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The Big Lebowski

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The Big Lebowski, a 1998 comedy film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, chronicles a few days in the life of an unemployed California slacker and recreational bowler after he is mistaken for a millionaire with the same name. The film, known for its idiosyncratic characters, surreal dream sequences, unconventional dialogue and eclectic soundtrack, has become a cult classic. While not directly based on Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, Joel Coen has said that "[we] wanted to do a Chandler kind of story - how it moves episodically, and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery. As well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant."[1] The world of Raymond Chandler has been modernized considerably, in the style of Robert Altman's 1973 film The Long Goodbye.

The Big Lebowski
Theatrical poster
Directed byJoel Coen
Written byEthan Coen
Joel Coen
Produced byEthan Coen
StarringJeff Bridges
John Goodman
Steve Buscemi
Julianne Moore
CinematographyRoger Deakins
Edited byTricia Cooke
Roderick Jaynes
Music byCarter Burwell
Distributed byGramercy Pictures
Release dates
United States March 8, 1998
Running time
118 minutes
Country United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$15,000,000
File:The.Big.Lebowski.1998.Screenshot.2.jpg
The Dude, Donny and Walter.

Characters and cast

Main characters

  • Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a single, unemployed slacker living in Venice, California, who enjoys cannabis, White Russians (which he calls "Caucasians"), the occasional acid flashback, and bowling in a league. He claims to be one of the members of the Seattle Seven, and to have worked on the original Port Huron Statement, not the "compromised second draft." He is still a pacifist, though he is presently less politically active. When college comes up in the movie, Lebowski claims he spent most of his time in college "occupying various administration buildings, smoking a lot of thai stick, breaking into the ROTC and bowling." A devoted Creedence Clearwater Revival fan, he actively hates the Eagles and refers to Metallica, whom he says he was a roadie for on their Speed of Sound Tour, as a "bunch of assholes." He has no job, but seems unconcerned with money.
  • Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), is a Vietnam War veteran, and the Dude's best friend and bowling teammate. Born a Polish Catholic, he converted to Judaism when he married his wife, Cynthia. They divorced five years prior to the events in the film, but he still attempts a relationship with her and remains devoted to Judaism. Walter is a paranoid, mentally unstable man who deals with situations passive-aggressively and stubbornly. He is boisterously confident in his actions, though his plans usually backfire, often ending disastrously. Walter runs his own security firm, Sobchak Security, and places bowling second in reverence only to his religion, as evidenced by his strict rule against bowling on Shabbos.
  • Theodore Donald "Donny" Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi) is a member of Walter and The Dude's bowling team. Charmingly naïve, Donny is an avid bowler and was a surfer in his younger days. Donny frequently interrupts Walter's diatribes to inquire about the parts of the story he missed or didn't understand, evoking Walter's abusive and frequently repeated response, "Shut the fuck up, Donny!" This line is a reference to Fargo, the Coen Brothers' previous film, in which Buscemi's character was constantly talking.
  • Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), "The Big Lebowski" referred to in the movie's title, is a wheelchair-bound multi-millionaire who lost the use of his legs in the Korean War. He is married to Bunny and is the father of Maude by his late wife. He is a very vain man who uses his late wife's money to make himself feel powerful and is obsessed with appearing rich, often through embezzlement masked by philanthropy. Both of these characteristics place him in stark contrast to The Dude, whom he views as a deadbeat loser.
  • Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) is the Big Lebowski's daughter. She is a feminist and an avant-garde artist whose work "has been commended as being strongly vaginal." She is good friends with video artist Knox Harrington (David Thewlis), and is possibly the person who introduced Bunny to Uli Kunkel, the nihilist, porn star and would-be kidnapper. Maude strongly disapproves of her father's marriage to Bunny. She also desires a child with a man whom she will never have to see socially.
  • Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), born Fawn Knutsen, is the Big Lebowski's "trophy wife." She ran away from her family in Moorhead, Minnesota and soon found herself making pornographic videos under the name "Bunny LaJoya." She is careless, irresponsible and sexually promiscuous (as evidenced by her $1,000 offer for oral sex made when she met The Dude) and an annoyance to her husband, who hopes "she will one day learn to live on her allowance, which is ample."
  • The Stranger (Sam Elliott) is the film's mysterious narrator, who sees this story unfold from an unbiased perspective. His narration is marked by a thick, laid-back western accent. He sees The Dude not as a low-life but as an ironic tragic figure, or even a kindred spirit. The Stranger enjoys a good Sioux City Sarsaparilla, wears his cowboy duds well, and is accompanied by the song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" each time he speaks.

