The Cast Of 'The Big Lebowski' Reunites in New York

Sound problems and a rambunctious crowd made for a challenging but hilarious tribute to the fan-favorite film
Andy Greene
August 17, 2011
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/the-cast-of-the-big-lebowski-reunites-in-new-york-20110817

When The Big Lebowski hit theaters in March 1998, few people could have imagined it would quickly become one of the biggest cult films of all time. Most critics dismissed it as a disappointing follow-up to Fargo – and it got creamed at the box office. Here's a list of movies that had higher grosses that first weekend: the twelfth week of Titanic, the fourth week of The Wedding Singer, U.S. Marshals, Twilight (the widely forgotten Paul Newman film noir) and Hush. If you don't remember Hush, it's that awful Gwyneth Paltrow thriller where she's pregnant and Jessica Lange is trying to kill her.

Well, nobody is dressing up like a pregnant Gwyneth Paltrow and headed to Hush Fest these days – but every year thousands of young men (and the occasional woman) dress up like characters like The Big Lebowski to bowl and drink White Russians at Lebowski Fests all over the country. Tuesday night at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom, the entire main cast reunited to celebrate the release of the movie on Blu-ray and participate in a panel discussion. Achievers (the preferred nomenclature for Lebowski fans) travelled from all over the country for the celebration.

On paper, this is the outline for an amazing night. Unfortunately, the panel discussion didn't go very well. The sight of Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, John Turturro and musical supervisor T-Bone Burnett together again was awe-inspiring – but group interviews are notoriously hard to carry off. Factor in thousands of drunken fans screaming out lines from the movie every three seconds and endless sound problems that made it near-impossible for the panel to hear anything, and you have a borderline disaster. Entertainment Weekly writer Clark Collis was a trooper as moderator and did his best to navigate through the chaos, but you could see his frustration boiling over as the night went on. During a forty-minute discussion, he was able to ask about five or so questions to the panel.

That isn't to say that the discussion didn't have its moments. The cast members all told hysterical stories about being accosted by obsessed fans in the streets, John Turturro shared his plans for a sequel about Jesus becoming a bus driver and Buscemi shared his theory that Donnie is actually just a figment of Walter's imagination. The whole cast said they would be happy to participate in a sequel, though John Goodman took everybody back to reality by saying there was no chance it would ever happen. Nobody could quite explain why the Coen Brothers have been so reluctant to embrace the movie.

I had the pleasure of sitting extremely close to James Hoosier, who had a bit (but highly memorable) role as Jesus' bowling partner Liam O'Brien. Lebowski Fest organizers Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt introduced him to the crowd early in the night, and he was more than happy to recreate his famous belly shake for the crowd. He wore an O'Brien/Quintana bowling jersey and seemed delighted to mingle with the fans. He stuck around for the movie, and soaked in thunderous applause every time he was on the screen. The very instant his initial scenes were over, he got up and left.

In many ways, viewing the movie for the millionth time was more enjoyable than watching the panel discussion. The crowd's drunken catcalls became endearing, and we all sang along to "The Man In Me" and screamed out "shut the fuck up Donnie!" in unison. Tiny details that don't register during the first 30 screenings become hysterical – like the fact that The Dude has book called Japanese Cooking in his apartment or that The Dude is singing the theme song to Branded (an actual 1960s western) while in the back of the police car. I had honestly only planned on staying for a bit of the movie so I could go home and write this, but before I knew it I was singing along to the Townes Van Zandt cover of "Dead Flowers" while the end credits rolled.

The Duke & The Dude

Thanks to Kenn Thomas of SteamshovelPress.com for the following...

Iconic John Wayne Role Redone
by Jonathan Crow
August 18, 2010
Yahoo News

In 1969, John Wayne played Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" -- a grizzled, drunken U.S. Marshal hired by a 14-year-old girl to track down her father's killer. The role ended up winning the aging Western star his first and only Oscar, prompting him to make a rare sequel -- "Rooster Cogburn" -- opposite Katherine Hepburn in 1975. The image of Wayne's craggy, eye-patched visage from "True Grit" has become a cinematic icon.

So film mavens everywhere were taken aback when it was announced last year that Joel and Ethan Coen would been making their own version of "True Grit." But don't expect a straight remake; this movie is based more closely on the Charles Portis novel. And Jeff Bridges, fresh off his Oscar win, was tapped to play Cogburn; that's right, the Duke has been replaced by the Dude.

The movie will also star another Coens alum, Josh Brolin, along with Barry Pepper and Matt Damon.

