The Big Lebowski

The Big Lebowski is the kind of film that has only grown in reputation since its debut in 1998. When it was released I knew TBL was the real thing, an instant classic, and still my favorite Coen Brothers film. I've tried to see it theatrically every time it plays as a midnight film, and lo and behold this weekend, September 25 & 26, The Dude abides at 12 a.m. at River Oaks Three. Back during its original release I interviewed Joel and Ethan Coen and here is the text of that article.





Commencing a movie as only the Coen Brothers can, The Big Lebowski opens with a shot of a lonely, tumbling tumbleweed, rolling across the valleys, late-night empty streets, and beaches of Los Angeles, accompanied by the harmonies of the Sons of the Pioneers. In voice-over, we hear The Stranger introduce the Dude. The Coens are known for the diversionary tactics in their films -- the Stranger isn't the main character, just the narrator, and bowling balls, not tumbleweeds, are the more important props. With Lebowski they've returned to full fledged Raising Arizona-style comedy.
The Big Lebowski takes place primarily in and around a bowling alley, and the main character thinks about little else. Yet, we never see Jeff Lebowski, hereupon known as the Dude, bowl a single frame.
With Fargo, the Coens proved that their idiosyncratic vision could also be mainstream enough to garner awards. Maybe their modestly prevents them from wanting to talk more than a mumble about Oscars. Maybe they're so tuned into their own wavelength that they don't readily realize how influential they are: one of a select few of filmmaking teams most copied in today's films.
(That's not to say that the Coens don't borrow a bit now and then from Hitchcock with any more a sense of homage than Danny Boyle, especially with the Coen-esque A Life Less Ordinary, borrows from the Coens in his films. One can readily spot a sight gag the brothers take from North By Northwest, where Cary Grant scratches on a pad with a pencil to reveal a number written on the page just ripped out.)
Bowling is a sport some believe goes back to Egyptian times, and was even outlawed for a period in 19th Century America, where it was known as ninepin. There are some who'd maintain that Henry VIII bowled a few frames while whistling "Greensleeves." As far as the Coens are concerned it would be helpful, if not necessary, to know the difference between a bowling ball and a golf ball.
"I like all the stuff connected with bowling," Joel Coen says to a group of reporters gathered at the Regency Hotel in Gotham for a press junket. "I like the design aspects. The sort of `50s and `60s Googie architecture that's associated with a lot of lanes in L.A. It's kind of a buddy movie, really."
In his book The Making of a Coen Brothers Film, insider William Preston Robertson places Big Lebowski as the third of the "trilogy of hard boiled literature grave robbing." Whereas Blood Simple was inspired by the deception pulp of James M. Cain, and Miller's Crossing modeled on the gang pulp of Dashiell Hammett, Big Lebowski pays homage to the crime capers of Raymond Chandler. Only the Coens have tossed in a double dose of Cheech and Chong with the kind of style and verve a film like Half-Baked can only hallucinate.
"We constructed it like a Raymond Chandler story set in L.A. in terms of what kind of narrative it is" explains Joel.
"It's an episodic quest, like a Chandler story where you meet these different characters from different parts of society," adds Ethan. "The characters try to figure out the mystery." In a reverse of The Big Sleep, with its older sophisticated daughter and younger strumpet sibling, the brothers made the wife a younger femme (Bunny, a scheming nympho) and the daughter, Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore, currently Oscar-nommed for her supporting role in Boogie Nights), an older, erudite performance artist.
The Coens conceived of Lebowski years ago, and as is their method, wrote 30-40 pages, then put it in the drawer. While Joel and Ethan will sometimes complete each other's sentences in the interview, they are vague on who actually writes what, or even whether one types as one dictates. "We went back to Lebowski before Fargo and we went back to it after Fargo," Ethan notes
Even as the nearly $26-million domestic gross, on a $6-million budget, of Fargo cements their autonomous ways, the spine of their popularity never leans any one way.
"Especially in the context of Fargo, which we thought..." Joel starts
"...Is a marginal movie," continues Ethan.
"The commercial success, modest as it was by Hollywood standards, surprised us," Joel finishes.
Ethan and Joel wrote the role of the White Russian-sipping, roach-toking, unemployed Dude for Jeff Bridges. The brothers, it turns out, had even written Blood Simple with M. Emmet Walsh in mind. "He [Walsh] kept calling it a student film," grins Joel.
On the day of a Busby Berkeley inspired dance number, Bridges was required to slide underneath a bevy of chorus girl legs as if he's floating through on a cosmic MRI. Bridges asked the first dancer if it was okay to take some pictures. "Oh, by all means Dude, please go ahead," she told Bridges. The chorus, in cahoots with the Coens and crew, had stuffed crepe hair in their tights in ever increasing amounts. This is a fun set, helmed by a creative pair who operate under the premise that their tangents are more interesting, analytically, to other people than to themselves.
"People see things, and say they were influenced by our films, but it always seems to mystify me," Ethan says. "It's usually filtered through somebody else's sensibility and changed to their own purpose - to the extent that it's hard for us to recognize."
What about that shot in Boyle's Shallow Grave where the shafts of light are coming through the ceiling with the same flash as the shafts of light through a wall in Blood Simple?
"If they really appropriated it, then it's fine," Joel continues. "Maybe that's why I'm blind to it."
No amount of bowling, detective novels, listening to Credence, or smoking pot can prepare you for the laughter you will experience, no matter how many times you've seen The Big Lebowski.