The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski is a 1998 crime comedy film written, directed, produced and co-edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi and John Turturro. It follows the life of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler who is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, then learns that a millionaire who shares the same name was the intended victim.
The film is loosely inspired by the work of Raymond Chandler. Joel Coen stated, "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." The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a longtime collaborator of the Coen brothers.
The Big Lebowski was produced by Working Title Films and distributed by Gramercy Pictures in the United States and Canada and by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment internationally. It received mixed reviews at the time of its release. Reviews have since become largely positive and the film has garnered a cult following, noted for its eccentric characters, comedic dream sequences, idiosyncratic dialogue and eclectic soundtrack. In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
Plot
In 1991, slacker and bowler Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, is attacked in his Los Angeles home by two enforcers for porn kingpin Jackie Treehorn, to whom a different Jeffrey Lebowski's wife owes money. One enforcer urinates on the Dude's rug before they realize they have the wrong man, and leave.After consulting his bowling partners, Walter Sobchak, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD, and Donny Kerabatsos, the Dude visits philanthropist Jeffrey Lebowski, requesting compensation for the rug. Lebowski refuses, but the Dude tricks his assistant Brandt into letting him take a similar rug from the mansion. Outside, he meets Lebowski's trophy wife, Bunny, and her German nihilist friend, Uli. Soon afterward, Bunny is apparently kidnapped, and Lebowski hires the Dude to deliver a ransom. That night, another group of thugs ambushes the Dude, taking his replacement rug on behalf of Lebowski's daughter, Maude.
Convinced the kidnap was a ruse by Bunny, Walter fakes the ransom drop. He and the Dude return to the bowling alley, leaving the briefcase of money in the Dude's car. While they are bowling, the car is stolen. The Dude is confronted by Lebowski, who has an envelope from the kidnappers containing a severed toe, supposedly Bunny's. Maude asks the Dude to help recover the money her father illegally withdrew from the family's charity foundation.
The police recover the Dude's car. The briefcase is missing, but the Dude finds a sheet of homework, signed by a teenager named Larry Sellers. Walter learns that Larry is the son of Arthur Digby Sellers, a writer for the television show Branded, which Walter reveres. The Dude and Walter visit Larry but get no information from him.
Jackie Treehorn's thugs abduct the Dude and bring him to the porn kingpin, who demands to know where Bunny is. The Dude says Bunny faked her kidnapping and Larry has the money, then passes out from a spiked drink Treehorn gave him. He is briefly arrested while wandering intoxicated in Malibu. On his way home, Bunny drives by, unnoticed by the Dude.
Maude is waiting for the Dude at his home and has sex with him, wishing to become pregnant by a father with whom she will not have to interact. She tells the Dude that her father has no money of his own; he is dependent on an allowance that Maude gives him out of her inheritance from her late mother.
The Dude and Walter confront Lebowski and find that Bunny has returned, having simply gone out of town. Bunny's nihilist friends took the opportunity to blackmail her husband, who in turn had tried to embezzle money from the family charity, blaming its disappearance on the blackmailers. The Dude believes the briefcase never contained any money. Walter suspects that Lebowski is faking his paralysis and lifts him out of his wheelchair, but his condition is real.
Walter and the Dude are bowling when a rival bowler, Jesus Quintana, interrupts them. Walter had previously stated that he could not bowl on Saturdays since he is shomer Shabbos. Quintana implies that he does not believe Walter's excuse for not bowling on Saturday, threatens Walter and the Dude, and storms out. Outside the bowling alley, the nihilists set fire to the Dude's car and demand the ransom money. Walter fights them off, but Donny dies from a heart attack in the commotion. Unwilling to pay for an urn from the local crematorium, the Dude and Walter opt to put Donny's ashes in a coffee can instead. On a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Walter eulogizes Donny's death but ruins the moment by referring to his fallen comrades in Vietnam. As he scatters Donny's ashes, they are blown back onto the Dude by an updraft. As Walter tries to brush off the ashes, the Dude loses his temper and yells at him for everything that has happened. After apologizing and consoling the Dude, the two go bowling.
At the bowling alley, the Dude encounters the Stranger, the movie's narrator. Addressing the audience, the Stranger sums up the story and states that, while he "didn't like seeing Donny go," he remains inspired by the Dude. He also reveals that Maude is pregnant, saying he happens to know that there's "a little Lebowski on the way."
Cast
Production
Development
The Dude is mostly inspired by Jeff Dowd, an American film producer and political activist the Coen brothers met while they were trying to find distribution for their first feature, Blood Simple. Dowd had been a member of the Seattle Seven, liked to drink white Russians, and was known as "The Dude". The Dude was also partly based on a friend of the Coen brothers, Peter 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". Exline knew Barry Sonnenfeld from New York University and Sonnenfeld introduced Exline to the Coen brothers while they were trying to raise money for Blood Simple. Exline became friends with the Coens and in 1989, told them many stories from his own life, including some about his actor-writer friend Lewis Abernathy, 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. As in the film, Exline's car was impounded by the Los Angeles Police Department and Abernathy found an 8th grader's homework under the passenger seat.Exline also belonged to an amateur softball league but the Coens changed it to bowling in the film, because "it's a very social sport where you can sit around and drink and smoke while engaging in inane conversation". 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. Milius introduced the Coen Brothers to one of his best friends, Jim Ganzer, who also served as a source for creating Jeff Bridges' character. Also known as the Dude, Ganzer and his gang, typical Malibu surfers, served as inspiration as well for Milius's film Big Wednesday.
Before David Huddleston was cast as "Big" Jeffrey Lebowski, the Coens considered numerous actors for the role: Robert Duvall, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson, Tommy Lee Jones, Ned Beatty, Michael Caine, Bruce Dern, James Coburn, Charles Durning, Jackie Cooper, Fred Ward, Richard Mulligan, Rod Steiger, Peter Boyle, Lloyd Bridges, Paul Dooley, Pat Hingle, Jonathan Winters, Norman Mailer, George C. Scott, Jerry Falwell, Gore Vidal, Andy Griffith, William F. Buckley, and Ernest Borgnine. The Coens' top choice was Marlon Brando. Charlize Theron was considered for the role of Bunny Lebowski. David Cross auditioned for the role of Brandt.
According to Julianne Moore, the character of Maude was based on artist Carolee Schneemann, "who worked naked from a swing", and on Yoko Ono.
The character of Jesus Quintana, a bowling opponent of the Dude's team, was inspired in part by a performance the Coens had seen John Turturro give in 1988 at the Public Theater in a play called Mi Puta Vida 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.
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." The use of the Stranger's voice-over 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 off-screen, 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."
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."