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Home , A Serious Man, Barton Fink, Ben Gazzara, Burn After Reading, David Huddleston, Far from Heaven

23, 2010 (XXI:13) Joel & Ethan Coen, (1998, 117 min)

Produced, written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen Original Music by by Film Editing by , Ethan Coen and Joel Coen Barry Asher....bowling consultant Pattie Cooke....baby wrangler

Jeff Bridges...Jeffrey Lebowski - The Dude ...Walter Sobchak ...Maude Lebowski ...Theodore Donald 'Donny' Kerabatsos Huddleston...Jeffrey Lebowski - The Big Lebowski ...Brandt ...Bunny Lebowski Philip Moon...Woo, Treehorn Thug Mark Pellegrino...Blond Treehorn Thug ...Nihilist #1, Uli Kunkel / 'Karl Hungus' ...Nihilist #2, Kieffer Torsten Voges...Nihilist #3, Franz ...Smokey Jack Kehler...Marty Man 1998. They’ve won four Oscars: Best Directing – No Country ...Jesus Quintana For Old Men, Best Screenplay Based on Previously Published James G. Hoosier...Liam O'Brien, Quintana's Partner Work – No Country For Old Men, Best Original Screenplay – Carlos Leon...Maude's Thug #1 Fargo, and Best Editing – No Country For Old Men. Terrence Burton...Maude's Thug #2 ...Knox Harrington CARTER BURKWELL (18 November 1955, , NY) has ...The Stranger composed the scores for 78 films & shows, some of which are: True ...Jackie Treehorn Grit 2010, The Kids Are All Right 2010, Howl 2010, Leon Russom...Malibu Police Chief 2009, 2008, 2008, Before the Devil ...Nihilist Woman, Franz' Girlfriend Knows You're Dead 2007, No Country for Old Men 2007, Fur: An Jerry Haleva...Saddam Hussein Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus 2006, Kinsey 2004, The Ladykillers 2004, Adaptation 2002, The Rookie 2002, The Man JOEL COHEN (29 November 1954, Minneapolis, ) and Who Wasn't There 2001, A Knight's Tale 2001, Three Kings 1999, ETHAN COHEN (21 September 1957, Minneapolis, Minnesota) have Being 1999, The General's Daughter 1999, The Big jointly directed, written, produced and edited 12 films: True Grit Lebowski 1998 , Gods and Monsters 1998, The Spanish Prisoner (2010), A Serious Man 2009, Burn After Reading 2008, No Country 1997, Conspiracy Theory 1997, The Chamber 1996, Fargo 1996, for Old Men 2007, The Ladykillers 2004, 2003, 1994, “And the Band Played On” 1993, This The Man Who Wasn't There 2001, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Boy's Life 1993, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1992, Doc Hollywood 2000, The Big Lebowski 1998, Fargo 1996, 1991, and 1991, Barton Fink 1991, Miller's Crossing 1990, . 1984. They wrote and directed 5 others: True Grit 1987, Blood Simple. 1984 2010, Paris, je t'aime 2006, The Hudsucker Proxy 1994, Miller's Crossing 1990, and Raising Arizona 1987. They produced 2: ROGER DEAKINS (24 May 1949, Torquay, Devon, England) has & Cigarettes 2005 and Down from the Mountain 2000. been cinematographer for 64 films and shows, some of which are And they wrote two: A Fever in the Blood 2002 and The Naked True Grit 2010, The Company Men 2010, A Serious Man 2009, Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —2

