Both of Robert D. Siegel’s screenwriting efforts to date are set in the world of sports, but they are tellingly devoid of the redemptive, underdog-victory narrative arcs endemic to most sports movies. Like his celebrated 2008 work The Wrestler, the new Big Fan — on which the former Onion editor pulls double duty as writer and director — is another gritty, unflinching look at the unsavoury aspects of pro sports that never make the highlight reel, this time exploring the existential quandary of Paul Aufeiro, an obsessive New York Giants fan (Patton Oswalt) who, after a night of fortuitous, unplanned stalking, ends up getting brutally assaulted by his favourite player, Quantrell “QB” Bishop. During a recent visit to Toronto, Siegel spoke to EYE WEEKLY about the disconnect between celebrities and their worshippers, and his own obsessive music fandom. 

Most films about overzealous fans — whether it’s Play Misty for Me or Misery — chart an increasingly violent, cat-and-mouse dynamic between the star and the stalker. What’s interesting about Big Fan is that QB winds up being a peripheral character.
I wanted the movie to be true to life, and in real life, fans and stars almost never cross paths. It felt more real to me to have this one incident — QB punches Paul and puts him in the hospital — and QB’s never heard from again. Most fans typically never meet the star; the experience of being a fan of somebody is a really remote, abstract one-way experience where you know them intimately but they don’t know who you are at all. I think it would’ve felt more Hollywood in a bad way if [Paul] took charge and kidnapped QB or took revenge. The fan is ultimately kind of helpless and isolated. On the other hand, I think for players, or singers, or Robert Pattinson, the experience of being a star is that you love your fans in theory but in practice, you’re just deeply uncomfortable with them. There’s a real appreciation for the fans as a concept, but the actual interaction between celebrities and their admirers, for the celebrity, is deeply unpleasant. 

The film works well as a companion piece to The Wrestler — though one story is told from the athlete’s perspective and the other the spectator’s, both deal with people who refuse to adapt to the world around them.
Usually characters who are “pathetic” in movies are unhappy and want to change and Patton’s character doesn’t want to change at all; he just wants to be left alone [to watch] his team and eat his pizza — he has no real aspirations beyond that. Hollywood screenwriting requires that your character have a growth arc: your character has to get from point A to B, even if it’s just a tiny baby step to self improvement, and in both movies, those characters are fighting change tooth and nail. I do that because it’s more true to life: most people don’t really change or are capable of change and don’t really want to. I would have a hard time writing a movie where the character grows and it doesn’t feel cheesy or fake. I’m laying that out as my own personal challenge for whatever I do next — I can’t get away with a third movie where the character doesn’t grow.

Was it difficult to get the NFL’s permission to portray some of its players in an unflattering light?
Typically, you have to make up fake teams if it’s not a purely positive portrayal. But the less we talk about this, the better: I didn’t get permission. Though I did consult with a lawyer who vetted the whole script and watched the movie. You can actually get away with a lot more than you would think; it’s just that [the NFL] can still sue you. For most studios, it’s not worth that risk to them, but this film was independently financed and produced, so we had the luxury of deciding whether or not we wanted to take that risk. I wouldn’t have wanted to make this movie with fake teams, because that bothers me as a movie fan.

Well now that you say that, the tailgate-party scenes did have a real guerilla/infiltration feel to them…
It was pretty guerrilla, and we were definitely on the lookout for cops. So far, so good — fingers crossed, [the NFL] haven’t bothered us yet. We’re not looking for trouble, but the whole movie was definitely a bit of a calculated gamble.

You’ve expressed your admiration for early-’70s American cinema. Were the soundtrack selections — like John Cale’s “Big White Cloud” — a deliberate nod to that era?
I wanted songs that were affordable — John Cale is surprisingly affordable, though he was a replacement for a Richard Thompson [song] I couldn’t get. You learn a lot about what our society values by song-licence prices. You’d think John Cale — legendary founding member of The Velvet Underground — would cost more than Skid Row. On The Wrestler, I wanted A-list top-tier ’80s glam-metal — Poison, Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses — and we just slid down the ladder. “OK, can we afford… Cinderella?” “No.” “How about Krokus? Trixter?” We got down to, like, Saxon. But I’m a huge music guy and I enjoyed the challenge of finding the right song. Though I feel like Wes Anderson’s a little bit on autopilot in that regard, it was thrilling to hear The Creation or Love in his movies. I love it when either a song you know is totally recontextualized by the movie, or when you hear some amazing song that makes you run home to look it up. So this was an opportunity for me to go through my “nuggets” collection and dig up something. And save money.

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