The Fan

Year 4, Day 153 - 6/1/12 - Movie #1,151

BEFORE: New month, new topic.  Once again I'm forced to abandon a topic without covering it completely - I passed on adding "The Recruit" to the list, and no premium channel has run "The Expendables" or the new "Mission: Impossible" film yet, so I'll have to circle back to this sort of action-hero special agent film later.  I'm hoping that someday I'll get the list down to just 20 or 30 films that don't play on cable, and I can sign up for streaming Netflix or buy the last few films on iTunes.  Who knows, by then people will be having movies beamed right into their brains via radio waves or something.  At least then I won't have to wonder when films are going to premiere on HBO or Showtime.

Sports-based films should keep me busy for the next three weeks or so.  Which sports, you might ask?  How about, all of them?  I've done chains before based around baseball or football films, this time I'm batting clean-up, so to speak, so they may get all mixed together.  Hey, all sports films are the same, right?  I'll get back to football in a bit, let's start with "America's Pastime".

I can't believe my luck, Bruce Dern was in a 1970 film called "Bloody Mama" that also co-starred Robert De Niro (last seen in "Little Fockers").  I did not see that one coming - but I bet at this point I could probably find a way to link any two films together.

THE PLOT: An all star baseball player becomes the unhealthy focus of a down on his luck salesman.

AFTER: Oh, good, De Niro plays a hunting knife salesman.  Because playing with knives is a sure sign of sanity.  Again, I feel that's another little bit of movie-script shorthand.  Although, maybe it's the salesman part that makes him snap - don't they say that working in sales is one of the most stressful jobs, right after bomb squad technician?  I do think this film did a better job than "Black Sunday" did of getting inside a crazy person's head.  Sorry, do we still say "crazy", or is the correct term "mental defective", or perhaps "differently thought-oriented"?

The world of baseball is a perfect framework for a story about an obsessive type - and I happen to know a thing or three about obsessiveness.  All those people who pore over stats, or draft fantasy leagues, or just spend hours listening to sports radio - if you add up all the hours spent talking about sports before the game, and all the time wasted by analysts after the game, it's probably 10 times longer than the game itself.  Why can't the game just be the game, and when it's over, we can forget about it?  Not gonna happen.

I admit there was a time when I paid a lot more attention to the standings and rosters of the Red Sox and/or NY Mets.  I even programmed the entire MLB roster's worth of averages and ERAs into one of those Playstation baseball games - not to play the games myself, but to let the computer simulate the games and predict the World Series winner that year.  (For the record, it was 2003 and the Red Sox were the virtual champions, a feat they repeated in the real world the following year.)

And there couldn't be a greater gulf between the major league players, who make tens of millions, and the Joe Six-packs who attend the games.  Wait, that's probably not true any more, because only rich people can afford to go to the games these days.  The middle class all stay home and watch the game on TV, or perhaps on their phones now.  But I digress.

De Niro's character loses his job, and has a strained relationship with his son and ex-wife, so about all he's got going for him is his love of baseball, the S.F. Giants in particular.  Perhaps he sees his troubles mirrored in that of their new all-star player, who's also in a professional slump.  Or perhaps he's jealous of the outfielder's money, or the relationship he has with his own son (though, in reality, that's kind of strained, too - things are sort of tough all over).

There's no one moment that you can really point to where De Niro's character arrives in crazytown - as in "Taxi Driver", it's a long, slow slide.  We know he's gonna get there, but no one else around him does.  And by the time they've figured out what he's done to help/hurt the object of his obsession, it's too late to prevent it.  What's great is that it's semi-logical and twisted as heck at the same time.

There are a number of nitpick points on IMDB, which seem to be mostly points made by obsessive baseball fans (ooh, irony!), and they didn't bother me - some are easily explainable anyway by later plot points, so why bring them up?  I've got more of a problem with the soundtrack, which featured mostly Rolling Stones song you've heard in a trillion movies ("Start Me Up", "Sympathy for the Devil") and tired rock hits you usually hear at the ballpark ("Devil With a Blue Dress").   They tried to use one of those hip (for 1996) songs from Nine Inch Nails, "Closer", to set the mood, but they had to edit out the best lines because they didn't fit with the action on screen.  The lyric "I want to f--- you like an animal" would have been very out of place.  In that case, it might have been better to find a more appropriate song that was just as moody.

Yes, people can be just as obsessive about watching, and making, (and reviewing) films as anyone is over one of those sporting competitions.  Remember, the word "fan" is short for "fanatic" - so when you use the word to say you like something, you're also admitting to some level of obsessiveness, or at least some type of imbalance.  I say this as a comic book fan, and a Star Wars fan.  I don't collect as much SW merchandise as I used to, but I do read all the novels that take place before/after/between the films, and then there's the autograph collection.

In 9 years of going to the San Diego Comic-Con, and 5 years at the NY Comic-Con, I've amassed a very respectable collection of signed 8x10s from about 75 or 80 actors.  (Outside the world of Star Wars, I've got only about 10 autographs that hold any meaning or value for me)  Oh, and there are rules about which actors are worthy of being in the collection, and which aren't - I mean, come on, we've got to draw a line somewhere.  "Third stormtrooper from the left" doesn't make the collection.

My interactions with the community of Star Wars actors have been overwhelmingly positive.  Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams - all were very gracious mega-stars (who were happy to accept my autographing fee).  But right down the line - Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, Ray Park, Daniel Logan, they've all been great sports and very personable.  I also behaved myself when I was given the opportunity to have my photo taken with Natalie Portman - I followed the rules and didn't ask for an autograph, or for anything other than the Polaroid record I was offered.

Only one time (so far) did my autograph-hunting turn a bit obsessive, and that's when I semi-stalked a semi-famous comedian who did a voice for one of the Star Wars films.  I paid to see his stand-up act, and thought that maybe entitled me to get an autograph on a photo I "happened" to be carrying, with a convenient silver Sharpie.  Well, said comedian wasn't in the mood to do any autographing that night, so I waited.  And waited.  I didn't make a scene, but the club staff probably thought I was nuts.  Oh, I got the autograph, but I got it begrudgingly, and that's not how I wanted it.  I didn't get into this game to piss off comedians.  But, didn't he realize I've got a collection I'm trying to build?  That's kind of where the madness starts, isn't it?

Also starring Wesley Snipes (last seen in "Brooklyn's Finest"), Ellen Barkin (ditto), John Leguizamo (last seen in "Carlito's Way"), Benicio Del Toro (last seen in "The Wolfman"), Patti D'Arbanville, Dan Butler, with cameos from Jack Black (last seen in "Gulliver's Travels"), two "Twin Peaks" actors (Don Davis and Chris Mulkey), John Carroll Lynch (last seen in "Mercury Rising") and also Aaron Neville.

RATING: 5 out of 10 autographed bats