The Big Lebowski

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The Big Lebowski

Theatrical poster
Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
Produced by Joel & Ethan Coen
Written by Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
Starring Jeff Bridges
John Goodman
Steve Buscemi
Julianne Moore
David Huddleston
Music by Carter Burwell
Cinematography Roger Deakins
Editing by Tricia Cooke
Roderick Jaynes
Distributed by Gramercy Pictures
Release date(s) March 8, 1998 (U.S.A.)
Running time 118 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $15,000,000
Gross revenue $17,451,873 (USA)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

The Big Lebowski is a 1998 American comedy film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film follows a few days in the life of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a burned-out, unemployed Californian slacker, after he is mistaken for a millionaire with the same name. While The Big Lebowski is 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 Dude is mostly inspired by Jeff Dowd, a member of the Seattle Seven, and a friend of the Coen brothers, Pete Exline, a Vietnam War veteran. Walter (John Goodman), the Dude's best friend, was based on a good friend of Exline's named Lew Abernathy, and on John Milius, a fellow filmmaker. The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a veteran of all the Coen Brothers' films. T-Bone Burnett, who also worked with the Coens on O Brother, Where Art Thou? (and later The Ladykillers), is credited as music bibliographer.

The Big Lebowski did not do well at the box office, grossing only USD $17 million domestically, just above its $15 million budget. However, it received generally positive reviews from critics. The film, known for its idiosyncratic characters, surreal dream sequences, unconventional dialogue and eclectic soundtrack, has become a cult classic and has been called "the first cult film of the Internet era."[2] Fans' devotion to the film has even spawned the Lebowski Fest, an annual festival that started in Louisville, Kentucky in 2002, and has since expanded to several other cities. The film's cult status is set to be cemented further with the release of a 10th Anniversary Edition DVD on September 9, 2008.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Set in 1991, Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is surprised by two thugs in his home in Venice, California, attempting to collect a debt Lebowski's supposed wife owes to Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara). After the thugs rough up the Dude and urinate on his rug, which, in the words of the Dude and his friends, "really tied the room together," the Dude points out that they're looking for a different person of the same name. The next day, the Dude seeks compensation for his rug from the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the titular "Big" Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound millionaire, and is met with a gruff refusal. After craftily stealing one of the Big Lebowski's rugs, the Dude meets Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), the Big Lebowski's nymphomaniacal trophy wife on his way off the property.

Days later, the Big Lebowski contacts the Dude, revealing that Bunny has been kidnapped and asks him to act as a courier for the million-dollar ransom, the Dude being in the unique position of being able to identify the rug-soiling thugs, the suspected kidnappers. Back at his apartment, the Dude naps on his new, stolen rug, only to have his apartment burgled again, the criminals knocking him unconscious. Following a musical dream sequence, the Dude wakes up on his bare wooden floor, his new rug missing. Soon after, when Bunny's kidnappers call to arrange the ransom exchange, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), the Dude's unstable friend and bowling teammate, convinces the Dude to keep the money and gives the kidnappers a "ringer" suitcase filled with dirty underwear. The exchange is bungled however and the kidnappers escape, at which point they decide, "Fuck it, let's go bowling." Later that night, the Dude's car is stolen, along with the briefcase filled with money. The Dude receives a message from the Big Lebowski's daughter, Maude (Julianne Moore), who admits to stealing the Dude's rug which he stole from the "Big" Lebowski's home, as it has sentimental value for her. At her art studio, she explains that Bunny is a porn starlet working under producer Jackie Treehorn and confirms the Dude's suspicion that Bunny probably kidnapped herself. She asks the Dude to recover the ransom, as it was illegally withdrawn by her father from a family-run charitable foundation for orphans, offering him a finder's fee in exchange for his services.

