Big Lebowski: An Illustrated, Annotated History of the Greatest Cult Film of All Time

216 Pages·2012·45.09 MB·English

by  Jenny M. Jones

by
Jenny M. Jones
“This is not’nam. This is bowling. There are rules.”
Contents
A Note from the Author
Prologue
Part I
B.L.: The Coens before Lebowski
The Coen Brothers: The Early Years
Blood Not So Simple
The Early Filmmaking Career of the Two-Headed Director
Part II
The Seeds of Production: Origin of The Big Lebowski, an L.A. Story
A Rug That Tied the Plot Together
Welcome to the Hotel California: The Lebowski Characters as Elements of L.A.
His Dudeness. Duder. El Duderino
The Three Faces of Walter Sobchak
Maude Lebowski and the Fluxus Movement
The Lebowski Cycle, by Joe Forkan
The Anti-Hollywood: The Old Pornographers
The Nihilists: Believing in “Nossing”
Pot Culture and the Dude
The Dude Rolls
Evolution of the Style: The Retro Look of Brunswick Bowling and Googie
Architecture
The Wide World of Bowling Sports
The Jetsons Styling of Googie Architecture
Pulling the Disparate Pieces Together
Part III
The Making of The Big Lebowski
Wordsmithing the Script
Casting the Principal Players (The League)
Jeff Bridges: The Elite Everyman, by Gail Levin
Lebowski “Family” Tree
The Big Lebowski Production and Postproduction
Scene Scrutiny: Micturating Thugs, Flying Carpets, and Dancing Landlords
Roll Scene I: The Dude’s Bungalow
Cast Stories from the Bungalow Scenes
Roll Scene II: The Thief of L.A.
Roll Scene III: The Danse Moderne / Marty the Landlord’s “Cycle”
Part IV
Genre-bending
The Big Lebowski as Period Piece
The Dude’s Seinfeldian Lexical World, by Mark Peters
The Big Lebowski as Musical
What Happens When Kafka, Busby Berkeley, and Kenny Rogers Meet in a
Bowling Alley
The Big Dance Number
Lebowski’s Music Condition, by Todd Martens
The Big Lebowski as Western
Once upon a Time in the Western: A Brief History of the Horse Opera, Oater, or
Cowboy Picture
Out of the Past: A Cowboy Dude
The Big Lebowski as Noir
The Muse: Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep-owski
The Precursor: The Long Goodbye
The Big Lebowski as . . . The Wizard of Oz?
Part V
The Release and Its Aftermath
Initial Audience and Critical Reception
The Rise of the Cult of The Big Lebowski
Tales from the Little Lebowski Shop, by Roy Preston
What Have You
Rolling On, and On, and On
Are You a Lebowski Achiever?: Awards and Acclaim
Effect on Cast and Crew: Recognition, Résumés, and Renown
What Makes a Cult Classic?
Repeated Viewings: Am I Wrong? Am I Wrong?
The Gospel According to the Dude: How The Big Lebowski Inspired a
Religion, by Oliver Benjamin
The Quotability Quotient
Part VI
A.L.: The Coens after Lebowski
Epilogue
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
About the author
Ve Cut Off Your Chonson, by Visual Etiquette. Courtesy of Visual Etiquette
This Here Story I’m about to Unfold
first saw The Big Lebowski upon its 1998 release in a moderately full movie theater in
a Portland, Oregon, mall. I left the theater both confused and exhilarated, as well as a
little wobbly—upon initial viewing, Lebowski’s sensibility can leave you feeling off-
kilter.
It’s a movie that I have now seen countless times in a variety of settings: at White
Russian parties and packed movie houses and alone in front of my TV (originally on
VHS). Like the best literature and films—for me Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury
and Coppola’s The Godfather—The Big Lebowski changes, expands, and deepens with
time. I initially found Walter’s constant yelling abrasive; now I consider his dialogue
and Goodman’s delivery of it to be the funniest and most interesting in the film. Each
showing reveals a little something new—a reference, a joke previously missed (because
laughing drowns it out), a parody, a philosophy. I’ll watch it and decide it’s about
masculinity . . . no, friendship . . . no, language . . . no, just plain silliness . . . no, it’s a
genre film that turns the genre on its head. Well, it’s all these things, and more.
This film, created by those sly, witty instigators who come from my home state of
Minnesota, had a muted opening that has become a groundswell. Timed for the fifteenth
anniversary of the movie, The Big Lebowski: An Illustrated, Annotated History of the
Greatest Cult Film of All Time is a celebration of all things Lebowski: the high and the
low of a film that is now among the elite in the pop-culture canon.
Jenny M. Jones, St. Paul, 2012