The opening scene gives us Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt), a parking lot attendant ticket taker, confined to his cage, meticulously scribbling something while reading, “I can’t tell you how sick I am.” From this point on, the audience wonders whether Paul is all there, or if he is so socially awkward that his only way to communicate is by scripting his every thought.
“I can’t tell you how sick I am,” begins his scripted call in to FAN 770, a New Jersey Radio station that seems to be all New York Giants football talk, all the time. His scripted rants serve to release his Giants impelled excitement and to bicker with Philadelphia Phil, a caller who ambushes the Jersey radio station from his home in Philadelphia to fuel the rivalry between Giants’ fans and Eagles’ fans.
Fun facts about Philadelphia: They pelted Santa Claus with snowballs, you know?
A regular caller, “Paul From Staten Island” is on a first name basis with the call screener and gets preferential treatment. His scripts are often jumbled and filled with confused expressions: “I just want to set the record clear,” which suggests that he has knowledge of such phrases, but has little to no experience using them. This jumbled phrase similarly suggests he rarely has to explain much. But, this is where Paul is socially accepted, in a one-sided medium that caters to his sole interest – though he must keep his voice down because his bedroom is next to his mother’s.
The Philadelphia Eagles are the only NFL stadium with their own jail.
Ostensibly, Paul lives a pathetic existence: he’s forty years old, lives with this mother, and is ostracized from other Giants fans inasmuch as he and his friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan) go to each Giants home game, but don’t have tickets so they rig a television up to their engine and watch the game in the parking lot while fifty thousand Giants fans abandon them and enter the stadium. So, in a way, Paul is the anti-fan.
Philadelphia fans cheered when Michael Irvin hit the turf with a broken neck.
His blood runs Giants red and blue as he decrees “We dominated” after a decisive Giants victory, but the camaraderie associated with mutual fandom is obviated. The marriage of himself and the team is even a bit weak in that he routinely isolates himself. What he mostly exhibits is hatred toward the fans of other teams, but essentially makes himself an outsider because of his refusal to join his cohort of fans.
I once got drunk in Philadelphia and no one would give me a cigarette.
Paul’s self-isolation eventually bites him when he and Sal stop at a gas station and Paul spots Quantrell Bishop, Pauls’ favorite Giants player. Not understanding the inherent eeriness of following someone from one burrough to the next, Paul and Sal follow Quantrell from Staten Island to a club in Manhattan where they sit timidly across the room hashing out plans to talk to star.
The Philadelphia Eagles kill dogs in the off-season, now.
This scene is reminiscent of being at a seventh grade dance and feeling the sweat trickle from your brow as you attempt to put your “how are you?” into action without letting your voice crack or look at her breasts. To avoid showing his pit stains, Paul and Sal decide that sending a drink to Bishop’s table is the best approach, but neglects to realize that a man sending another man a drink – particularly a celebrity – doesn’t function the way he intends. Thus, Paul and Sal conjure their bravery moment and approach Bishop, where all starts well, but Bishop and his entourage begin pummeling Paul when he lets slip that they followed him all the way from Staten Island, which comes across rather stalkerish.
They cracked the Liberty Bell on purpose to protest a city wide mandate on showering.
Initially, I thought there would be a commentary about how celebrities get away with whatever crime they commit, even if they beat the victim badly enough to put him in a coma. However, the authorities want to arrest Bishop, but Aufiero refuses to press charges, which suggests that Big Fan looks to explore reasons that we might isolate ourselves.
I’d be a Philadelphia Eagles fan, but I prefer winning Super Bowls.
Perhaps some of these reasons are a lack of encouragement, but it seems that some people just want to exist within their passions. Some scapegoats for Paul’s isolation could be his family or his social anxiety, but in the end, it seems that Paul’s passion for the Giants mirrors his brother’s passion for money and his sister’s passion to find a wealthy husband, or his mother’s obsession with control and, curiously, Chinese food condiments. Go figure.
Each person strives for happiness, and sometimes happiness is watching the Philadelphia Eagles get swallowed by a horrendous earthquake and drown in hot pits of magma another team lose, which in a sense, allows Paul to exist on a similarly competition-driven plain without acknowledging that he lost anything.
DYL MAG Rating: 7
