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The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski is a 1998 American comedy film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Jeff Bridges plays Jeffrey Lebowski, a burnt-out, unemployed Los Angeles slacker, who calls himself the "Dude." After he is mistaken for a millionaire with the same name (David Huddleston), Lebowski must turn to the help of his best friend Walter (John Goodman) and others to make things right. Steve Buscemi, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, and Tara Reid also star in the film. The film's overall structure and use of voiceover narration was influenced by Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, although The Big Lebowski is not directly based on this work. The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a longtime collaborator of the Coen Brothers. While not a commercial success (the film grossed only $17 million domestically, just above its $15 million budget), it received generally positive reviews from critics. Known for its idiosyncratic characters, surreal dream sequences, unconventional dialogue and eclectic soundtrack, The Big Lebowski has become a cult classic and has been called "the first cult film of the Internet era".[1] 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.
PlotSet in 1991, Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski is surprised by two thugs in his home in Venice, California, attempting to collect a debt Lebowski's supposed wife owes to Jackie Treehorn. 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. At the suggestion of his friend Walter, the Dude decides to seek compensation for his urine-soaked rug from "the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the Millionaire." The next day, the titular "Big" Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound millionaire, gruffly refuses the Dudes request despite Duder's assurance that he "isn't trying to scam anyone." After craftily stealing one of the Big Lebowski's rugs, the Dude meets Bunny Lebowski, 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, the Dude's unstable friend and bowling teammate, tries to convince the Dude to keep the money and give the kidnappers a "ringer" suitcase filled with dirty underwear - a plan the Dude rejects. During their argument, the exchange is bungled, leaving the Dude and Walter with the million, the ringer having been flung out the car window by Walter, who subsequently jumps from the moving car in an attempt to apprehend one of the kidnappers. The kidnappers escape, however; Walter, seemingly unperturbed by this turn of events takes the Dude 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, 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 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, 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". Cast and characters
Minor characters
ProductionOriginsThe 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.[8] Dowd had been a member of the Seattle Seven, liked to drink White Russians, and was known as "The Dude".[9] 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".[10] 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.[11] 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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14] 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.[15] According to Julianne Moore, the character of Maude was based on artist Carolee Schneemann "who worked naked from a swing" and Yoko Ono.[16] 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.[14] 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".[17] 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 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".[18] 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".[19] ScreenplayThe Big Lebowski was written around the same time as Barton Fink. When the Coen brothers 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. The Coens decided to make Fargo in the meantime.[15] 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.[18] 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.[20] 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".[21] 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 them, 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".[22] 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.[23] 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.[24] Pre-productionPolygram 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".[25] 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".[10] 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.[2] He wore his character's clothes home because most of them were his own.[26] The actor also adopted the same physicality as Dowd, including the slouching and his ample belly.[24] 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.[27] 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[28] 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.[29] 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.[29] 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".[30] 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.[31] Bill and Jacqui Landrum did all of the choreography for the film. For his dance sequence, Jack Kehler went through three three-hour rehearsals.[2] 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.[32] Principal photographyActual 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)[33] and the Dude's Busby Berkeley-esque dream sequences in a converted airplane hangar.[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".[34] 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[35] while Sam Elliott was only on set for two days and did many takes of his final speech.[36] Deakins described 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.[37] 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.[38] 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.[35] SoundtrackThe 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".[39] 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".[39] For Joel, "the original music, as with other elements of the movie, had to echo the retro sounds of the Sixties and early Seventies".[16] 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.[16] Soundtrack album track listing
Other music in the film
ReceptionThe 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".[40] The film was also screened at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival[41] 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.[42] Reviews have been mostly positive. The Big Lebowski currently has a rating of 77% 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".[43] 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".[44] 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".[45] 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".[46] 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".[47] 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".[48] 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".[49] 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".[50] LegacyThe Big Lebowski has become a cult classic over the years and has been called "the first cult film of the Internet era".[1] Steve Palopoli wrote about the film's emerging cult status in July 2002.[51] 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.[52] 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.[53] 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.[54] 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.[54] The British equivalent, inspired by Lebowski Fest, is known as The Dude Abides and is held in London.[55] 
Two-disc 10th Anniversary Edition DVD cover artwork DVDUniversal 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.[56] 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.[57] ReferencesBibliography
Further reading
External links
ca:El gran Lebowski da:The Big Lebowski de:The Big Lebowski es:El gran Lebowski fa:?????? ???? fr:The Big Lebowski hr:Veliki Lebowski it:Il grande Lebowski he:??? ??????? la:The Big Lebowski hu:A nagy Lebowski nl:The Big Lebowski ja:????????? pl:Big Lebowski pt:The Big Lebowski ru:??????? ???????? sk:Big Lebowski sv:The Big Lebowski Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
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