"I've never even seen the original John Wayne movie"

Matt Damon, who plays Glen Campbell's old role of LaBeouf in this new version, told Entertainment Weekly. Unlike the old flick, this LaBeouf reportedly doesn't sing. "Our movie is totally different."

This week, the first photo of the Coen Brothers' effort was released, hinting at other differences. The most obvious being is that Mattie Ross, who is a fourteen year-old girl in the book, is actually being played by a fourteen year-old girl -- newcomer Haile Steinfeld. In the original, Kim Darby was 21.

But what fans of the original are all wondering is how the Dude's Cogburn going to stack up next to the Duke's. The photo shows Bridges, looking ornery and weathered, sporting a beard and that famous eye patch. Wayne, a staunch Republican during the height of the '60s, was resolutely clean-shaven.

A quick comparison reveals that Wayne and Bridges sport their patches on opposite eyes. The Duke covered his left eye as a nod to his longtime collaborator John Ford, who lost vision in that eye when he removed bandages too soon after a cataract operation. No word on why Bridges decided to cover the other side.

When he was making his "True Grit," John Wayne was 61 years old. He was too unhealthy to perform his own stunts and, thanks to having an entire lung removed years prior, could barely walk more than 30 feet before heavy breathing. You might be forgiven, when looking at side-by-side photos, for assuming that Bridges is five or ten years younger that Wayne when he shot his version. In fact, Jeff Bridges turns 61 in December.

"True Grit" opens December 25, 2010.

The Big Lebowski, Review by Roger Ebert

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100310/REVIEWS08/100319989/1004
The Big Lebowski (1998)
BY ROGER EBERT / March 10, 2010

"The Big Lebowski" is about an attitude, not a story. It's easy to miss that, because the story is so urgently pursued. It involves kidnapping, ransom money, a porno king, a reclusive millionaire, a runaway girl, the Malibu police, a woman who paints while nude and strapped to an overhead harness, and the last act of the disagreement between Vietnam veterans and Flower Power. It has more scenes about bowling than anything else.

This is a plot and dialogue that perhaps only the Coen Brothers could have devised. I'm thinking less of their clarity in "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men" than of the almost hallucinatory logic of "Raising Arizona" and "The Hudsucker Proxy." Only a steady hand in the midst of madness allows them to hold it all together--that, and the delirious richness of their visual approach.

Anyone who cares about movies must surely have heard something about the plot. This is a movie that has inspired an annual convention and the Church of the Latter-Day Dude. Its star, Jeff Bridges, has become so identified with the starring role that when he won the 2010 Oscar for Best Actor, Twitterland mourned that his acceptance speech didn't begin with, "The Dude Abides." These words are so emblematic that they inspired a book title, The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers, by Cathleen Falsani. This is a serious book, though far from a dreary theological work.

The Dude is Jeff Lebowski, an unemployed layabout whose days are spent sipping White Russians and nights are spent at the bowling alley. There is always a little pot available. He has a leonine mane of chestnut hair, a shaggy goatee, and a wardrobe of Bermuda shorts, rummage sale shirts, bathrobes and flip-flops,. He went to Woodstock and never left. He lives in what may be the last crummy run-down low-rent structure in Malibu. Trust the Dude to find it.

It is widely known that the Dude was inspired by a real man named Jeff Dowd, a freelance publicist who was instrumental in launching "Blood Simple" (1984), the first film in the Coen canon. I have long known Jeff Dowd. I can easily see how he might have inspired the Dude. He is as tall, as shaggy and sometimes as mood-altered as Jeff Lebowski, although much more motivated. He remembers names better than a politician, is crafty in his strategies, and burns with a fiery zeal on behalf of those films he consents to represent.

In the film, Jeff Lebowski tells the millionaire's daughter (Julianne Moore) that in his youth he helped draft the Port Huron Statement that founded Students for a Democratic Society, and was a member of the Seattle Seven. In real life Jeff Dowd was indeed one of the Seattle Seven, and remains so militant that at Sundance 2009 he took a punch the jaw for insisting too fervently that a critic see "Dirt," an ecological documentary Dowd believed was essential to the survival of the planet. True to his credo of nonviolence, the Dude did not punch back.