Revolutionary Road 2008, The Reader 2008, Doubt 2008, The The Survivors 1983, Eddie Macon's Run 1983, The Face of Rage Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 2007, No 1983,and Jailbait Babysitter 1977. Country for Old Men 2007, Jarhead 2005, House of Sand and Fog JULIANNE MOORE (3 December 1960, Fayetteville, North 2003, Intolerable Cruelty 2003, A Beautiful Mind 2001, The Man Carolina) has appeared in 62 films and tv series, some of which are Who Wasn't There 2001, Thirteen Days 2000, O Brother, Where Art Crazy, Stupid, Love 2011, "As the World Turns" 1985-2010, Thou? 2000, The Hurricane 1999, The Big Lebowski 1998, Kundun Elektra Luxx 2010, The Kids Are All Right 2010, Shelter 2010, A 1997, Fargo 1996, Dead Man Walking 1995, The Shawshank Single Man 2009, The Ballad of G.I. Joe 2009, I'm Not There. 2007, Redemption 1994, The Hudsucker Proxy 1994, The Secret Garden Savage Grace 2007, 2006, Marie and Bruce 2004, 1993, Passion Fish 1992, Thunderheart 1992, Barton Fink 1991, The Hours 2002, Far from Heaven 2002, The Shipping News 2001, Homicide 1991, Air America 1990, Pascali's Island 1988, Stormy World Traveler 2001, Hannibal 2001, Magnolia 1999, The End of Monday 1988, White Mischief 1988, 1986, Nineteen the Affair 1999, An Ideal Husband 1999, Psycho 1998, The Big Eighty-Four 1984, Van Morrison in Ireland 1980, Cruel Passion Lebowski 1998, Boogie Nights 1997, The Lost World: Jurassic Park 1977, and Mothers Own 1975. 1997, Surviving Picasso 1996, Assassins 1995, Nine Months 1995, Vanya on 42nd Street 1994, 1993, The Fugitive 1993, (4 December Benny & Joon 1993, Body of 1949, , California) Evidence 1993, The Hand That has appeared in 76 films and TV Rocks the Cradle 1992, Tales series, among them True Grit from the Darkside: The Movie 2010, TRON: Legacy 2010, 1990, and "The Edge of Night" Crazy Heart 2009, The Men 1984. Who Stare at Goats 2009, The Open Road 2009, How to Lose STEVE BUSCEMI (13 December Friends & Alienate People 2008, 1957, Brooklyn, New York) has Iron Man 2008 , The Moguls appeared in 121 films and shows, 2005, The Door in the Floor some of which are Pete Smalls Is 2004, Seabiscuit 2003, Scenes of Dead 2010, "Boardwalk Empire", the Crime 2001, The Contender The Chosen One 2010, Grown 2000, The Big Lebowski 1998, Ups 2010, "30 Rock" 2007-2009, The Mirror Has Two Faces Rage 2009, John Rabe 2009, Igor 1996, White Squall 1996, Wild 2008, I Now Pronounce You Bill 1995, Blown Away 1994, Chuck & Larry 2007, Paris, je Fearless 1993, The Vanishing t'aime 2006, "" 1993, American Heart 1992, The 2002-2006, Romance & Fisher King 1991, Texasville 1990, The Fabulous Baker Boys 1989, Cigarettes 2005, The Island 2005, Coffee and Cigarettes 2003, Tucker: The Man and His Dream 1988, Nadine 1987, The Morning Love in the Time of Money 2002, "Saturday Night Live" 1994-2000, After 1986, 8 Million Ways to Die 1986, Jagged Edge 1985, 28 Days 2000, Big Daddy 1999, Armageddon 1998, The Big Starman 1984, Against All Odds 1984, TRON 1982, Cutter's Way Lebowski 1998, Con Air 1997, Escape from L.A. 1996, Kansas City 1981, Heaven's Gate 1980, The American Success Company 1980, 1996, Trees Lounge 1996, Fargo 1996, Things to Do in Denver Winter Kills 1979, King Kong 1976, Stay Hungry 1976, Hearts of When You're Dead 1995, Desperado 1995, Airheads 1994, Pulp the West 1975, Rancho Deluxe 1975, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Fiction 1994, The Hudsucker Proxy 1994, Reservoir Dogs 1992, 1974, The Iceman Cometh 1973, The Last American Hero 1973, Billy Bathgate 1991, Barton Fink 1991, Miller's Crossing 1990, Lolly-Madonna XXX 1973, Bad Company 1972, Fat City 1972, The King of New York 1990, Mystery Train 1989, “Borders” 1989, New Last Picture Show 1971, Halls of Anger 1970, "The Lloyd Bridges York Stories 1989, "Lonesome Dove" 1989, Heart 1987, "Miami Show" 1962-1963, and "Sea Hunt" 1958-1960. He won a Best Vice" 1986, and Tommy's 1985. He has directed 12 films & shows: Actor Oscar for Crazy Heart, 2010. Queer 2011, "Nurse Jackie" 2009, "30 Rock" 2009, "The Sopranos" 2001-2006, 2005, “Baseball Wives” 2002, "Oz" JOHN GOODMAN (20 June 1952, St. Louis, Missouri) has appeared 1999-2001, 2000, "Homicide: Life on the Street" in 114 and tv shows, some of which are Spring Break '83 2010, 1998, Trees Lounge 1996, and What Happened to Pete 1992. "Treme" 2010, You Don't Know Jack 2010, Pope Joan / Die Päpstin 2009, Alabama Moon 2009, Speed Racer 2008, Evan DAVID HUDDLESTON (17 September 1930, Vinton, Virginia) has Almighty 2007, Dirty Deeds 2002, My First Mister 2001, The appeared in 138 films and shows, some of which are It's Always Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle 2000, O Brother, Where Art Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas 2009, Postal 2007, Thou? 2000, "The Simpsons" 1999, Bringing Out the Dead 1999, Old Glory 2007, The Producers 2005, "" 2000- "Saturday Night Live" 1998-1999, The Big Lebowski 1998, Blues 2002, "The Practice" 1999, The Big Lebowski 1998, "Walker, Texas Brothers 2000 1998, Fallen 1998, Mother Night 1996, “Kingfish: A Ranger" 1994, Life with Mikey 1993, "Murder, She Wrote" 1990, Story of Huey P. Long” 1995, The Flintstones 1994, The Hudsucker “M.A.D.D.: Mothers Against Drunk Drivers” 1983, “The Proxy 1994, Born Yesterday 1993, The Babe 1992, Barton Fink Oklahoma City Dolls” 1981, Smokey and the Bandit II 1980, Zero 1991, Always 1989, Sea of Love 1989, Everybody's All-American to Sixty 1978, Capricorn One 1977, The World's Greatest Lover 1988, Burglar 1987, Raising Arizona 1987, The Big Easy 1986, 1977, The Greatest 1977, "Charlie's Angels" 1976, "Hawaii Five- True Stories 1986, Revenge of the Nerds 1984, Heart of Steel 1983, O" 1976, Breakheart Pass 1975, "" 1975 , "Emergency!" 1975, "Kung Fu" 1973-1975, "Petrocelli" 1974, Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —3

