Big Fan

Sometimes I feel like I'm pretty weird because I would prefer to listen to sports talk radio and contemplate the Oakland Raiders' back-up quarterback instead of turning on some sort of popular music station and listen to what all the kids are listening to.  Then I watch a movie like Big Fan and I don't feel so bad.


Patton Oswald plays a winner named Paul Aufiero, a New York Giants fan that is bat shit obsessed with Quantrell Bishop (Jonathn Hamm).  Paul, of course, is a shlub.  He lives with his mom, he has a crappy job, and he's a very unpleasant person with whom to interact.  One night, as the film subtly shifts from Kevin Smith to David Cronenberg, Paul follows (stalks) Quantrell from Staten Island to Manhattan and catches a beating at the hands of his existential fixation.

Patton Oswald is an intelligent man.  He looks like a lesbian Tweedle Dee, yes, but his stand-up is sharp and witty and freaking funny.  Oswald plays Aufiero as dim-witted, cranky, automaton without a properly formatted motivation program.  He's fantastic and he's acting.  Patton Oswald can act.  Who'd've thunk it?  I think that when i make my next movie, I'm going to have Patton Oswald in it.


Big Fan's shots have a dreamy, bleached out glow, which keeps the tone fairly light-hearted despite the severe emotional problems of the main character.  As Paul's psychosis slips into deep depression, I found myself thinking that I know this territory: images of Travis Bickle or Barbara Jean from Nashville.  But writer/director Robert Siegel (who also penned The Wrestler) keeps Big Fan in the hokey yokeley universe that it creates.  Which is another way of saying that this is not a Wes Anderson film and things don't go from quirky to slash-your-wrists serious.  And I appreciate that.

Too often, movies try to be silly and melodramatic -- probably as a result of the Real World and Jon and Kate.  Luckily Big Fan is content to repress all of the serious psychological baggage that its players carry on their sleeves.  Very early in the film, it establishes a line between ideal actions and real actions.  In an ideal world, the Giants would be undefeated, Quantrell Bishop would have barbecues for his biggest fans once a year, and feuds between Sports Talk callers would be something that people cared about.  In the real world, life is hard, women only like men with their own places, and mom's always breathing down your neck.

The kookiest thing about Paul Aufiero: he's not a person that can't distinguish the real (that which exists in actuality) and the ideal (that which is fantasy).  In fact, his actions cause his ideal to interact with the real.  So, Paul is not a paranoid schizo or a man on the verge of a mental breakdown.  He's just ultra-focused.  And that's totally life-affirming.




notes I took during the film




Big Fan's shots have a dreamy, bleached out glow
there's a consistent buzz in the ambient sound -- radios, mindless chatter



the land of the slack-jawed yokels


This movie makes me want to eat pizza


there's a fine line when funny becomes weird