In "The Big Lebowski," our hero has left politics far behind, and exists primarily to keep a buzz on, and bowl. He is never actually drunk in the movie, and always far from sober. His bowling partners are Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi). Walter, even taller than the Dude, is a proud Vietnam veteran and the strategist of the three. He and the Dude never mention politics. Donny is their meek sidekick, always a step behind the big guys. He says perhaps three complete sentences in the film, all brief, and is often interrupted by Walter telling him to shut the f--- up. He is happy to exist on the fringes of their glory.

Details of the plot need not concern us. It involves a mean-tempered millionaire in a wheelchair who is the Big Lebowski (the Dude becomes, by logic, the Little Lebowski). He broods before the fire in a vast paneled library, reminding me of no one so much as Major Amberson in "The Magnificent Ambersons." His trophy wife Bunny (Tara Reid) appears to have been kidnapped. This leads indirectly to the Dude being savagely beaten by hit men who mistake him for the Big Lebowski. Well, how many Jeff Lebowskis can there be in Malibu? One of them urinates on The Dude's rug, which he valued highly ("it pulled the room together"), and the whole movie can be loosely described as being about the Dude's attempts to get payback for his rug.

The inspiration for the supporting characters can perhaps be found in the novels of Raymond Chandler. The Southern California setting, the millionaire, the kidnapped wife, the bohemian daughter, the enforcers, the cops who know the hero by name, can all be found in Chandler. The Dude is in a sense Philip Marlowe -- not in his energy or focus, but in the code he lives by. Down these mean streets walks a man who won't allow his rug to be pissed on. "That will not stand," he says, perhaps unconsciously quoting George H.W. Bush about Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The Dude does not lie, steal or cheat. He does swear. He wants what is right. With the earliest flags of the republic, he insists, "Don't tread on me."

The Coens have always had a remarkable visual style, tending toward overwhelming architectural detail -- long corridors, odd interior decoration, forced perspectives, lonely vistas, lurid cityscapes. Even in ostensibly realistic settings, such as the suburbs of "A Serious Man" (2009), they like to insist beyond the point of realism. Their suburb is the distillation of Suburbhood. In "The Big Lebowski," their anchor location is the bowling alley, their dominant colors what might be described as Brunswick Orange and turquoise. The alley is strangely underpopulated, its lanes vertiginous in length. There is one POV shot from within a rolling bowling ball. When Jeff hallucinates or is unconscious, he inhabits bizarre fantasy worlds.

One of their fellow bowlers is Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), a man who has converted himself into an artwork in his own honor. Another trio of supporting characters, the Nihilists, is led by Peter Stormare (who played the man feeding the body of Buscemi into the wood chipper in "Fargo"). A considerable role is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Brandt, the worshipful assistant to the Big Lebowski. Some of its fans have seen this movie dozens of times. I suppose they've already observed that that Hoffman and David Huddleston, who plays the Big Lebowski, bear a strong family resemblance. Someone knowing nothing about the film could be excused for suspecting that Philip Seymour Hoffman plays both characters, the older man with skillful makeup effects. A coincidence? I would not for one moment put it beyond the Coens, Ethan and Joel, to encourage this misapprehension. I suspect they cast Huddleston for the physical resemblance.

The film is about all about Jeff Lebowski's equanimity in the face of vicissitudes. He is pounded, water-boarded, lied to and insulted. His rug is pissed on and his car set aflame. He is seduced by a woman who wants only his seed. He has a fortune dangled before his eyes, only to have it replaced by telephone books and used boxer shorts. To heal and keep himself whole he stirs himself another White Russian, has a toke, sits in a warm bath. Like the Buddha, he focuses on the big picture.

The film is narrated by The Stranger (Sam Elliott, never more gloriously mustached). It is he who observes at the end that the Dude Abides, and says he hears there is a little Lebowski on the way. The Dude however is denied matrimony, and indeed seems to have no women at all in his life, except by lucky chance. Does this depress him? Is he concerned about being chronically unemployed? No. If a man has a roof over his head, fresh half-and-half for his White Russians, a little weed and his bowling buddies, what more, really, does he need?

The Decade of the Dude

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/22694342/the_decade_of_the_dude/

The Decade of the Dude
How The Big Lebowski — the Coen brothers' 1998 stoner caper starring Jeff Bridges as an L.A. slacker called the Dude — became the most worshipped comedy of its generation
ANDY GREENE
Posted Sep 04, 2008

"This whole room is kind of dude-like," Jeff Bridges says. It's a summer afternoon at Bridges' Santa Barbara, California, estate, and the 58-year-old actor is digging around his dusty garage, looking for memorabilia from The Big Lebowski. Artifacts from the movie are strewn about his Spanish-tiled house. In Bridges' recording studio — where he once cut an album with Michael McDonald — sits one of the bowling-pin hats used in the trippy dream sequence with Bridges and co-star Julianne Moore. In his office are the grimy jelly sandals that Bridges' character, a slacker called the Dude, wore for most of the film. When we walk up to the ocean-view bluff where Bridges likes to hike every day, there's the remains of a cocktail in a dirty cup. It's a Black Russian. As far as I can tell, this seems like the biggest difference between Bridges and his most enduring character, who prefers his Russians white.

