Kaleidoscopic: Patton Oswalt

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Kaleidoscopic: Patton Oswalt

POSTED: Thursday, August 27, 2009, 7:07 PM

Filed Under: Comedy | Interview | Kaleidoscopic | Movies

In this week's Kaleidoscope, I wrote about Patton Oswalt. Here's what I said:

Patton Oswalt doesn't push it. The man who dubbed KFC's Famous Bowl a "failure pile in a sadness bowl" prefers simply to stand there riffing on the mundane and basking in his own nerdy glory. This is a big week for Oswalt. His newest special, My Weakness is Strong, is released on DVD and he's getting his first big-screen starring role (unless you count the titular voice in Ratatouille) in Big Fan.

This is by far my favorite Oswalt routine, from his Lollipops & Werewolves DVD:

I got to talk to Oswalt about his role in Big Fan. Here's an excerpt where we talked about the nature of fandom:

CP: You say you aren't a hardcore sports fan, but you talk about how much of a geek you are a lot in your standup. Do you see the two areas of fandom mirrored at all?

PO: I certainly do, there's a definite parallel. It's the same spark, it's just a different fuel. Like, a fanatic Christian and a fanatic Muslim could find so much in common because they have a spark. A Philadelphia Phil or a Paul could find something in common, but they have different fuel and there's something so tragic about that.

CP: It's interesting to hear people talk about sports teams as "we" instead of "they" ' like when I'm at a bar and some guys are talking about the Birds, it's "We're on the field." Is that the way it is with your fans, even though it's not live or necessarily as active an experience?

PO: Definitely. People literally treat movies like they're their teams. They treat filmmakers like they know them ' "Oh, I think he's really going to pull it out this time." They get into the lives of their heroes.

You can read the rest over at citypaper.net/movies. Did any of you guys catch My Weakness is Strong on Comedy Central last Sunday? I forgot to set my DVR was pissed when I came home and it wasn't there. What did you think? Better than Werewolves & Lollipops? Even the Comedians of Comedy? Hit me up with whether I should move it to the top of my Netflix queue.

Big Fan opens tomorrow at the Ritz at the Bourse.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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