Minor characters

  • Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a sycophant and loyal assistant to The Big Lebowski, who tries to please everyone. Brandt has a habit of echoing his boss as well as forcing out nervous laughter during awkward moments.
  • Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) is a pornographic film producer and loan shark who lives in Malibu, where he commands respect because of his wealth. He employs the two thugs who assault The Dude in his home at the beginning of the movie. He also seems to carry considerable weight with the local police.
  • The Nihilists are three Germans who claim to be nihilists, composed of leader Uli Kunkel, aka porn star Karl Hungus (Peter Stormare), Franz (Torsten Voges), and Dieter (Flea). They briefly constituted a Kraftwerkian techno-pop band called "Autobahn" during the late '70s. The group, along with Kunkel's ex-girlfriend (played by musician Aimee Mann, who provided some of the music heard in the film), pretend to be the kidnappers of Bunny Lebowski.
  • Marty Pfeiffer (Jack Kehler) is The Dude's landlord. Marty is an aspiring interpretive dancer and values the Dude's opinion, inviting him to his performance.
  • Jesus Quintana (John Turturro) is one of The Dude and Walter's opponents in the bowling league semifinals match. This eccentric, Latino, trash-talking North Hollywood resident served "six months in Chino for exposing himself to an 8-year-old." He speaks with a thick Hispanic accent, and often refers to himself in the third person, insisting on the English pronunciation of his name (GEE-zus) rather than the Spanish (hay-SOOS). Although he appears in only two scenes, he is one of the most memorable characters in the film, and he also utters one of its most memorable quotes: "Nobody fucks with the Jesus!"
  • Larry Sellers (Jesse Flanagan) is the son of Arthur Digby Sellers (Harry Bugin), a former television writer who is said to have written the bulk of the series Branded and who now spends his life in an iron lung due to an unspecified illness. He steals The Dude's car for a joyride, along with the suitcase given to him by The Big Lebowski. The Dude and Walter unsuccessfully attempt to retrieve the suitcase from him.
  • "Smokey" (Jimmie Dale Gilmore) is on a bowling team that the Dude and Walter play in order to qualify for the semifinals. When Walter claims that Smokey committed a foul and Smokey demurs, Walter pulls a gun on him. As the Dude explains to Walter, Smokey is a "fragile" person who was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and remains a pacifist to this day.
  • Da Fino (Jon Polito) is a private investigator hired by Bunny's parents, the Knutsens, to entice their daughter back to their Midwestern farm. He drives a battered blue Volkswagen Beetle (in reference to the Coen Brothers' first film, Blood Simple), mistakes the Dude for a "brother Shamus" (a fellow P.I.), and offends the Dude by referring to Maude as his "special lady" and not the Dude's preferred term, "lady friend."
  • Knox Harrington, (David Thewlis) is a rather campy "video artist" and an associate of Maude's who manages to aggravate the generally laid-back Dude with his intrusive questions, e.g. "So, what do you do Lebowski?" and his incessant over-the-top laughter. At one point Knox offers the Dude a drink, then waits for the Dude to take a seat before adding that "The bar's over there."
  • Tony the Chauffeur (Dom Irrera) is Maude Lebowski's personal limo driver who drives The Dude home after his first meeting with her. During the ride, Tony engages The Dude in a lighthearted conversation (in a stereotypical Brooklyn/Italian accent) with about his own personal shortcomings, specifically that his wife is "a pain in the ass," his daughter is "married to a jadrool loser bastard," and he's got a "rash so bad on his ass [he] can't even sit down." After The Dude laments about his own shortcomings, Tony tells him to "fuggedaboutit." Upon arrival at The Dude's home, Tony also points out that they were followed there by a blue Volkswagen Beetle (see Da Fino above).
  • Frances Donnelly, (Warren Keith) is a funeral director encountered by The Dude and Walter when they come to the mortuary to pick up Donny's remains. His fee is met by some confrontation by Walter and The Dude who resist the notion of paying $180 for an urn since they are scattering the ashes. He remains calm and soft spoken and describes the urn as his "most modestly-priced receptacle." His calm demeanor is disturbed when Walter responds, screaming "Goddamnit!"
File:The.Big.Lebowski.1998.Screenshot.1.jpg
The Dude, Jeff Lebowski, talking to the "Big Lebowski" (Huddleston) about compensation for the rug