Now Bridges, a four-time Oscar nominee, is rooting through a giant stack of cardboard boxes in his garage. After a while, he clutches something and pulls it out.

"Ahhh," he says. "Here it is."

It's the Sweater. As in, the beige and brown zigzag cable-knit sweater that the Dude wears through much of Lebowski. For a die-hard fan, it's like seeing Harrison Ford dig out Indiana Jones' fedora.

Bridges sees me smiling and laughs hysterically. "Here, try it on," he says.

"I can't," I say. It would be wrong.

"C'mon," he says.

I put the Sweater on. It's heavy, and way too big. Bridges grabs my cellphone camera. "Move your right shoulder a little bit to the side," he says. "Head up a little bit, perfect, right there."

To think this is all about a strange movie that bombed when it came out in 1998. But in the 10 years since its woeful release, The Big Lebowski — a tangled Desert Storm-era comedic caper directed by Ethan and Joel Coen (Fargo, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men) — has become the most beloved movie of its generation. Young comic stars like Seth Rogen (the co-writer and star of the current hit Pineapple Express) and Jonah Hill (Superbad) worship the film. The Internet teems with Lebowski tributes and videos (like "The Mii Lebowski," a homage done entirely using Wii video-game characters), and the film has inspired dozens of academic papers, with titles like "Logjammin' and Gutterballs: Masculinities in The Big Lebowski." Several times a year, thousands of costume-wearing fans flock to conventions called Lebowski Fest. Bridges attended a Southern California Fest a few years ago — "My Beatles moment," he says. To date, The Big Lebowski has made $40 million on DVD — more than twice what it made in theaters — and in September, Universal is releasing a 10th-anniversary limited-edition DVD of the film, which will come (of course) in a bowling-ball case.

"No movie is quoted more often amongst [our] friends," says Jim James, the lead singer of Louisville, Kentucky, band My Morning Jacket, who performed at their hometown Lebowski Fest in costume (James dressed as the Dude). "We often hear stories about how it has changed people's lives."

Why has Lebowski become an early- 21st-century phenomenon? The answer may be as complicated as the film's labyrinthine plot, which the Coen brothers loosely based on the L.A.-noir novels of Raymond Chandler. Part of Lebowski mania can surely be attributed to the fact that it's just a very funny premise for a film. Bridges' Dude (real name: Jeffrey Lebowski) is a listless L.A. pothead wiling away the early 1990s playing in a recreational bowling league with friends Walter Sobchak (a mercurial Vietnam vet played by John Goodman) and Donny Kerabatsos (a mild-mannered sidekick played by Steve Buscemi). When a pair of clumsy thugs confuse the Dude with another, wealthier Jeffrey Lebowski — peeing on his prized rug in the process — the Dude is thrown into a screwball escapade that involves a family feud, a gang of nihilists, the avant-garde art world, the SoCal porn scene, lost homework, Tara Reid and a missing toe.

But that's just the start of it. Early in Lebowski, the narrator (a cowboy named the Stranger, played by Sam Elliott) intones, "Sometimes there's a man, who, well, he's the man for his time 'n place." The odd truth is this man — the Dude — may have been a decade ahead of his time. Today, as technology increasingly handcuffs us to schedules and appointments — in the time it takes you to read this, you've missed three e-mails — there's something comforting about a fortysomething character who will blow an evening lying in the bathtub, getting high and listening to an audiotape of whale songs. He's not a 21st-century man. Nor is he Iron Man — and he's certainly not Batman. The Dude doesn't care about a job, a salary, a 401(k), and definitely not an iPhone. The Dude just is, and he's happy.

"There's a freedom to The Big Lebowski," theorizes Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Brandt, the wealthy Lebowski's obsequious personal assistant. "The Dude abides, and I think that's something people really yearn for, to be able to live their life like that. You can see why young people would enjoy that."

"Lebowski is one of those rare magnets of the universe that has the power to change time and space, to draw people and events together," says James.

