Big Fan - "Hero War Ship"

Written and Directed by Robert D. Siegel

           

How much do you love your passions? At what point would you give up on something; when does undying love die?  Standup comedian and animated rat Patton Oswalt plays Paul Aufiero, or “Paul from Staten Island” as he is known when he calls into his local sports talk radio show to make methodical statements about the dominance of his local New York Giants football team. Paul has a crappy job as a night attendant at a car park, but at least it lets him listen to the radio while he works. On weekends, he and his buddy Sal (Kevin Corrigan, who seems stereotyped into these types of roles) head down to the stadium to cheer on The Giants even though they are too poor for actual tickets. Instead, they sit in the parking lot watching the game on a tv rigged to a car battery. They are die-hard fans, and nothing is more important than The Giants winning it all this season.

When they spot star Quarterback Quantrell Bishop one night in Staten Island, they begin to follow him, which leads them to a strip club in midtown Manhattan. Eventually they meet him, but with dire consequences- Paul is beaten within an inch of his life. The ensuing events pull Paul apart from the inside out. Does he hold Bishop responsible for his actions, bring a lawsuit against him, and get him thrown out of the NFL? Or does he keep his mouth shut and try to put the entire ordeal behind them all so that The Giants can win games? Meanwhile, Paul continues the back and forth rivalry he shares with “Philadelphia Phil” (Michael Rapaport), his Eagles-fan counterpart who calls the NY sport shows just to rile up the local fans.

Staying up nights at work and listening to the radio well past midnight have given him bags under his eyes and a zombie-like sleepwalk through anything that isn’t football related. Writer/Director Robert D. Siegel would like you to think of Paul as a modern day Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver or Rupert Pupkin from The King of Comedy (both portrayed by Robert Deniro and directed by Martin Scorsese). He has the drive, the trauma, and the celebrity worship to follow in their footsteps (and in Pupkin’s case, the berating mother as well). What’s missing is a serious dissection of the mind that ends up a political commentary on par with these predecessors. Most likely, we have become too jaded with professional athletes in recent times to have this story be as shocking as it could be. The idea that a drug addled football player would beat up an innocent fan seems like nothing new.

What does hold your attention is the way in which Paul deals with the event. There is a tension to his love for the Giants that makes one fear the possibilities of what he is capable of. Outside forces are swirling around his head and he would like nothing more than for them to all disappear. But Paul is a weak man. He is well into his thirties and still living with his mother who he has a frighteningly realistic love-hate relationship with. He asserts himself in his convictions but cannot bring the people around him to follow suit (excepting Sal, who for undisclosed reasons is such a loser that he worships Paul as the next man up the evolutionary chain of football fans).

Paul Aufiero is a man that we may all have met at some point in our lives and passed over. He loves football to a dangerous degree, a reflection of how these teams of sport reflect the tribal warfare of the past. With that conviction, you know it will all end in some kind of violence. When the ending comes, and you are expecting the worst- only to basically have your fears met- Siegel plays on the way we subconsciously associate Big Fan with Taxi Driver. The film plays like a parody of ‘Driver’ in a way that befits Paul’s weak will and need to vent his aggression not against the real life villains that he loves but against the villains in his head.


***1/2 Three and a half stars – Take it or leave it

Big Fan is available now on DVD, with too cheery a cover.

Special – “Use Your Delusion”

Written and Directed by Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore

Comic book movies have reached well beyond their saturation point. Advances in digital technology have enabled characters like Spiderman and Superman to come across today with their full breadth of powers on screen, wowing audiences worldwide. But there was a time in cinema when simple trickery had to be employed to make us believe that Batman could even turn his head in ‘Batman’ (1989). After the success of that film, a serious of “street level” superhero and comic-based movies were made, varying in success from Dick Tracy to The Crow to The Phantom. Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore’s ‘Special’ is a movie that harkens back to that low-fi 90’s era of comics on screen.

Les (Michael Rapaport) is a parking attendant who lives alone and enjoys reading comic books. He participates in a clinical study for a new medication called “Special” which is an undisclosed new form of anti-depressant. Naturally, things go awry. The tightrope that the film walks is that it’s not that Les gains superpowers; it’s that he thinks he has. Les’ own transformation as he tries to make the most of his newly found powers (aka, his decline into insanity) is well played by Rapaport, who finally shows something more than the New York thug character type casting he has mostly been relegated to. The film is make-or-break on his performance and he gives it his all, reminding me of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler at times for some reason. Perhaps the grainy urban cinematography has something to do with it.

The upside is that the film plays with the archetypes of the hero’s journey as if Les really was going through them all to be a better savior in the end. There is the mentor figure/ doctor who is responsible for his powers (The Big Lebowski’s Jack Kehler), the supportive friends/ owners of Les’ local comic shop, the love interest/a checkout girl at the supermarket, and of course the diabolical villains who are entwined with our hero/ businessmen who engineered the drug. Unfortunately, these same archetypes make for easy stereotypes. The businessmen, despite trying to convince Les that he is imagining everything, really do act like Lex Luthor-style scumbags. They drive around in a limo and the main one is named Jonas Exiler (Paul Blackthorne), who looks and acts like a low rent Hugo Weaving. It always feels like he one step away from suddenly strapping Les to a table with a slow moving laser pointed at him. The comic book store-owning brothers Everett (Robert Baker) and Joey (Josh Peck) are such poorly written clichés that they could very well have been Walt and Steve-Dave from an early Kevin Smith film. They treat their customers like crap and spend their time debating meaningless topics or getting high. Only the doctor is given anything to work with, caught in the middle of a company who wants to make money and his allegiance to the health of his patient.

The idea of a person with no powers thinking they can save the world is nothing new. This story takes it one step forward, as psychoanalysis of someone like Batman in the real world would always lead to the conclusion he must be delusional. Here we see how a person who just goes around tackling those that he thinks are criminals would just end up going down an extremely destructive path. But in the end it all feels like something we’ve seen before with a slight twist that isn’t enough to save it. If the film stuck to its guns and allowed Les to die or “lose” in the end, we would feel the weight of a moral lesson. Instead, the film just errs on the side of super-fiction, giving us a hero triumphantly walking away and a villain clenching his fist and saying “Bah! Next time!”


** Two Stars – See it if you must

After existing in limbo for several years, Special is now on DVD.