To read Peter Simek’s review of Big Fan click here.

Renegade Bus: Take me through how you went from being editor of The Onion, to writing screenplays, and now completing your first film as a director.

Robert Siegel: I was at The Onion for nine years, and really boredom was the precipitating factor. I was tired of doing The Onion. I started messing around with screenwriting, got an agent. When I wrote Big Fan it was really my first decent script. It made the rounds – it was my calling card. I spent the better part of three years on The Wrestler, and when I finished, I looked around at my options and Big Fan was sitting there. It had a lot of admires, but no one was calling up. For stretches it looked like it was going to be made, and there were a series of directors who were attracted by it. But as things went on, I got less excited about meetings.

RB: What gave you the confidence to make the leap and make the film yourself?

RS: I wrote it on spec. Other scripts were in the clutches of studios, this one offered a change for me to take charge and make it happened. When I finished The Wrestler, I thought I’d rather direct it. The day The Wrestler wrapped I started on Big Fan. The first day of shooting was the day after The Wrestler wrapped. The key was I owned and controlled the script. I wasn’t going to be able to get a studio to hire me as a director. It is strange how it works, but they would rather entrust scripts to incompetent directors than someone who has never directed before. So I self-financed it.

RB: Was there the fear, at any point during the production, that as a first time director, you weren’t going to pull off the film as you imagined it should be done?

RS: I didn’t really worry about that. At the risk of sounding naïve, I was assured that if I was in total control of the film it would come out how I wanted. When you don’t have studio backing, there are many limitations that are kind of accidental. It would have been nice to have a zoom lens or a dolly. It is nice to have the meat and potatoes.

RB: Both The Wrestler and Big Fan are films about misfits in the sports world. What attracts you to these kinds of characters?

RS: They are guys on the fringes of society, on the margins of the sports world, the type you don’t see in sports movies. There are really two categories of sports movies: the underdog, triumph movie, like Rudy, and then there is the broad comedy, like a Will Farrell movie. But there are other ways to tell stories about sports. I like small gritty character studies, which I just placed in a sports context. I don’t know if I want to make a career out of these kinds of things. There are films about heroes but not any about the people who worship those heroes. In both cases [The Wrestler and Big Fan], these are guys who are extras in other movies – the camera blows past them.

RB: Is it significant that these characters are involved in the sports world? What I mean is, could there be a similar film made about someone obsessed with rock star or some other celebrity, or is the fact that they are obsessed with sports offer a unique relationship between the hero and the worshiper?

RS: It could have been about a guy obsessed with a rock star – or about someone who is a huge comic book fan and gets punched out by Hugh Jackman on the red carpet. But I like sports, and I grew up around [the kinds of characters in Big Fan]. The topic seemed ripe – it is a big part of our culture. These people [sports radio frequent callers] are heard by millions of people – they are sort of stars. There was a well-known caller to WFAN – Doris from Regal Park – and when she died two years back her obituary ran in the New York Times. I mean this is the New York Times.