"The Dude is like Dirty Harry," says the brash conservative screenwriter John Milius (Apocalypse Now, Dirty Harry), one of the Coen brothers' inspirations for Goodman's manic vet, Walter Sobchak. "Dirty Harry became a movement. And the Dude became a movement. It's symbolic of a whole way of life."

No one is more surprised by the extended life of Lebowski than the people who made it. When I meet him one afternoon in L.A., Goodman immediately tells me it's his "favorite thing [he's] ever worked on," and he laughs uproariously when I quote him some of Walter's best lines (a favorite: "Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos"). Moore, who played Maude, the estranged artist daughter of the wealthy Jeffrey Lebowski, says it's "one of the movies people mention most to me. I keep saying that one of these days I'm going to go to a Lebowski Fest." Adds Buscemi, who has appeared in nearly 100 films, including a few Oscar winners, "I'll pass three guys on the street, and they may just give me a nod. They don't even have to say a line from the movie. I know what movie they're thinking about."

Bridges, too, says that he never really saw The Big Lebowski's second life coming. An actor's actor, he has played rowdy townies (The Last Picture Show), quiet aliens (Starman), louche piano players (The Fabulous Baker Boys) — but none have had the impact of the Dude. And while some actors have difficulty accepting the indelibility of a well-loved character, that is not the case with Bridges. He is at peace with the Dude. When asked if he would be upset if The Big Lebowski is the movie he's most remembered for, Bridges doesn't hesitate. "No," he says. "Not at all."

Read the entire story in the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands August 22, 2008.

Zen and the art of Dudeliness

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2135314,00.html

Zen and the art of Dudeliness
Jeff Bridges on The Big Lebowski
Friday July 27, 2007
Guardian

People often ask me if I'm surprised at the amount of attention The Big Lebowski has received over the past few years. They usually seem to expect me to say "yes," but my answer is always "no". What surprises me is that it didn't do as well as I thought it would when it first came out. It was so damn funny, and the Coen brothers had just won the Academy award for Fargo - I thought people would flock to this thing. To tell you the truth, I was sort of disappointed. But now ... well ... I'm glad people are digging it, that it found its audience.

People will sometimes ask me, "What is it about, this movie? I can't figure it out - how come people like it so much?" Well, that one's a little tougher to answer. I usually point them toward the script, to what the Stranger says at the end of the movie. I think the Stranger's enjoyment of the story sums up what most people like about it:

"I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there, the Dude, takin' her easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the Finals. Welp, that about does her, wraps her all up. Things seem to've worked out pretty good for the Dude'n Walter, and it was a purty good story, dontcha think? Made me laugh to beat the band. Parts, anyway. Course -I didn't like seein' Donny go. But then, I happen to know that there's a little Lebowski on the way. I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands a time until - aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again. Wal, uh hope you folks enjoyed yourselves."

What's great about that is how it says it all without really saying anything. Maybe that's one reason people dig the movie and are able to watch it over and over again. It's like picking up a kaleidoscope. You see something new each time.

Then there's this perspective. A few years ago I met a guy named Bernie Glassman. Bernie started an organisation called the Zen Peacemakers and has founded a number of Zen centres in the United States. He calls his brand of Zen Farkatke Zen. He's a Jewish fella, a wonderful cat.

Anyway, we got to talking, and he said, "You know, a lot of folks consider the Dude a Zen Master." I said, "What are you talking about? Zen?" He said quite a few people had approached him wanting to chat about the Dude's Zen wisdom. I'd never heard of that.

I never thought of the Coen Brothers as Zen guys. They never talked about it. I don't think the word Zen was ever mentioned, or Buddhism, or Judaism, for that matter. I don't think of the Dude as a fancy spiritualist or anything like that. But I can see what these folks are talking about. There's enough room in the movie that a lot can be read into it.

For me, the Dude has a certain type of wisdom. I like to call it the "Wisdom of Fingernails": the wisdom that gives you the ability to make your hair and fingernails grow, your heart beat, your bowels move. These are things that we know how to do, but we don't necessarily know how we know how to do them, yet still we do them very well. And that to me is very Dude. It's not like he's a know-it-all, the Dude. He's not a guy who has figured out the way to be or anything like that, but he is comfortable with what he's got, and, as the Stranger says, things turn out pretty well for him. I guess we can all take comfort in that because - who knows? - things may turn out pretty well for us, too.

From the foreword to I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski by Bill Green, Ben Peskoe, Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt, published by Canongate on August 2, £12.99