The No. 1 Fan

As far as I know, no one had yet made a decent film of Herman
Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener. And Big Fan is a
movie about a rabid football fan whose life revolves around phoning
sports-radio call-in shows. I think you see where I’m going with this:
Yes, Big Fan is the first successful adaptation of
Bartleby, and it works by ignoring all of the particulars of the
story and keeping only its most basic element: refusal.

Patton Oswalt stars as Paul Aufiero, a middle-age man who lives with
his mother in a rotting house in Staten Island. One of Paul’s brothers
is a lawyer, the other a midlevel executive with a retail company. Not
one to succumb to the base needs of capitalist impulse, Paul serves the
public by sitting in a tiny booth in a parking garage and collecting
money from motorists while listening to sports radio. He’s a doughy,
unattractive, compulsive masturbator who’s never had a girlfriend, and
he’s very, very happy.

Well, he’s happy whenever the New York Giants win a football game,
and when he gets to call his favorite sports-radio show, and when he’s
with his friend and fellow Giants fanatic Sal (played by the underrated
and awesome Kevin Corrigan). He’s only unhappy, it seems, when he has
to deal with his family.

That’s because they’re always offering him better jobs or blind
dates or opportunities to make money, move out of his mother’s house
and get on with his life. And this is what makes Big Fan so
strange and interesting: Paul isn’t a loser dreaming of a better life.
He isn’t hoping for his big break, and there’s no romance in the form
of a plain girl who secretly loves him and will redeem him when he
finally notices her. Paul simply, and clearly, wants nothing more than
what he has: a tiny bedroom with an enormous poster of his favorite
Giants player, a job that lets him listen to sports radio all day, and
fall weekends tailgating at Giants Stadium.

Writer/director Robert D. Siegel, who wrote the screenplay for
The Wrestler, films Paul’s life perfectly, with lots of
close-ups of Oswalt’s pudgy face, rooms decorated in late-20th-century
chintz, and an overall dirty, grimy and crowded feel. It all creates an
atmosphere that should reek of desperation.

But desperation isn’t the emotion that comes to the forefront in
Oswalt’s weird and complex performance. When Paul is sitting with his
family and watching TV commercials for his brother’s sleazy law
business, or witnessing his siblings’ lives, his face forms a pout so
intense that it could kill a Mouseketeer. But when he’s watching the
Giants win a football game, he looks as happy as Rush Limbaugh in a
room full of oxycodone and doughnuts.

Siegel’s screenplay and directing work for a number of reasons.
First, he avoids music in most scenes. This creates greater tension,
with thick silences building up around Paul’s pouty moments. But most
importantly, the script doesn’t pass judgment on Paul’s weird little
life. It’s portrayed with a repulsive honesty, but Paul wants nothing
more, and is content in his own way with what he has. When his brother
offers him a better job, Paul notes that he already has a “career.”
When his mother tries to fix him up on a date, he makes it clear that
he has no interest. Given every opportunity to better himself, he would
simply prefer not to.

And that’s because these aren’t opportunities for betterment, at
least not by his own standards. He’s already found perfection in taking
on the “tremendous responsibility,” as he puts it, of “being the
Giants’ no. 1 fan.”

There are a lot of films about middle-age losers, but they’re almost
always goofball comedies (Step Brothers, Big Daddy) or romantic
comedies (Failure to Launch, The 40 Year Old Virgin), and the
dénouement involves some kind of redemption. But that redemption
is a rejection of the life they lived before. That’s such an obvious
trajectory, and so unsympathetic to the initial character, that it’s
time someone Bartleby’d it, and simply said, “I’d prefer not
to.”

Even though Paul isn’t directed toward growing up, the film still
has conflict and a strong, forward trajectory. Paul’s radio call-in
life puts him in a pissing match with Eagles fan Phillie Phil. And one
day, Paul spots his football idol, Quantrell Bishop (which is probably
the best fake football-player name ever), and follows him to a strip
club in Manhattan.

There, things get out of control—not in a fun or growth-ful
way, but in the way that things get out of control when over-amped
superstars who’ve been groomed for their aggression and physical power
encounter tiny, adoring fans. This plot contrivance lets Siegel play
out all the angles on Paul’s refusal to be anything but what he is, and
leads to a tremendously effective ending.

Right now, Big Fan is easily one of the best, and most
creative, films of the year. Its originality comes not from wild ideas
or fantastic plot devices, but from exploring from the inside, and with
sympathy, a form of life that has in the past only been subjected to
ridicule and reform.

This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.