Mellotron Sounds

If you take a look at Robert Siegel’s resume, you’ll probably be a little dumbfounded. This is a guy who, before writing the screenplay for Daron Aronofsky’’s spectacular character study The Wrestler last year, not only didn’t have one shred of prior credited experience in film or drama, but instead was an editor for comic fake-news site The Onion. You figure it out.

Now, though, he’s cracking those artistic knuckles even harder, taking the helm of his first feature film (which he also scripted), called Big Fan, starring comedian Patton Oswalt (The King of Queens, …everything else). And the trailer is embedded at the foot.

Simply, the movie seems to be about a down-and-out guy (Oswalt) who obsesses over the New York Giants, only to have his two realities–the one where he lives with his mother and works in a toll booth, and the other his vicarious fanaticism–collide.

What excites me so much about this, beside the fact that Siegel’s coming off of a gem with The Wrestler and Patton Oswalt seems such a interestingly odd choice for a dramatic lead, is the fact that, like The Wrestler, the story feels like it was right there all along for the taking, always around us but also kind of taken for granted. What happens to ‘roided-out wrestlers after they’re old and their fanbase stops caring? Why do we put so much emotion into who scores more points than who on some field in some stadium somewhere?

Because we do, I guess. But Siegel seems to be about digging deeper, getting down to those honest human desires and tendencies that go along with the “other” side of sports. And it just seems such a relevant and efficient vehicle for getting there.

I read on /Film that a lot of people coming out of Big Fan at Sundance were taken back by just how separate from their expectations it was. Being that Oswalt was the lead, they were expecting a pretty straight-edged comedy, not a “dramedy” (I hate that word, by the way – Is real life ever really all one of the other?) about desperation and loneliness and coping with shattered ideals. And you can see that in the trailer: The way it’s shot with the same grainy natural realism used in The Wrestler, the plenty of shots of Oswalt rubbing his head and looking miserable. And beside the pretty awful title, so far it all looks good to me.

Big Fan will be out August 30th.