The Dude (Jeff Bridges) talking to the "Big Lebowski" (David Huddleston) about compensation for the rug
The Dude (Jeff Bridges) talking to the "Big Lebowski" (David Huddleston) about compensation for the rug

The Big Lebowski angrily confronts the Dude over his failure to hand over the money. The Dude claims that he made the pay-off as agreed, but the Big Lebowski responds by handing the Dude an envelope sent to him by the kidnappers which contains a severed toe, presumably Bunny's.

The Dude is enjoying a relaxing bath when he receives a message that his car has been found. Mid-message, three German nihilists invade the Dude's apartment, identify themselves as the kidnappers, and interrogate and threaten him for the ransom money. The Dude returns to Maude's studio, where she identifies the German nihilists as Bunny's friends and pornographic co-stars. The Dude picks up his car from the police, and based on evidence he finds in the front seat, he and Walter track down the supposed thief, who turns out to be a stubborn teenager. Upon returning home without any clue about the whereabouts of the ransom money, Jackie Treehorn's thugs return to bring the Dude to Treehorn's beach house in Malibu, where Treehorn inquires about the whereabouts of Bunny. When the Dude confesses he has no such information, Treehorn drugs the Dude's drink and he passes out, leading to a second, more elaborate dream sequence, starting as the opening credits of a movie named "Gutterballs". Upon awakening once again, the Dude finds himself in a police car and then in front of the sheriff of Malibu, who berates him for coming to Malibu and ruining the peace. The Dude arrives home and is greeted by Maude Lebowski, who hopes to conceive a child with him. 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, and she left her money exclusively to the family charity. In a flash, the Dude unravels the whole scheme: When the Big Lebowski heard that Bunny was kidnapped, he used it as a pretense for an embezzlement scheme, in which he withdrew the ransom money from the family charity, kept it for himself, gave an empty briefcase to the Dude (who would be the fall guy on whom he pinned the theft), and was content to let the kidnappers kill Bunny.

Meanwhile, it has by now become clear that the kidnapping was itself a ruse. While Bunny took an unannounced trip, the nihilists (her friends) alleged a kidnapping in order to get money from her husband. (It is left unclear whether and to what extent Bunny was an active collaborator in this scheme). The Dude and Walter arrive at the Big Lebowski residence, finding Bunny back at home, having returned from her trip. They confront the Big Lebowski with their version of the events, which he counters but does not deny. The affair apparently over, the Dude and his bowling teammates 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 and Bunny has not even been kidnapped. Walter viciously fights them off, biting and severing an ear out of one of them, 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 complete with Vietnam War references. He scatters Donny's ashes, but a gust of wind blows much of the ashes onto 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." As the movie nears its end, the Dude sums up his situation and philosophy with the phrase, "The Dude abides".

