Rob Siegel, former editor in chief at The Onion, hit both the highest highs and the lowest lows since transitioning to Hollywood screenwriting. First he saw his The Onion Movie get shelved for year and barely appear on DVD; then last year’s The Wrestler appealed to audiences and critics alike as an unexpected comeback vehicle for Mickey Rourke. This year, he’s directed his first feature called Big Fan, with Patton Oswalt, and rather than the comedy you’d probably expect from Siegel and Oswalt, it’s a dark look at sports fandom and people who aren’t content to settle for “normal” lives. Read on for the full interview where Siegel talks about The Wrestler, directing his first feature, and why writing is much harder than directing.

So tell me how this project came about. I read somewhere recently, I guess in an interview during Sundance, this started out as a comedy or you tried to write it as a comedy and it just didn’t…

No, no, no, what I said was that I tried to write comedies before I wrote this. I wrote for The Onion for years and that is my background. So I was a comedy writer, hence when I started messing around with screenplays, I started writing comedies just because I thought that is what you are supposed to do as a comedy writer, you write screenplays and hopefully, you get Owen Wilson or Jack Black to star in them and that’s what comedy writers do, particularly New York Jews, this is what they do.

And I wrote one, two, three and they got more competent, but they didn’t get anymore inspired or special or funny. And I reached a certain point where I said, this is not really working and I couldn’t figure out why. And I just think it wasn’t really my thing. Everything kind of came off as a little derivative and this is the kind of thing I think people want to see or I think — it was very imitative and derivative.

So then I had this idea for this movie Big Fan, which was not a comedy. I didn’t think of it as a comedy, I always thought of it as - I am sure there is a comedy version of this movie, but I always wanted to do it as a Mean Streets, you know ’70s, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy a little bit. And I wrote it and just something clicked. I found my voice writing this movie. And then from there, I just kind of stuck to writing those types of movies and everything kind of flowed much better and that was in 2001-2002.

When you wrote it?

Yeah, and then it just floated around from director to director and like many things, people liked it, but it never got made. And then, at a certain point, I decided to keep it for myself. I had been screenwriting for not that long, but I have been writing for maybe four or five years and I was ready to do something else. The idea of signing on for another two to three year tour with the studio for a writing job, it just didn’t excite me, and I thought about it and I decided that I would make this movie myself, direct it myself. And I did.

So when you first met with Darren Aronofsky, he was sort of interested in this story?

That’s why I met him. I forget how, but the script of Big Fan floated across his desk. He liked it a lot and was interested and I think it was somebody in his development — he has a development team, couple of people who read scripts for him to find projects. And somebody showed it to him and he really liked it a lot, he was interested in directing it and for a while –– I don’t remember exactly, maybe six months –– he was trying to direct it and then eventually just went on to I think The Fountain. You know, major directors tend to have multiple things they are entertaining the notion of at the same time. So I was one of his things and he decided not to do it.

But we had established a relationship and we felt like we shared a common sensibility, a certain like New York indie sensibility. And then, I don’t remember, maybe a few months later, he called me and wanted to meet with me and he said, I have an idea for another movie that I think you would be good for and it was The Wrestler. To me tonally they are pretty similar, certainly the scripts are very similar.

Was it the first time you have been like kind of asked to work on a project and write a project directly like that?

All he said was I want to write a movie set in the world of indie wrestling, he didn’t give me a plot or anything. You mean like collaborate with the director?

Had you written spec scripts before?

No, they were all studio jobs. I wrote a thing for Warner Brothers for Johnny Depp called Ballad of the Whiskey Robber. And then I wrote a thing called The Recruiter, it didn’t have a director, but it was for Judd Apatow to produce. And then there was a movie called Sweat for I think Amy Heckerling at that time was… you know, just jobs.

Right. So was this production on Big Fan happening kind of concurrent with The Wrestler?

No, it happened the day after, literally the day after. The day we wrapped on The Wrestler and then the following day I started on Big Fan. My wife was pregnant and I felt this sense of urgency to get the thing shot. I wanted to get it shot while she was still pregnant. I started in February and had until, the due date was June something and I felt like I had till early June to get the movie made. It was kind of a race. It was like kind of the race of the babies. Big Fan was my baby.

When did you finish?

We wrapped in May.

So you got it done right in time?

Yeah, I got it in right under the wire - yeah I got it just how I wanted, but then post production and then I thought okay, once I had my footage, it is in the can, I can kind of spend a few months being a father and adjusting to that and then I will go back to post production. So I just took most of June off and then by July, my wife giving me permission to go back to disappearing for days at a time in editing suites.