Synopsis

Jeffrey Lebowski (aka, "The Dude") returns home from the grocery store and is assaulted by two thugs demanding money for Jackie Treehorn, a pornographic film maker, to whom Lebowski's alleged wife, Bunny, owes a large sum of money. Before the identity confusion is revealed, one of the thugs urinates on The Dude's living room rug, a prized possession that "really tied the room together." The Dude has been mistaken for another man named Jeffrey Lebowski, a disabled philanthropist, the real husband of Bunny. The Dude meets with Lebowski to ask for compensation for the rug that was "micturated upon". The millionaire Lebowski is not at all sympathetic to the Dude's needs, berating him for being a slacker. Soon after Bunny disappears, the victim of an alleged kidnapping by German nihilists.

Sequence of events

Two thugs surprise Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Bridges) in his home in Venice, California, attempting to collect a debt Lebowski's supposed wife owes to Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara). After roughing The Dude up, one of the thugs urinates on his rug, until he convinces them he is not the Jeffrey Lebowski they seek. The Dude seeks compensation from the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the titular "Big" Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound millionaire, who gruffly refuses. On his way out, he meets Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), the Big Lebowski's promiscuous trophy wife.

Soon after, the millionaire Lebowski calls The Dude, saying that Bunny has been kidnapped and asking him to act as a courier for the million dollar ransom, as The Dude is in the unique position of being able to identify the rug-soiling thugs. Walter Sobchak (Goodman), his unstable bowling teammate, convinces The Dude to keep the money and gives the kidnappers a "ringer" suitcase filled with dirty underwear. That night, The Dude's car is stolen, along with the briefcase filled with money. The Dude receives a message from the other Lebowski's daughter, Maude (Julianne Moore). At her studio, she shows him Bunny's porn film Logjammin, produced by Jackie Treehorn, and confirms The Dude's suspicion that Bunny probably kidnapped herself, identifying her likely accomplices as a trio of German nihlists led by Uli Kunkel, aka "Karl Hungus" (Peter Stormare). She asks The Dude to recover the ransom, as it was embezzled by her father from a charitable foundation for orphans.

The Dude is relaxing, when he receives a message that his car has been found. Mid-message, the three German nihlists invade The Dude's apartment, seeking the ransom money. The Dude picks up his car, and finds the briefcase missing. He tracks down the teenager who stole it, but this is a dead-end. Upon returning home, the thugs from the opening return to bring The Dude to Jackie Treehorn. At Treehorn's beach house, he asks the whereabouts of Bunny, but The Dude has no such information. Treehorn drugs The Dude's drink and he passes out, leading to a second, more elaborate dream sequence.

The Dude arrives home and is greeted by Maude Lebowski, who hopes to conceive his child. During post-coital conversation with Maude, The Dude finds out that, despite appearances, her father has no money of his own, as Maude's late mother was the rich one. In a flash, The Dude unravels the whole scheme: The nihilists faked the kidnapping to get a million dollars. The Big Lebowski thought that Bunny was kidnapped, but wanted to keep the money and was content to let the kidnappers kill her. The Dude seemed a perfect fall guy, so the Big Lebowski gave him a briefcase filled with phonebooks. The Dude and Walter arrive at the Big Lebowski residence, finding Bunny back at home, unaware of the elaborate fake-kidnapping scheme. They confront the Big Lebowski with their version of the events, which he counters but does not deny.

