Reel Politique: Book Review, Lebowski Studies, Part 1
There is a reason why the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski is one of the great cult films of all time. It’s because it is one of the great films of all time. Too often cult films are inept, worthless failures that exact a charm on people seeking to shed themselves momentarily of art. It’s “fun” to like Plan 9 From Outer Space. It’s “so bad it’s good,” one of the most disastrous aesthetic formulations of the last 30 years. Such cult films allow for a little slumming before returning to the difficult world of sense, logic, values, and aesthetics. In any case, the word “cult” has been degraded in connection with its use in movie criticism. A cult film used to be a difficult-to-see work whose lore was passed on as part of an oral tradition amongst rabid fans who spoke a private language. Such films were one step up from stage films, and very difficult to track down or read about. These days any film that a lot of people like and revere, such as Road House, a major studio release with big stars and repeated showings on television and several successful DVD publications, but which officially isn’t popular, qualifies as a “cult film.”
The Big Lebowski is good, and has been recognized as such immediately by many people. For example, I saw it three times before it even opened by attending all the advance screenings for critics. I even tried to get a publicist to give me the promotional stand ups of the cast that were on display in the Broadway Theater for months, but, typically, the publicist pulled a stonewall. There was never any doubt in my mind that it was yet another great Coen Brothers film. But despite the fact that the Coens were coming off of their Oscar-garnering Fargo, The Big Lebowski (released in 1998) was a bit ahead of its time. Seinfeld mania hadn’t translated to the cinema yet, and so a movie about nothing didn’t seize the popular imagination as it might have just three years later.
Now comes I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What Have You (Bloomsbury, 256 pages, $16.95, ISBN-13: 978-1596912465), written by four guys just as obsessed and ticked by the film as I and everyone I know. The authors (Bill Green, Ben Peskoe, Scott Shuffitt, Will Russell) manage a Lebowski website, and stage an annual Lebowski convention. This book is the product of their web work, convention mounting, and additional interviews. If The Big Lebowski is one of the greatest films ever made, then this detailed celebratory smorgasbord must be one of the greatest books ever published.
There was one previous volume on the film which I didn’t find mentioned in I’m a Lebowski, though it may be in there among all the colorful sidebars. It was the slim volume called The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film, credited to Tricia Cooke (Ethan Coen’s wife and a co-editor on most of their films) and William Robertson, a supposed Kentucky-based screenwriter who may actually exist (the Coens are fond of arch bulletins issued under prankish pseudonyms). If any of the book can be believed it offers an insight into the Coens’ filmic practices; if it isn’t to be believed, well, as the shrink says in the famous punchline, even more interesting.
Obfuscation is not the mandate of the I’m a Lebowski team. There are quite a few revelations in it. The biggest coup is that they manage to track down the real life counterpart to Little Larry, the car thief. His name is Jaik Freeman, and he is a now-adult, not-un-irked toiler in the film industry, just like his father, who really was a screenwriter disabled by illness (though he didn’t write Branded). The team gets the real story behind the car thievery that holds down the third quarter of the film. Other real life analogues are Jeff Dowd (the real Dude), Big Lew Abernathy and John Milius (who contributed to the creation of Walter), and Peter Exline (a college prof and former movie executive whose adventures contribute components of the Dude’s story). These interviews are fascinating to read and despite their revelations in no way minimize one’s pleasure in the film itself.
There is a lot of goofy filler in the book, such as Dude-quotient tests, a “Dude Libs” game, and a not necessarily enlightening series of interviews with typical fans. However, the bulk of the book is highly useful. There is a list of all the philosophical movements mentioned in the film. There are interviews with virtually every star of the film, even down to the guy who played Saddam Hussein in the dream sequence and the clerk in the Ralph’s at the beginning. Chapter Four is an interesting journey into the meaning of cult films and The Big Lebowski’s place in that tradition. After a chapter of interviews and a self-celebration of the Lebowski conventions, with lots of posters and pix, the last chapter is equally helpful. It kicks off with a “by your side” Lebowski guide keyed to the time codes on the Region 1 DVD. This list explains many of the film’s references and peculiarities and in-jokes, a feature obviously inspired by Kill Bill: An Unofficial Casebook. This is followed by a glossary, a soundtrack list, and a survey of Lebowski locations. One of the funniest features in the book is a compare-and-contrast sidebar that charts the real dialogue and its bowdlerized TV equivalents (page 35). There, Walter’s “This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass” becomes “This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps” (the Coens didn’t care what the actors said when they dubbed the lines for television). What’s missing is the legacy of The Big Lebowski, which can be seen in shows such as 30 Rock, where (to cite one example among so many) Jack Donaghy aide Jonathan is so obviously a newer version of Brandt. Or, things that people get wrong about the film. Like the confusion between Frankenstein and the Monster, and most people assuming that The Big Lebowski is the Dude, when it is really the disabled millionaire.
What the team are at pains to find out from all the subjects they interview is what makes The Big Lebowski such a cult film. What is its secret, why is it so special? But isn’t it obvious? It’s stoner humor. What the Coens set out to make, it seems, was another exploration of the work of a hard-boiled writer. They’d done Dashiell Hammett in Miller’s Crossing; they were to do James Cain in The Man Who Wasn’t There; but in Lebowski they were doing Raymond Chandler, modernizing Philip Marlowe for the 1990s, but coyly marrying the hardboiled genre to stoner movies like Up in Smoke. In the end, The Big Lebowski may be the most intellectual Cheech and Chong movie ever made.