Big Fan

I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR a few weeks ago and Terry Gross was interviewing Robert Siegel and Patton Oswalt about their new movie Big Fan (which, of course, I'm planning on seeing). In the movie Patton plays an obsessed fan of the New York Giants. It was a great interview and here are some of my favorite parts:

Gross: Why did you think of Patton Oswalt for the role of the fan?

Siegel: Why did I think of him?

Gross: Yeah, I mean, he's best known as a comic and as an actor in comedies. This is not a comic film. It's not a comic performance.

Siegel: No, no. I didn't do it - you know, sometimes comedians are cast in dramatic roles in kind of - in ways that feel like stunt casting; you know, look at the funny clown, he's really sad inside... I just thought he was right. I just thought he felt right for the role. He looked right. He was the right age.

Gross: What does looking right mean?

Oswalt: Yeah, what DOES looking right mean, Robert?

Siegel: Can I let Patton take...

Oswalt: No, you can't.

Siegel: You know, I thought if he - we discussed it, and he said he was willing to bulk up for the role.

Oswalt: Yeah

Siegel: And stay out of the sun. He had a pretty healthy, glowing tan at the time, and he promised that he would go method and stay in a basement for a few months to kind of get rid of that.

Oswalt: Yeah, I laid off the mixed martial arts for about nine months. I really got doughy.

Siegel: I thought if he would go through a really advanced, aggressive anti-tanning process, and then, you know, then hit some Lucky Charms, we could get him in shape. No, I just thought - Patton, may I insult you?

Oswalt: Go right ahead.

Siegel: Okay. I just thought he looked like he could be an obsessive, you know, nerdy sports fan. Is that fair?

Oswalt: That's fair.

Siegel: Okay. Yeah, you know, and I also thought, honestly, on a practical level, you know, it was a very low-budget movie, and I didn't think that Philip Seymour Hoffman or Paul Giamatti would be willing to - I'd be getting reamed out by their managers every night when they found out that I didn't supply them with a chair to sit in, things like that. So I knew I couldn't get, you know, those two guys.

Oswalt: And plus, Paul Giamatti is a triathlete. He wears that shlubby suit. That's a fake thing he puts on for his roles. That guy has, like, I think he's at two percent body fat right now. He's so cut. So he puts on this Paul Giamatti suit, and that's why he gets all this indie crap, and it drives me crazy.

Gross: Patton Oswalt, now that we know you come cheap...

Oswalt: I come cheap.

Siegel: Not anymore...that will change now.

Oswalt: Thanks for jumping in, Robert.

Then Patton was discussing how he knows very little about sports:

Oswalt: A couple of scenes in the movie, when me and Kevin Corrigan, who plays my best friend, we're supposed to riff about sports, and Robert found out very early on that we don't have any sports knowledge. So we would start improvising, and I mean, I'm not exaggerating - five seconds into it, we would both just stop because we had nothing. Well, that's the extent of our sports knowledge.

Siegel: You would run out of sports terminology very quickly.

Osawlt: And then I would start - I would get scared and I would make stuff up that literally made no sense, like 'You think Broncos are going to go 500 on the blue level?' And - 'Cut! What? What did you say?' It just, it made no sense.

Siegel: He knows the terms touchdown and ball.

Oswalt: Which I'm pretty sure are golfing terms.