Films have been made about the heroes of sport, but who speaks for the fans? Who especially speaks for the hard-core fanatic, the zealot who devotes an entire life to a team with the single-minded intensity of a monk meditating in a cave? “Big Fan” does, and it does it exceptionally well.
Written and directed by Robert Siegel and starring Patton Oswalt in the title role, “Big Fan” is a poignant, dead-on character study, an examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants football fans.
“Big Fan” neither denigrates nor idealizes Paul Aufiero, it may not even particularly like him, but it does respect the ferocity of his convictions, respects the courage of his obsessions no matter where they lead him.
As he did for Mickey Rourke with Randy “The Ram” Robinson, Siegel has written a killer role for his leading man. Oswalt, best known for stand-up comedy, TV’s “The King of Queens” and his turn as the voice of Remy the Rat in Pixar’s animated “Ratatouille,” may be unlikely to get an Oscar nomination, but he deserves one.
Oswalt captures Paul’s marginal status as well as his unconquerable bravado, in the process creating someone who is as engaging as he is off-putting.
Though it doesn’t show us a second of on-field footage, “Big Fan” says a lot about the games we play as a culture and as individuals.
A 36-year-old resident of Staten Island who watches his team on a TV in the stadium parking lot, Paul’s day job is manning the booth at a parking garage. What he really lives for, however, are his New York Giants and being a call-in voice on “The Zone,” a late-night sports talk radio program.
Though he pretends to his best friend and fellow Giants enthusiast Sal (a dead-on Kevin Corrigan) that his radio tirades are improvised, Paul in fact writes them out in advance and practices them like any actor. His nemesis is Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport), a caustic Eagles fan and one of the legion of “cheese steak bozos” that Paul cannot abide.
Paul also has to contend with a difficulty closer to home, his light-sleeping mother Theresa (Marcia Jean Kurtz). Theresa’s a difficult person, and she and Paul regularly tear into each other like a mother-son version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.”
Paul’s hero is marauding linebacker and five-time all-pro Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm). So imagine his state of mind when he and Sal catch a glimpse of Bishop at a Staten Island gas station and decide on impulse to follow him no matter where it leads.
The ultimate destination turns out to be a Manhattan strip club where, in an incident eerily reminiscent of what recently happened to real-life Giants star Plaxico Burress, things end badly for all concerned.
Paul, pressured by everyone, has to figure out if he is willing to pay the price for what he believes.
“Big Fan” lets us see Paul not necessarily as a loser but as someone who has found something he loves, something that sustains him. Like a hipster with a contempt for the square world, Paul feels superior to his bourgeois relatives.
When he says of his conventional siblings, “I don’t want what they’ve got,” he’s telling the biggest truth he knows.
“BIG FAN.”
R for language and some sexuality. 1 hour, 26 minutes. Written and directed by Robert Siegel; starring Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Rapaport, and Marcia Jean Kurtz. Opens today at the Chez Artiste.
