Big Fan vs One Hour Photo

Sometimes being a fan is the most important part of being a fan. If you love a band so much you want to follow then cross-country, eventually it becomes less about how much you love them and more about you being someone who loves something else so much. You become that guy. It’s visible all over: Star Trek, Phish, comic books. There was a guy on This American Life last week who had the biggest Lewis and Clark book collection in the country, and he started it not out of an interest in history, but because he wanted something to collect. Once he started, he was obsessed, and never actually read the books until after he sold the collection to a library. He was so dead-set on being the best Lewis and Clark guy out there, he never bothered to find out if he actually liked Lewis and Clark. In Big Fan, Patton Oswalt plays Paul, the biggest New York Giants fan in the world. Well, if you ask him or his best friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan), that is. They don’t seem to communicate with any other fans (Paul doesn’t have internet at home, where he lives with his mom), and they go to games, but only to tailgate outside the stadium. Paul probably wouldn’t understand the game as well in person, without close-ups, commentary and stats constantly coming at him. Paul’s a nice guy, but tunnel-visioned to the point of self-destruction. If he had a difficult or important job, it’d be easy to see him hurting himself or others because of his preoccupation with football. Luckily, he works as a toll-attendant in a parking garage. If he’s distracted on the job, all you have to do is honk and he’s back on the ball.

Paul lives a second life, though, one of excitement and fun, in which he’s dominant, articulate and popular. He’s Paul from New York, a regular caller to a late-night sports radio show. Paul writes a script before each call. He doesn’t debate sports topics though, or offer insight into tough plays or referee decisions. He just calls to boast about the next game. It’s all threats and promises, delivered in a voice normally heard in trailers for action movies (Oswalt uses a similar voice when he describes crazy restaurants in his act). The hosts of the show know him, get a kick out of him actually. He’s not some nut who bothers them (well, he is, but they seem to like him anyway), and Sal listens at home, cheering every zinger Paul from New York gets in against the other teams. These details were important to me. In most movies with an obsessed character, we only see the isolation and delusions. Paul is at work every day, and his friendship with Sal is genuine. Big Fan is scripted and shot in a natural way, so even if Paul has some sort of King of Comedy/Taxi Driver meltdown in his future (I won’t reveal that here, but the trailer makes it out that way), then I appreciate seeing him as a regular guy for as long as it lasts.

It doesn’t last long. Paul and Sal see Giants’ quartback Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) out one night, and follow him all the way from Long Island to Manhattan (with a shady stop part-way for what appears to be a drug buy). They wind up at a strip club, watch for a while, and then muster the courage to send over a drink. Paul and Sal are so naïve and nerdy they buy Quantrell what looks like a screwdriver. It’s probably the only mixed drink either of them could think of. If they’d been a little savvier, they would have just told the waitress to get him another of whatever he’d already been drinking, though I’m not sure they could afford it. When they aren’t acknowledged, they approach Bishop, and after an embarrassing and frustrating misunderstanding (it is pretty suspicious that they followed him so far), Paul is beaten into a coma by his favorite quarterback.

Three days later, Paul wakes up in the hospital, and immediately wants to know the score to the last game. His brother and mother want to sue, but Paul isn’t interested. He’s approached throughout the rest of the movie by a detective, but won’t comment, won’t help hurt his favorite team. But his family won’t shut up about it, and his head has been hurting, and Paul’s been outed as Bishop’s victim on the radio show by another caller, and well, something’s gotta give. Patton Oswalt is of course primarily known for stand-up comedy, and while much of Big Fan is funny (not as much at Paul’s expense as you might think), it’s the vulnerability he brings to the role that impresses the most. It’s no longer big news for comedians to take dramatic roles, but it is rare for one to do so this naturally. I often enjoy Robin Williams and Jim Carrey more in dramas than comedies, but I also feel like each has been disciplined by a director who had to strong-arm them into staying on-script. Oswalt clearly saw something true in Paul (he travels enough in the worlds of comic books and comedy that he’s no doubt met guys like this before), and only goes for laughs in the moments when Paul is going for laughs. There are times in Big Fan when Paul is the butt of the joke, and luckily, those are the scenes that are the hardest to watch. Big Fan was written and directed by Robert D. Siegel, who also wrote The Wrestler. One more great script outta this guy, and I might just declare myself his biggest you-know-what.

Even after all these years, I still consider it an achievement for Robin Williams to portray a character in a drama. Not because I feel it’s so far a reach from his comedy roots, but because I like him so much more as a dramatic actor, and often lose touch of that during his comedies, which can be taxing on my patience. Give me Robin Williams in Insomnia over Robin Williams in Jack any day. One Hour Photo finds him at his darkest, and for Williams’ performance alone, it’s worth your time. Williams plays Seymour, a photo developer at a huge, immaculate Kubrickian department store, which never seems to have much business and is so white it practically glows. Despite the huge, artificial setting, Seymour treats his business like he’s at the general store, learning his customer’s names, paying extra attention to making their pictures as close to perfect as possible, and in one instance, paying way too much attention to the life inside the photographs. Seymour is enamored by Nina, whose photos show her life with husband Will and son Jakob as idyllic. Do I have to tell you that Seymour is obsessed with Nina’s family to the point of having a movie stalker-style wall of their photos in his home? And that when he learns their perfect life is flawed and tainted by dishonesty, he makes them pay? Of course I don’t. We’ve seen this story a million times. The key to selling me on this version of it was Robin Williams. He keeps Seymour (who…sigh…sees more. Get it?) grounded and sympathetic for as long as the script will let him. As with Insomnia, he plays the bad guy calmly, allowing us to project our fears onto him. Seymour is never quite as bad as he could be, but his potential is off the charts because Williams hints just enough at Seymour’s emotional fragility.

One Hour Photo was written and directed by Mark Romanek, who has directed some of the best music videos ever. His direction is clear and vibrant, like someone who directs good music videos, but his script isn’t quite there, like someone who fast-forwarded to the good parts of Fatal Attraction and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. The biggest problem is that the life Seymour covets so is boring as hell. Nina and Will (Connie Nielsen and Michael Vartan) could not be blander yuppies. If they were quarterbacks, Big Fan’s Paul would have left them on Long Island and gone back home to mom.

Big Fan: A-

One Hour Photo: B-