Interview

Patton Oswalt in Big Fan

Big Fan, which was released today, stars Patton Oswalt as Paul, middle-aged Staten Islander who works in a parking garage and lives at home with his mother. More importantly, he eats, talks, and breathes the New York Giants. Following a hostile encounter with his favorite player in a strip club, he's forced to reevaluate everything he once held dear. Writer/director Robert Siegel has turned a sharp corner or two of his own: A former Onion editor-in-chief, the native Long Islander earned serious acclaim for his screenplay for The Wrestler and ended up behind the camera before knew what hit him.  We talked to him about neglected sports fans and the difference between the Mickey Rourkes and the George Clooneys of the world.

DARRELL HARTMAN: So this is the script that got Darren Aronofsky's attention and led to you writing The Wrestler.

ROBERT SIEGEL: Yeah, this was kind of my calling card. I wrote it many years before I wrote The Wrestler, and it kind of made the rounds and that's how I met him. He asked me if I had any interest in writing a movie set in the world of wrestling.  The idea was there's this great tradition of boxing movies, but there had never been a serious movie about a professional wrestler.

DH: And it's the same case here: there are plenty of good movies about athletes but none, really, about fans.

RS: I'm glad you said that. Celtic Pride was the most serious exploration out there, so I really felt there was a hole in the universe that I could plug into. Sports fandom is such a huge part of American culture. I felt it was sort of there for the taking. There was The Fan with DeNiro and Wesley Snipes, which I'm told is a slightly trashy thriller. I haven't seen it.

DH: Were you channeling yourself at all when you came up with Paul?

RS: I'm a huge football and baseball fan. I wouldn't say I was comparable to this character, but I was a definite sports nerd growing up.  I listened obsessively to WFAN sports radio and I was really into baseball cards.

DH: And were the Giants your team?

RS: I'm actually a huge, lifelong, diehard Steelers fan. When I came of football age, maybe 8 or 9 years old, it was the late 70's. The Giants and Jets both sucked.

DH: Why did you make a movie about a Giants fan, then?

RS: I love New York movies and I wanted to make one. All the romantic associations: Scorsese and Spike Lee and whatnot. Plus I live in New York, and making a movie in Pittsburgh wouldn't have been realistic for budgetary reasons.

DH: You've said previously that this is the first of several screenplays you wrote that "didn't suck."

RS: If you read the ones that came before, you'd agree. I was writing more broad comedy, the kind that Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller would star in. They got better, but there was no spark. And they didn't have anything particularly personal about them.

DH: Is that the key, make it personal?

RS: I think the first one I tried writing came from a somewhat cynical place. "This is what I see in movie theaters, this is what works. So I'm going to give them what they want." There's a certain negativity in that, and it comes across in the writing.  I loved Anchorman and Zoolander and I Love You, Man, but when I think of my favorite movies and look at my DVD collection, it's filled with Hal Ashby and Robert Altman. It's become a cliché, write what you know and love. But it's 100% true.

DH: Patton Oswalt isn't a big name by any means, but he's just right for the role. Darren Aronofsky insisted on Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler, even though the studio was pressuring him to make it with Nicolas Cage.  Did seeing that unfold influence you at all?

RS: Absolutely. That was the biggest thing I learned from watching Darren. Make the best possible movie, and everything else will take care of itself. There's just an enormous difference between casting the perfect person and somebody who's kinda, sorta right. The first thing that goes through your mind is this urge to get a big star. Even if you think of yourself as an indie filmmaker with integrity and whatnot, it's really tempting to get one. You want to tell your friends, "Oh my god, you'll never guess who's starring in my movie." If you succumb to that temptation, that's where your problems begin.

DH: Did you know right away you wanted Patton Oswalt in the role?

RS: When I got down to it and thought about the character, it narrowed down to a tiny handful of people, and Patton was the first person on that list. I didn't even have him read for the part; I just hired him on a leap of faith. If you put, say, Sam Rockwell in that role, you could style him to look believable. But Patton looks utterly believable as a nerdy sports fan.  And it was important to me that everyone else was taller than him.

DH: He's better known as a comedian. Was that a tough adjustment to make?

RS: Patton had no reservations going to dark places. He'd just never really gotten the opportunity before. He's not a sports fan, but he certainly understands the psychology of that obsessiveness. And he knew I wasn't going for a comedy, which is not a given.

DH: There are definitely some laugh-out-loud moments, but this is essentially a drama.

RS: Tonally, I like stuff that has a mix because I think real life has that mix. That's part of why I love Scorsese so much. Another model would be The Sopranos. And P.T. Anderson is amazing at that. As dark and artistic as it is, I find his stuff hugely entertaining.

DH: Tell me about your career at The Onion.

RS:I kind of followed a backwards path: growing up in New York and heading out to a small, Midwestern town to make it in entertainment. I went to the University of Michigan and my college girlfriend moved to Madison, Wisconsin [at the time, headquarters for The Onion] to get a Ph.D.  I got there in 1994 and I saw a stack of copies of The Onion in a coffee shop and thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. So I called them up and within a week or two was in a meeting pitching ideas.

DH: What have other former Onion editors gone on to do after leaving?

RS: One of the editors went on to write for Futurama and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One was the executive producer of The Daily Show for many years and subsequently handed over the reins to another Onion guy. Another former editor is at Colbert Report, and a bunch of people have moved on to write for Conan.

DH: So everyone goes into TV. Or, in your case, movies.

RS: It's hard to make a lateral move. It seems at any moment there's one print publication in the world for humor: National Lampoon, then there was Spy, then The Onion.

DH: Which brings me back to sports fandom. On the sports radio show that Paul is always calling into, it's these fringe types addressing a wider phenomenon but mainly talking amongst themselves. They're competing, but also performing for each other.

RS: If you listen every night, you'll hear the same callers and get to know them: Doris from Regal Park, Vinny from Flushing. They have relationships with each other on the air. There's something sweet and intimate about that, even though sometimes they're yelling angrily. It's a little like The Wrestler, this loose-knit community that to the outside world is kind of strange.  And when [Paul] puts on his costume, which is this radio persona, he transforms into this confident, macho guy.

DH: Is there a comment in this film on how today's athletes have betrayed the fans?

RS: Every year there's a big athlete doing something heinous. You know, now it's Plaxico's moment. Of course there are many athletes that are really good people, but fandom is definitely something of a one-way street: we love them unconditionally and they take steroids and shoot people. And sports in general shits on us. They raise ticket prices. There's no end to the abuses that fans take. It all feels like a test of our devotion.  Paul loves this. He blames it on himself and can't bring himself to reject this thing.  It's kind of like being a battered wife.

DH: Between this and The Wrestler, I'd say you have a thing for masochistic protagonists.

RS: I'm definitely interested in flawed, outsider-type characters. They're much more up my alley than Will Smith. I wouldn't know how to make a handsome, heroic character interesting. I think if I were a better screenwriter I could probably write for George Clooney. But it would be an uphill battle to make him as interesting as Mickey Rourke or Patton Oswalt.

Big Fan opens today at the Angelika Film Center. The Angelika is located at is located at 18 West Houston Street in New York.