What was the hardest part of the process, either writing or directing?

Well, with this movie, I wrote this one really fast. This was one of those like crank it out in 10-day scripts. Most of the other things I have written are more two or three years and they are grueling and you write thousands of pages and throw out 99% of it. Writing in general to me is much much harder. It is not even - there is no comparison, writing is much harder, mentally harder.

Directing is really physically rigorous activity. You have to be really mentally sharp, but you don’t have that painful tortured thinking. To me thinking is the most painful torturous thing, a blank page. I think Mel Brooks once said, somebody was griping about something and he said, “You think you had a tough day, I had to deal with this” and he just held up like a blank sheet of paper.

And the two are really nice counterpoints to each other. Directing is very external lecture, it requires extroversion and you know you got to delegate and talk to people and writing is just, you are just holed up in your room with nothing but your thoughts and your laptop. And so it is kind of refreshing palate cleanser.

Did anything change during filming from what you had on the page?

Yeah, mostly it was more of the - I mean necessity is the mother of invention. There were a variety of things. Like, you get a call at nine o’clock at night, look your location fell through, pretty typical indie film making stuff. We didn’t have the budget to spend $10,000 to reserve the hospital room, so we had to kind of hope that you know… as of now the room is open, if you want to shoot tomorrow. Oh sorry, a building exploded, we got some burn patients coming in and you can’t shoot here tomorrow, and just changes that I had to make because of time.

Right.

Time is the monster on a movie set, race everyday, you’re just obnoxious that you are not going to get it done. And then if you don’t get it done, it sets off a chain reaction of disaster, you know, it is because actors… it’s this insane grid, like an interconnected web of actor availability and weather and location scouting and it’s very stressful, but it’s not as hard.

Did spending time on the set of The Wrestler help prepare you for the Big Fan?

I probably should have studied more, paid more attention there, but what I mostly did was I gathered members of my crew.

Like “Hey when this is done, I got a job for you”?

No, no. Like, during breaks, I kind of sidled over to the sound mixer and say hey, you know any like - do you got any good young prodigies who are 25 and looking for experience, want their first like lead, want to move up from assistant to being the guy in charge. So, I got my sound mixer that way and my hair and makeup people that way. A lot of people came from Wrestler poaching. Most of the crew was young. The recent film school graduates are overwhelmingly under 30, just eager and hungry young kids, who are good, but had never been in charge of their department.

The other day we were debating whether or not Paul’s character changes over the course of the film. My consensus was that he did. He changed enough to take fandom to another level, which was what results in the final scene. But do you think he changes?

Oh, I agree with the other side.

You think he doesn’t change?

I don’t think he changes. I definitely didn’t want to follow the traditional story that requires that by the end of the movie the character grows or learns something. I don’t know if it’s not interesting to me or I just don’t know how to do it without turning it into some thing lame and cliche.

Right.

But both in this and in The Wrestler, these are two guys who just want to be left alone to live their lives and it’s the rest of the world that wants them to change and they just want to stay the same. And they are both people who care deeply about something that most people look down upon or at least dismissive off. I don’t know, I like characters like that. I like people who really really care about something, even if it is something that most people don’t really necessarily respect.

Did you do a lot of listening to shows?

Yeah, I still do occasionally, but that’s a memory that’s burned into my brain, those voices and those callers and queens, the tri-state area, Rollin’s WFN. Every sports radio show has regular callers who have relationships with the host and relationships with each other and it’s a kind of a form of a family. I liken it in a weird way to Boogie Nights. We have this family of kind of misfit porn stars who all don’t really belong in society, but you know together they make sense.

Sure.

Boogie Nights is one of my favorite movies over the last 10-15 years. I didn’t model this after that, but that’s definitely an inspiration.

So, The Wrestler is sort of really taking off right now, everyone is talking about it and you have Big Fan coming out. How is it for you right now?

It would be surreal if I had the time to contemplate it. I’m just very busy with this and it’d be nice to spread them out to savor them a little bit more. I am cramming all those delicious food into my mouth. You know if you occasionally go to a great restaurant, and you are like, you have a movie to catch or something afterwards and you are running late, you’re like oh god and it takes a long time for the food to get there and you have five minutes to eat your meal. And you are really like, ah I really wish I could just eat this slowly and savor it. It is that weird feeling like shoving delicious food down your throat, but I’m not complaining. But it is definitely surreal. It will be surreal in retrospect, right now I’m just trying to work.

And this was the first feature that you’ve directed?

Yeah.

And you are going to do it again, what do you think?

Yeah, definitely. If you go through the trouble of writing something, you may as well get the credit.