[edit] Cast and characters

The Dude (Jeff Bridges), Donny (Steve Buscemi), and Walter (John Goodman)
The Dude (Jeff Bridges), Donny (Steve Buscemi), and Walter (John Goodman)
  • Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, a single, unemployed slacker living in Venice, California, who enjoys cannabis, White Russians, and bowling. Reflecting his very laid-back approach on life, he has no job and seems unconcerned with money. Jeff Bridges had heard or was told by the Coen brothers that they had written a screenplay for him.[3]
  • John Goodman as Walter Sobchak, a Vietnam War veteran, and the Dude's best friend and bowling teammate. Walter runs his own security firm, Sobchak Security, and places bowling second in reverence only to his religion, Judaism, as evidenced by his strict rule against bowling on Shabbos. He is quite unstable and has a violent temper.
  • Steve Buscemi as Theodore Donald "Donny" Kerabatsos, a member of Walter and the Dude's bowling team. Charmingly naïve, Donny is an avid bowler and frequently interrupts Walter's diatribes to inquire about the parts of the story he missed or did not 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.[4]
  • David Huddleston as Jeffrey Lebowski, the "Big" Lebowski referred to in the movie's title, is a wheelchair-bound multi-millionaire who is married to Bunny and is Maude's father by his late wife.
  • Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski, 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.
  • Tara Reid as Bunny Lebowski; born Fawn Knutsen, is the Big Lebowski's "trophy wife". She ran away from her family's farm in Moorhead, Minnesota and soon found herself making pornographic videos (such as 'Logjammin') under the name "Bunny LaJoya". According to Reid, Charlize Theron tried out for the role of Bunny.[3]
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman as Brandt, a sycophant and loyal assistant to the Big Lebowski, who tries to please everyone. Hoffman auditioned for the film and had to do the scene where Brandt shows the Dude around Jeffrey Lebowski's office.[3]
  • Sam Elliott as The Stranger, the film's narrator, who sees this story unfold from an unbiased perspective. His narration is marked by a thick, laid-back Western accent.
  • Ben Gazzara as Jackie Treehorn, a wealthy pornographic film producer and loan shark who lives in Malibu. He employs the two thugs who assault the Dude in his home at the beginning of the movie.
  • Peter Stormare, Torsten Voges and Flea play The Nihilists, composed of Uli Kunkel, Franz and Dieter respectively. Three Germans who claim to be nihilists, they, along with Kunkel's ex-girlfriend (Aimee Mann), pretend to be the ones who kidnapped Bunny. The character of Uli originated on the set of Fargo between Ethan Coen and Stormare who would often speak in a mock German accent.[3]
  • John Turturro as Jesus Quintana, an opponent of the Dude's and Walter's team in the bowling league semifinals match. This eccentric, Latino, trash-talking North Hollywood resident 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 (Hehh-ZOOS). Turturro originally thought that he was going to have a bigger role in the film but when he read the script, he realized that it was much smaller. However, the Coen brothers let him come up with a lot of his own ideas for the character, like shining the bowling ball and the scene where he dances backwards, which he says was inspired by Muhammad Ali.[3]
  • Jon Polito as Da Fino, a private investigator hired by Bunny Lebowski's parents, the Knutsens, to entice their daughter back to their farm in Moorhead, Minnesota. Da Fino, who 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, "my fucking lady friend".

[edit] Minor Characters

[edit] Production

[edit] Origins

The Dude is mostly inspired by Jeff Dowd, a man the Coen brothers met while they were trying to find distribution for the feature film, Blood Simple.[5] Dowd had been a member of the Seattle Seven, liked to drink White Russians, and was known as "The Dude".[5] 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".[6] He knew Barry Sonnenfeld from New York University and he introduced Exline to the Coen brothers while they were trying to raise money for Blood Simple.[5] Exline became friends with the Coens and, in 1989, told them all kinds of stories from his own life, including ones about his friend Lew Abernathy (one of the inspirations for Walter), a fellow Vietnam vet who later became a private investigator and helped him track down and confront a high school kid who stole his car.[5] Like in the final film, Exline's car was impounded by the Los Angeles Police Department and Abernathy found an 8th grader's homework under the passenger seat.[5] Exline also belonged to an amateur softball league but the Coens changed it to bowling in 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.[6] 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.[6]

According to Julianne Moore, the character of Maude was based on artist Carolee Schneemann "who worked naked from a swing" and Yoko Ono.[6] 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.[6]

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".[6] 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".[7]

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".[7]

[edit] 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.[6] 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.[7] They also came up with the idea of setting the film in contemporary L.A. because the people who inspired the story lived in the area.[8] When Pete Exline told them about the homework in a baggie incident, the Coens thought that that was very Raymond Chandler-esque and decided to integrate elements of the author's fiction into their script. Joel Coen cites Robert Altman's contemporary take on Chandler with The Long Goodbye as a primary influence on their film in the sense that The Big Lebowski "is just kind of informed by Chandler around the edges".[9] When they started writing the script, the Coens wrote only 40 pages and then let it sit for a while 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".[7] In order to liven up a scene that they thought as too heavy on exposition, they added an "effete art-world hanger-on", known as Knox Harrington, late in the screenwriting process.[10] In the original script, the Dude's car was the one Dowd used to have – a Chrysler LeBaron but it was not big enough to fit John Goodman so the Coens changed it to a Ford Torino.[5]