"" 1971-1974, Billy Two Hats 1974, Blazing Saddles Peach 1996, Restoration 1995, Black Beauty 1994, Naked 1993, 1974, "" 1971-1972, "" 1971-1972, Bad The Trial 1993, Damage 1992, Afraid of the Dark 1991, Company 1972, "McMillan & Wife" 1971, Fools' Parade 1971, Rio "Screenplay" 1987-1991, Resurrected 1989, "A Bit of a Do" 1989, Lobo 1970, and Slaves 1969. "Valentine Park" 1987-1988, Little Dorrit 1988, and "Only Fools and Horses...." 1985. PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN (23 July 1967, Fairport, New York) has appeared in 53 films, some of which are SAM ELLIOTT (9 August 1944, Sacramento, California) has Moneyball 2011, Jack Goes Boating 2010, The Invention of Lying appeared in 78 films and shows, some of which are The Big Bang 2009, Doubt 2008, Synecdoche, New York 2008, Charlie Wilson's 2010, Did You Hear About the Morgans? 2009, Up in the Air 2009, War 2007, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead 2007, The Savages The Golden Compass 2007, Ghost Rider 2007, Thank You for 2007, Mission: Impossible III 2006, Capote 2005, “Empire Falls” Smoking 2005, Hulk 2003, We Were Soldiers 2002, The Big 2005, Along Came Polly 2004, Cold Mountain 2003, Red Dragon Lebowski 1998, “Texarkana” 1998, The Desperate Trail 1995, 2002, Punch-Drunk Love 2002, Love Liza 2002, Tombstone 1993, Shakedown 1988, Fatal Beauty 1987, “The Quick 2000, Magnolia 1999, Patch Adams 1998, The Big Lebowski 1998, and the Dead” 1987, The Legacy 1978,Lifeguard 1976, "Hawaii Boogie Nights 1997, Hard Eight 1996, Nobody's Fool 1994, When a Five-O" 1974, “The Manhunter" 1974, The Blue Knight 1973, "The Man Loves a Woman 1994, The Getaway 1993, Scent of a Woman Mod Squad" 1972, "Gunsmoke" 1972, Frogs 1972, "Mission: 1992, My New Gun 1992, and Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole Impossible" 1970-1971, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969, 1991. He won a best actor Oscar for Capote. and "Felony Squad" 1968-1969.

