At face value, one might mistake Tony Scott’s The Fan (1996) for a remake of either The Fan (1981) or Der Fan (1982). Despite all three films having identical titles once translated to English, as well as strikingly similar premises, they are all unrelated. All three films are about obsession and the perils that come with fame; the two ‘80s films concern artists, while Scott’s film is set in the world of baseball. In fact, Scott’s The Fan merges two staples of ‘90s American cinema: baseball and the domestic thriller. And, it renders both with his flair for style and emphasis on brutal violence.
Scott introduces Gil Renard (Robert De Niro), a knife salesman with a poisonous affinity for baseball and, in particular, a star player named Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes) in the opening moments of The Fan. De Niro appears on screen as The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” blares on the soundtrack and it’s clear that Scott is unsubtly making reference to the films that the actor made with Martin Scorsese because the similarities don’t stop there. Renard’s palpable psychosis, which leads him to think that his acts of violence and terror are in the name of good, is eerily reminiscent of Travis Bickle’s in Taxi Driver (1976). Moreover, both films feature De Niro as a jilted pariah who comfortably takes on the role of the working class antihero until his climactic deeds render him reprehensible to all.
Renard’s early scenes find him hustling in his career, fixated on attending a baseball game with the son that he shares custody with his ex-wife over. He’s portrayed as a desperate father, clinging to a sports game that gives his rather meaningless life a sense of purpose. Scott, in his typical frenetic style, lets the film in on Renard’s mental state with dizzying handheld photography, courtesy of the Polish cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (he shot Scott’s Crimson Tide the previous year), and quick cuts from his regular collaborator Christian Wagner (future editor on 2004’s Man of Fire and 2005’s Domino). Around the film’s midpoint, Scott also amps the soundtrack from the classic rock comfort of The Stones to the industrial shrieks of Nine Inch Nails and the guttural brutality of Corrosion of Conformity. The result is such that The Fan begins as a Falling Down-esque man-on-the-edge desperation drama and ends as Fatal Attraction (1987) for the baseball stats set.
Like its source novel, Scott’s film takes the United States’ favorite pastime and makes it insidious. Although the team in the film, the San Francisco’s Giants, are fake, Renard’s obsession with them is all too real. For a decade that saw so many baseball movies targeted at families—A League of Their Own (1992), Rookie of the Year (1993), The Sandlot (1993)—it makes sense that a studio, and filmmaker, would set a decidedly adult story in the shadow of a typically wholesome sport. But The Fan isn’t a ribald sports/sex comedy like Bull Durham (1988) or Major League (1989). It offers something darker. When Scott films Renard brutally kill an insect to a Nine Inch Nails song halfway through the film, it becomes clear that Scott has something else in mind than what was typically expected of baseball films at the time. And, it’s to his credit that he’s able to deliver.
The Fan screens tonight, August 18, at Nitehawk Prospect Park on 35mm as part of the series “Reconsider This.”
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