[edit] 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".[11] 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".[6] The actor went into his own closet with the film's wardrobe person and picked out clothes that he had that the Dude might wear.[3] He wore his character's clothes home because most of them were his own.[12] The actor also adopted the same physicality as Dowd, including the slouching and his ample belly.[5] Originally, Goodman wanted a different kind of beard for Walter but the Coen brothers insisted on the "Gladiator" or what they called the "Chin Strap" and he thought it would go well with his flat-top haircut.[3] Bridges, Goodman, and Buscemi were trained for the bowling scenes by Barry Asher who can be seen in the last shot of the film throwing a strike.[3]

For the look of the film, the Coens wanted to avoid the usual retro 1960s clichés like lava lamps, Day-Glo posters, and Grateful Dead music[13] and for it to be "consistent with the whole bowling thing, we wanted to keep the movie pretty bright and poppy," Joel said in an interview.[6] 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 similar free-form star thing on the interior". 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.[6] For Jackie Treehorn's Malibu beach house, he was inspired by late 1950s and early 1960s bachelor pad-style furniture. The Coen brothers told Heinrichs that they wanted Treehorn's beach party to be Inca-themed with a "very Hollywood-looking party in which young, oiled-down, fairly aggressive men walk around with appetizers and drinks. So there's a very sacrificial quality to it".[14]

Cinematographer Roger Deakins discussed the look of the film with the Coens during pre-production. They told him that they wanted some parts of the film to have a real and contemporary feeling and other parts, like the dream sequences, to have a very stylized look.[15] Bill and Jacqui Landrum did all of the choreography for the film. For his dance sequence, Jack Kehler went through three, three-hour rehearsals.[3] The Coen brothers offered him three to four choices of classical music for him to pick from and he settled on "Pictures at an Exhibition". At each rehearsal, he went through each phase of the song.[3]

[edit] Principal photography

Actual filming took place over an eleven-week period with location shooting in and around L.A., including all of the bowling sequences at the Hollywood Star Lanes (for three weeks in Santa Monica)[16] and the Dude's Busby Berkeley-esque dream sequences in a converted airplane hanger.[17] 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".[6] Julianne Moore was sent the script while working on The Lost World: Jurassic Park. She worked only two weeks on the film, early and late during the production that went from January to April 1997[18] while Sam Elliott was only on set for two days and did many takes of his final speech.[3]

Deakins describes the look of the fantasy scenes as being very crisp, monochromatic, and highly lit in order to afford greater depth of focus. However, with the Dude's apartment, Deakins said, "it's kind of seedy and the light's pretty nasty" with a grittier look. The visual bridge between these two different looks was how he photographed the night scenes. Instead of adopting the usual blue moonlight or blue street lamp look, he used a very orange sodium-light effect.[19] The Coen brothers shot a lot of the film with wide-angle lens because, according to Joel, it made it easier to hold focus for a greater depth and it made camera movements more dynamic.[20]

To achieve the point-of-view of a rolling bowling ball the Coen brothers mounted a camera, "on something like a barbecue spit", according to Ethan, and then dolly it along the lane. The challenge for them was figuring out the relative speeds of the forward motion and the rotating motion. CGI was used to create the vantage point of the thumb hole in the bowling ball.[18]

[edit] Soundtrack

The Big Lebowski: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
The Big Lebowski: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack cover
Soundtrack by Various artists
Released February 24, 1998
Genre Rock, classical, jazz, country, folk, pop
Length 51:43
Label Mercury
Producer T-Bone Burnett, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Professional reviews
Coen Brothers film soundtracks chronology
Fargo
(1996)		 The Big Lebowski
(1998)		 O Brother, Where Art Thou?
(2000)