Though the whole affair finally appears to be over (sort of), the bowling team are once again confronted by the "nihilists", who have set The Dude's car on fire. They are still demanding the million dollars, despite the fact that The Dude does not have the money. Walter fights them off, but their third teammate, Donny (Steve Buscemi), suffers a fatal heart attack. They take his ashes to a beach, where Walter offers a lengthy eulogy. He scatters Donny's ashes, but a wind blows much of the ashes into The Dude's face. Upset, The Dude lashes out at Walter. Walter apologizes and hugs The Dude, before suggesting "Fuck it, man. Let's go bowling."

Production

Origins

The Dude mostly inspired by Jeff Dowd, a man the Coen brothers met on one of their first trips to Los Angeles in the 1970s.[2] Dowd had been a member of the Seattle Seven and also used to program the Seattle Film Festival. The Dude was also partly based on a friend of the Coen brothers, Pete Exline, a Vietnam War veteran who reportedly lived in a dump of an apartment and was proud of a little rug that "tied the room together."[2] He belonged to an amateur softball league but the Coens changed it to bowling the movie because "it's a very social sport where you can sit around and drink and smoke while engaging in inane conversation," Ethan said in an interview.[2] Exline told the Coens of his friend Walter, a fellow Vietnam vet who had had his car stolen by teenagers, tracked down one of them from his school homework that had been left in the car, and confronted the boy.[2] The Coens met filmmaker John Milius when they were in Los Angeles making Barton Fink and incorporated his love of guns and the military into the character of Walter.

According to Julianne Moore, the character of Maude was based on artist Carol Schneerman "who worked naked from a swing" and Yoko Ono.[2] The character of Jesus Quintana was inspired, in part, by a performance the Coens had seen John Turturro give in 1988 at the Public Theater in a play called Ma Puta Vita in which he played a pederast-type character, "so we thought, let's make Turturro a pederast. It'll be something he can really run with," Joel said in an interview.[2]

The film's overall structure was influenced by the detective fiction of Raymond Chandler. Ethan said, "We wanted something that would generate a certain narrative feeling - like a modern Raymond Chandler story, and that's why it had to be set in Los Angeles...We wanted to have a narrative flow, a story that moves like a Chandler book through different parts of town and different social classes."[2] The use of The Stranger's voiceover also came from Chandler as Joel remarked, "He is a little bit of an audience substitute. In the movie adaptation of Chandler it's the main character that speaks offscreen, but we didn't want to reproduce that though it obviously has echoes. It's as if someone was commenting on the plot from an all-seeing point of view. And at the same time rediscovering the old earthiness of a Mark Twain."[3]

The significance of the bowling culture was, according to Joel, "important in reflecting that period at the end of the Fifties and the beginning of the Sixties. That suited the retro side of the movie, slightly anachronistic, which sent us back to a not-so-far-away era, but one that was well and truly gone nevertheless."[3]

Screenplay

The Big Lebowski was written around the same time as Barton Fink but when the Coens wanted to make it, John Goodman was taping episodes for the Roseanne television program and Jeff Bridges was making the Walter Hill film, Wild Bill and they decided to make Fargo in the meantime.[2] According to Ethan, "the movie was conceived as pivoting around that relationship between the Dude and Walter" which sprang from the scenes between Barton Fink and Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink.[3] When they started writing the script, the Coens only wrote 40 pages and then let it sit for awhile before finishing it. This is the normal writing process for the Coens because they often "encounter a problem at a certain stage, we pass to another project, then we come back to the first script. That way we've already accumulated pieces for several future movies."[3]

Pre-production

Polygram and Working Title Films, who had funded Fargo, backed The Big Lebowski with a budget of $15 million. In casting the film, Joel remarked, "we tend to write both for people we know and have worked with, and some parts without knowing who's going to play the role. In The Big Lebowski we did write for John [Goodman] and Steve [Buscemi], but we didn't know who was getting the Jeff Bridges role."[4]

In preparation for his role, Bridges met Dowd but actually "drew on myself a lot from back in the Sixties and Seventies. I lived in a little place like that and did drugs, although I think I was a little more creative than the Dude."[2]

