When Fandom Goes Too Far
Passion for your favorite team, show, or celebrity can be a great thing. But when fandom turns into fanaticism, the results can be truly frightening. Here are some fans, both real and fictional, that took their obsessions a little too far.
Robert DeNiro in The Fan
In this 1996 film, knife salesman Gil, played by DeNiro, is obsessed with Giants center fielder Bobby Rayburn, played by Wesley Snipes. Gil's family life falls apart around the same time that Rayburn's batting average goes into a slump, and he becomes determined to resuscitate the baseball star's career at any cost. The climactic scene, where DeNiro pitches a knife to Snipes from the pitcher's mound at Candlestick Park (now AT&T Park) has to be seen to be believed.
If you can't get enough of De Niro's stalkings after watching The Fan, check out Martin Scorcese's film The King of Comedy (1982) where a younger De Niro character named Rupert Pupkin yearns to be a late-night comedy icon like his role model, Jerry Lewis. Kidnapping Lewis and holding him hostage in exchange for a TV appearance is just one stop on Pupkin's route to stardom, or madness.
Kathy Bates in Misery
In this 1990 film based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, Kathy Bates plays a reclusive fan of romance novels named Annie Wilkes. When the writer of her favorite series, played by James Caan, is injured in a car crash near her secluded Colorado home, Wilkes takes him in and nurses him back to health. As a reward for her good deed, she wants him to write a novel just for her. When he tries to escape, she breaks his leg again, with an mallet. Bates was so chilling in the role that she won an Academy Award.
Osama bin Laden
The head honcho of international terrorist organization Al Qaeda is reportedly a big fan of the British football team, Arsenal. It was revealed in Adam Robinson's book Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of a Terrorist that when bin Laden was visiting England in 1994 to find financing for his terrorism operations, he found time to attend four matches and even bought a team jersey for his son.
Arnold Rothstein
This gangster was accused of backing the scheme that resulted in the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, in which the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, to the delight of gamblers and the chagrin of fans. Rothstein, a New Yorker, was likely not a die-hard fan of either team. But it would have been better for baseball if he had turned his attentions to golf instead.