August 6, 2009
Robert Siegel, the writer/director of the new movie Big Fan, has kindly agreed to respond to a few questions from members of BigBlueInteractive.com (BBI).
Robert Siegel is based in New York. He is the author of numerous screenplays, including “The Wrestler”, starring Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei. From 1996 to 2003, Siegel was editor-in-chief of the satirical newspaper The Onion. “Big Fan” is his directorial debut.
Question from Ben in Adirondacks: I’m assuming this was written and filmed before the Plaxico Burress incident. How did that affect what you had?
I wrote the movie in 2002 and shot it a few months before the Plaxico incident, so it didn’t really affect the actual making of the movie at all. But there have always been things like that going on in the sports world, athletes behaving badly. Back around the time I wrote it, the big scandal was Ron Artest. You may remember, he’s the Pacers player who went up into the stands during a game in Detroit and went after a Pistons fan. That’s probably the closest real-life incident to what I’ve got in the movie. But even that wasn’t something I directly based the movie on. The movie’s kind of a composite of all the different stuff you read about in the sports pages all the time.
Question from Giantgator: Sports fans are able to brush off a lot of negative aspects of their heroes (treatment of women, financial foolishness, selfishness, drug abuse) as long as he’s on “our team.” Is this a central theme of the film?
Definitely. In the original version of the poster, there was a tagline under the movie’s title: “Big Fan: A Tale Of Unrequited Love”. The movie’s essentially about, What do you do when the thing you love most doesn’t love you back? Which is something sports fans can definitely relate to. Fans take all kinds of abuse – heartbreaking losses, insane ticket prices, holdouts, strikes, steroids, off-field crimes, yet somehow we keep coming back for more. It doesn’t really make sense, but we do it anyway. Because there’s just something about sports that we can’t live without.
Question from giantfanboy: Are you a big Giants fan? Why did you pick the Giants as the team in the movie?
No, I’m not a Giants fan. I’m a lifelong, hardcore Steelers fan. I got into football in the late ’70s, when I was about 8 or 9. I’m from Long Island, and back then, the Jets and Giants both sucked pretty bad. All of my friends were either into the Steelers or the Cowboys. None of us were running around wearing Joe Pisarcik or Richard Todd jerseys. As for why I picked the Giants for the movie, I knew I wanted the movie to be set in New York. I live there, and I wanted to shoot there, both for creative reasons (I love New York movies) and financial (it was the cheapest way). So it was either gonna be the Jets or Giants. I picked the Giants because in the movie, the main character can’t get/afford tickets to the game. I wanted him not to have tickets because, thematically, he’s an outsider. He’s not some rich Manhattan guy who has access to corporate skybox seats through his law firm or who inherited season tickets from his father. He’s a regular, blue-collar guy from Staten Island. And I just thought it was more realistic that he can’t get Giants tickets than Jets.
Question from halfback20: Did you interview any fans of sports to get ideas?
No, but I definitely felt like I knew this type of guy. When I was a kid, I used to listen to WFAN every night religiously. That’s where a lot of the inspiration came from. I’d lie awake under the covers in the dark, way past my bedtime listening to Steve Somers, The Schmoozer. There’d be these regular callers – Joe From Rego Park, Manny From Massapequa, etc. – and I’d just love listening to them rant about some Wally Backman error or Phil Simms interception that drove them crazy. When I wrote this movie, I imagined Paul, the main character, being one of these guys I heard on the radio. Actually, if anything, the movie’s based on Mets fans. I’m a huge Mets fan, and I’d see guys like Paul at the games. I imagine him like one of those hardcore, obsessive guys sitting up there someplace in the upper deck at Shea.
Question from Greg from LI: Patton Oswalt is an interesting casting choice, since he has done mostly comedy. What led you to cast him?
At its core, Big Fan is a pretty dark story. And if you’ve ever hung around comedians, you’ll know they’re among the darkest people you’ll ever meet. So I felt like Patton would have a good handle on that aspect of the character. And while he’s not a sports fan, Patton is a huge, obsessive nerd about other things, particularly comic books and movies. He might not know who Mark Bavaro is, but he could go on an impassioned half-hour rant about how The Avengers were never the same after Yellowjacket was expelled in Issue #213. So I knew he’d understand the psychology of being way, way into something. When you get down to it, there’s really not such a big difference. Ant-Man, Maurice Carthon… It’s pretty much the same thing.
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