For the look of the film, the Coens wanted it to be "consistent with the whole bowling thing, we wanted to keep the movie pretty bright and poppy," Joel said in an interview.[2] For example, the star motif featured predominantly throughout the movie started with the film's production designer Richard Heinrichs' design for the bowling alley. According to Joel, he "came up with the idea of just laying free-form neon stars on top of it and doing a simliar free-form star thing on the interior."[2] This carried over to the film's dream sequences. "Both dream sequences involve star patterns and are about lines radiating to a point. In the first dream sequence, the Dude gets knocked out and you see stars and they all coalesce into the overhead nightscape of L.A. The second dream sequence is an astral environment with a backdrop of stars," remembers Heinrichs.[2]

Principal photography

Actual filming took place over an eleven-week period with ___location shooting in an around L.A., including all of the bowling sequences at the Hollywood Star Lanes and the Dude's Busby Berkeley-esque dream sequences in a converted airplane hanger.[5]

According to Joel, the only time they ever directed Bridges "was when he would come over at the beginning of each scene and ask, 'Do you think the Dude burned one on the way over?' I'd reply 'Yes' usually, so Jeff would go over in the corner and start rubbing his eyes to get them bloodshot."[2]

Big Lebowski in pop culture

Main article: The Big Lebowski in popular culture

Soundtrack

Untitled

The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a veteran of all the Coen brothers' films. T-Bone Burnett, who also worked with the Coen brothers on O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Ladykillers, is credited as music bibliographer. For Joel, "the original music, as with other elements of the movie, had to echo the retro sounds of the Sixties and early Seventies."[3] Music defines each character. For example, "The Man in Me" by Bob Dylan was chose for The Stranger at the time the Coens wrote the screenplay, as was "Lujon" by Henri Mancini for Jackie Treehorn, and "the German nihilists are accompanied by techno-pop and Jeff Bridges by Creedance. So there's a musical signature for each of them," remarked Ethan in an interview.[3]

Soundtrack album

  1. "The Man In Me" — written and performed by Bob Dylan
  2. "Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles" — written and performed by Captain Beefheart
  3. "My Mood Swings" — written by Elvis Costello and Cait O'Riordan; performed by Costello
  4. "Ataypura" — written by Moises Vivanco; performed by Yma Sumac
  5. "Traffic Boom" — written and performed by Piero Piccioni
  6. "I Got It Bad & That Ain't Good" — written by Duke Ellington and Paul Francis Webster; performed by Nina Simone
  7. "Stamping Ground" — written by Louis T. Hardin; performed by Moondog with orchestra
  8. "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" — written by Mickey Newbury; performed by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
  9. "Walking Song" — written and performed by Meredith Monk
  10. "Glück das mir verblieb" from Die tote Stadt — written and conducted by Erich Wolfgang Korngold; performed by Ilona Steingruber, Anton Dermota and the Austrian State Radio Orchestra
  11. "Lujon" — written and performed by Henry Mancini.
  12. "Hotel California" — written by Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Don Felder; performed by The Gipsy Kings
  13. "Technopop" — written and performed by Carter Burwell
  14. "Dead Flowers" — written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; performed by Townes van Zandt

Other music in the film

Trivia

The Special Edition DVD contains an introduction by Mortimer Young (played by George Ives), of (fictional) production firm "Forever Young Film Preservation". The Coen Brothers have used the character Mortimer Young before in the re-release version of their debut film Blood Simple. The introduction is notable for its deadpan humour.

In the italian version of the film, the term "dude" is dubbed with "drugo", which is the same word used to translate "droog", the member of the evil gang from the Anthony Burgess' book "A Clockwork Orange". The same word was used in the film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick. The term "drugo" hasn't a real meaning in italian.

References and footnotes

  1. ^ An Interview with The Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan about The Big Lebowski
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bergan, Ronald (2000). "The Coen Brothers". Thunder's Mouth Press. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ a b c d e f Ciment, Michel (May 1998). "The Logic of Soft Drugs". Postif. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Woods, Paul A (2000). "Joel & Ethan Coen: Blood Siblings". Plexus. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. ^ Levine, Josh (2000). "The Coen Brothers: The Story of Two American Filmmakers". ECW Press. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Further reading

  • The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film, by William Preston Robertson, Tricia Cooke, John Todd Anderson and Rafael Sanudo (1998, W.W. Norton & Company), ISBN 0-393-31750-1.
  • The Big Lebowski, by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen ;(May 1998, Faber and Faber Ltd.), ISBN 0-571-19335-8.
 
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