The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a veteran of all the Coen Brothers' films. The Coens asked T-Bone Burnett to pick songs for the soundtrack of the film. They knew that they wanted different genres of music from different times but, as Joel remembers, "T-Bone even came up with some far-out Henry Mancini and Yma Sumac".[21] Burnett was going to be credited on the film as "Music Supervisor" but asked his credit to be "Music Archivist" because he "hated the notion of being a supervisor; I wouldn't want anyone to think of me as management".[21]

For Joel, "the original music, as with other elements of the movie, had to echo the retro sounds of the Sixties and early Seventies".[7] Music defines each character. For example, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" by Bob Nolan was chosen for the Stranger at the time the Coens wrote the screenplay, as was "Lujon" by Henri Mancini for Jackie Treehorn. "The German nihilists are accompanied by techno-pop and Jeff Bridges by Creedence. So there's a musical signature for each of them", remarked Ethan in an interview.[7]

[edit] Soundtrack album track listing

  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 (Wie Glauben)" — written and performed by Carter Burwell
  14. "Dead Flowers" — written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; performed by Townes van Zandt

[edit] Other music in the film

[edit] Reception

The Big Lebowski received its world premiere at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 1998 at the 1,300 capacity Eccles Theater. Reportedly, there were a few walkouts and Peter Howell, in his review for the Toronto Star, wrote, "It's hard to believe that this is the work of a team that won an Oscar last year for the original screenplay of Fargo. There's a large amount of profanity in the movie, which seems a weak attempt to paper over dialogue gaps".[22] The film was also screened at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival[23] before opening in North America on March 6, 1998 in 1,207 theaters. It grossed USD $5.5 million on its opening weekend, grossing $17 million domestically, just above its $15 million budget.[24]

Reviews have been mostly positive. The Big Lebowski currently has a rating of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes (58% for their "Cream of the Crop" designation). Todd McCarthy in Variety magazine wrote, "One of the film's indisputable triumphs is its soundtrack, which mixes Carter Burwell's original score with classic pop tunes and some fabulous covers".[25] USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and felt that the Dude was "too passive a hero to sustain interest," but that there was "enough startling brilliance here to suggest that, just like the Dude, those smarty-pants Coens will abide".[26] In his review for the Washington Post Desson Howe praised the Coens and "their inspired, absurdist taste for weird, peculiar Americana – but a sort of neo-Americana that is entirely invented – the Coens have defined and mastered their own bizarre subgenre. No one does it like them and, it almost goes without saying, no one does it better".[27] Janet Maslin praised Bridges' performance in her review for the New York Times: "Mr. Bridges finds a role so right for him that he seems never to have been anywhere else. Watch this performance to see shambling executed with nonchalant grace and a seemingly out-to-lunch character played with fine comic flair".[28] Andrew Sarris, in his review for the New York Observer, wrote, "The result is a lot of laughs and a feeling of awe toward the craftsmanship involved. I doubt that there'll be anything else like it the rest of this year".[29]

However, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in the Chicago Reader, "To be sure, The Big Lebowski is packed with show-offy filmmaking and as a result is pretty entertaining. But insofar as it represents a moral position–and the Coens' relative styling of their figures invariably does–it's an elitist one, elevating salt-of-the-earth types like Bridges and Goodman . . . over everyone else in the movie".[30] Dave Kehr, in his review for the Daily News, criticized the film's premise as a "tired idea, and it produces an episodic, unstrung film".[31] The Guardian criticized the film as "a bunch of ideas shoveled into a bag and allowed to spill out at random. The film is infuriating, and will win no prizes. But it does have some terrific jokes".[32]

[edit] Legacy

Steve Palopoli wrote about the film's emerging cult status in July 2002.[33] He first realized that the film had a cult following when he attended a midnight screening in 2000 at the New Beverly Cinema in L.A. Palopoli witnessed people quoting dialogue from the film to each other.[5] Soon after the article appeared, the programmer for local midnight film series in Santa Cruz decided to screen The Big Lebowski and on the first weekend they had to turn away several hundred people. The theater held the film over for six weeks which had never happened before.[34]

