suppose, to having a favorite actor or artist attack you, and as you recover the show or comic goes downhill, much to fandom's chagrin. I cannot quite find the accurate corollary, which is why Big Fan had to be about athletes.
I won't say too much more, because the mental breakdown Paul suffers as a result of his guilt mixed with family pressure to sue Bishop and talk radio antagonizing from Phil in Philadelphia is where the movie gets most interesting. The third act of the film moves forward in a logical, albeit disturbing fashion, but then makes a sudden turn which is both uplifting and pathetic. It all depends on where you're sitting on the matter.
Patton Oswalt is fantastic as Paul Aufiero. He embodies the "man child" in a way that's never cheap or condescending; Paul doesn't believe that he's the sad man of the story, even when he lashes out in cruel ways at his mother and siblings. His desperation for the incident to just go away is the portrait of a fan in denial, and Oswalt sells every beat with conviction. People will be rightfully surprised to see him play it straight, and it's a pity more people won't see this film due to limited availability.
Writer / Director Robert Siegel takes a very naturalistic approach to the film, in a manner akin to Aronofsky's The Wrestler (which Siegel wrote). Using RED, a new digital camera that approximates the human eye's ability to pick up low light, Siegel makes the most of the film's low budget to achieve versimilitude. Take a shot, for example, where Paul and Sal are driving through Manhattan, neon lights reflecting off of the windshield, but both men are perfectly visible reacting to the display.
Despite the "no frills" independent film aesthetic, Big Fan looks great in HD. For some reason, the film is only being released on DVD, but I still recommend you check it out. I could continue hurling superlatives as Oswalt, but it's better if you just see the film yourselves. Even if you don't know the first thing about football, I promise that many readers of this blog will recognizes themselves - and a lot of themselves they don't want to be - in Paul Aufiero, the Big Fan.
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