Two-disc 10th Anniversary Edition DVD cover artwork
Two-disc 10th Anniversary Edition DVD cover artwork

[edit] DVD

Universal Studios released a "Collector's Edition" DVD on October 18, 2005 with extra features that included and "Introduction by Mortimer Young", "Jeff Bridges' Photography", "Making of The Big Lebowski", and "Production Notes". In addition, a limited edition "Achiever’s Edition Gift Set" also included The Big Lebowski Bowling Shammy Towel, four Collectible Coasters that included photographs and quotable lines from the movie, and eight Exclusive Photo Cards from Jeff Bridges’ personal collection.[35] A "10th Anniversary Edition" will be released on September 9, 2008 and will feature all of the extras from the "Collector's Edition" and "The Dude's Life: Strikes and Gutters . . . Up's and Downs . . . The Dude Abides", Theatrical Trailer (from the first DVD release), "The Lebowski Fest: An Achiever's Story", "Flying Carpets and Bowling Pin Dreams: The Dream Sequences of the Dude", "Interactive Map", "Jeff Bridges Photo Book",and a "Photo Gallery". There will be both a standard release and a Limited Edition which features "Bowling Ball Packaging" and is individually numbered.[36]

[edit] Lebowski fest

Main article: Lebowski Fest

An annual festival, the Lebowski Fest, began in Louisville, Kentucky in 2002 with 150 fans showing up, and has since expanded to several other cities.[37] The Festival's main event each year is a night of unlimited bowling with various contests including costume, trivia, hardest and farthest traveled contests. Held over a weekend, events typically include a pre-fest party with bands the night before the bowling event as well as a day long outdoor party with bands, vendor booths, games. Various celebrities from the film have even attended some of the events, including Jeff Bridges attending the Los Angeles event.[37] The British equivalent, inspired by Lebowski Fest, is known as The Dude Abides and is held in London.[38]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "An Interview with the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan about The Big Lebowski", IndieWire, 1998. Retrieved on 2008-03-24. 
  2. ^ Russell, Will. "Hey Dude: The Lebowski Festival", The Independent, August 15, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-08-17. 
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Green, Bill; Ben Peskoe, Will Russell, Scott Shuffitt. "I'm A Lebowski, You're A Lebowski", Bloomsbury, 2007, pp. 25-72. 
  4. ^ Coen, Joel (Writer, Director) and Ethan Coen (Writer, Producer). (2005-10-18). The Big Lebowski (Collector's Edition) [DVD]. Universal Studios. Retrieved on 2007-12-17. Event occurs at (Special Feature Interview).
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Green 2007, p. 87-111.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Bergan, Ronald. "The Coen Brothers", Thunder's Mouth Press, 2000. 
  7. ^ a b c d e f Ciment, Michel; Hubert Niogret. "The Logic of Soft Drugs", Postif, May 1998. 
  8. ^ Robertson, William Preston; Tricia Cooke. "The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film", W.W. Norton, 1998, pp. 41. 
  9. ^ Robertson 1998, p. 43.
  10. ^ McCarthy, Phillip. "Coen Off", Sydney Morning Herald, March 27, 1998]]. 
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  38. ^ Hodgkinson, Will. "Dude, let's go bowling", The Guardian, May 11, 2005. Retrieved on 2008-01-04. 

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Coen Brothers films
1980s
Blood Simple (1984) · Raising Arizona (1987)
1990s
Miller's Crossing (1990) · Barton Fink (1991) · The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) · Fargo (1996) · The Big Lebowski (1998)
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O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) · The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) · Intolerable Cruelty (2003) · The Ladykillers (2004) · Tuileries, from Paris, je t'aime (2006) · No Country for Old Men (2007) · Burn After Reading (2008) · A Serious Man (2009)
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