PETER STORMARE (27 August 1953, Arbrå, Gävleborgs län, BEN GAZZARA (28 August 1930, , New York) has Sweden) has appeared in 102 films, some of which are The appeared in 129 films and shows, including 13 2010, Paris, je Wayshower 2011, The Divide 2011, How I Spent My Summer t'aime 2006, Schubert 2005, 2003, "Law & Order: Special Vacation 2011, Undocumented 2010, Inseparable 2010, Janie Victims Unit" 2001, Jack of Hearts 2000, The Thomas Crown Jones 2010, Henry's Crime 2010, "Weeds" 2010, "Entourage" 2009, Affair 1999, Illuminata 1998, The Big Lebowski 1998, Buffalo '66 The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus 2009, Witless Protection 1998, The Spanish Prisoner 1997, Ladykiller 1996, Bandits / 2008, Boot Camp 2007, "Prison Break" 2005-2006, Constantine Banditi 1995, Tales of Ordinary Madness / Storie di ordinaria follia 2005, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction 2005, “Hitler: The 1981, They All Laughed 1981, Inchon 1981, Saint Jack 1979, Rise of Evil” 2003, Minority Report 2002, Windtalkers 2002, 13 Voyage of the Damned 1976, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie 1976, Moons 2002, Chocolat 2000, 2000, Capone 1975, “The Family Rico” 1972, Husbands 1970, The Armageddon 1998, "Seinfeld" 1998, The Big Lebowski 1998, 1969, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium Lost World: Jurassic Park 1997, Fargo 1996, Damage 1992, Den 1969, 1959, "Kraft Theatre" 1952-1958, frusna leoparden 1986, and Fanny and Alexander 1982. "" 1957-1958, The Strange One 1957, and “Daisy” 1952. JOHN TURTURRO (28 February 1957, Brooklyn, New York) has acted in 84 films, some of which are Somewhere Tonight 2011, Nutcracker in 3D 2010, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 2009, You Don't Mess with the Zohan 2008, Margot at the Wedding 2007, Transformers 2007, Slipstream 2007, The Good Shepherd 2006, Romance & Cigarettes 2005, Anger Management 2003, Collateral Damage 2002, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing 2001, The Luzhin Defence 2000, O Brother, Where Art Thou? 2000, Cradle Will Rock 1999, Rounders 1998, Illuminata 1998, He Got Game 1998, The Big Lebowski 1998, Clockers 1995, Search and Destroy 1995, Quiz Show 1994, Fearless 1993, Mac 1992, 1991, Barton Fink 1991, State of Grace 1990, Miller's Crossing 1990, Mo' Better Blues 1990, Men of Respect 1990, Catchfire 1990, 1989, The Sicilian 1987, Five Corners 1987, The Color of Money 1986, 1986, To Live and Die in L.A. 1985, Desperately Seeking Susan 1985, The Flamingo Kid 1984, Exterminator 2 1984, and Raging Bull 1980.

DAVID THEWLIS (20 March 1963, Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK) has appeared in 64 films and shows, some of which are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II 2011, Anonymous 2011, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I 2010, London Boulevard 2010, Mr. Nice 2010, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 2009, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 2008, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2007, The Omen 2006, Basic Instinct Joel & Ethan Coen, From The St James Film Directors 2 2006, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004, Cheeky Encyclopedia. Ed. Andrew Sarris. Visible Ink, NY, 1998. Entry 2003, Divorcing Jack 1998, The Big Lebowski 1998, Seven Years in by R. Barton Palmer Tibet 1997, The Island of Dr. Moreau 1996, James and the Giant Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —4

Although Joel Coen had worked as an assistant film editor on Though some critics thought Blood Simple a kind of commercial projects and had made valuable contacts within the pointless film-school exercise, audiences were impressed—as were industry (particularly director ), he and his brother Ethan the major studios who competed for releasing rights to the brothers’ decided to produce their first feature film independently, raising next project. The Coens’ subsequent films have all been made with $750,000 to shoot their jointly written script for Blood Simple, a substantial commercial backing, but these films continue to be neo-noir thriller with a Dashiell Hammett title and a script full of independent in the sense that none fits into the routine categories of homages to Jim Thompson. Though Joel received screen credit for contemporary Hollywood production. In fact, the art cinema direction, and Ethan for the script, this distinction is somewhat tradition of the seventies has been kept alive by the Coens and the artificial both here and in their subsequent productions. Joel and few other mavericks (e.g. Quentin Tarantino) who have emerged to Ethan cowrite their scripts and meticulously prepare in prominence. a collaborative effort unusual for the American cinema (the closest The least successful of these films—Miller’s Crossing—is analogy perhaps comes from abroad with the British team of Powell the most traditional. A “realistic” drama (though the scenes of and Pressburger). violence are highly stylized) with a well-developed plot line, this Blood Simple was hardly the first film the saga of Prohibition-era mobsters, like Scorsese’s made together. Addicted to TV and movies at an early age, they (released the year before), aims to debunk the romantic tradition of spent a good deal of their childhood writing films and then shooting the gangster film most tellingly exemplified by The Godfather them on a Super-8 camera. Movie brats in the Spielberg tradition, (1972). The central character, a “good guy” high up in the Ethan and Joel desired commercial success but were determined to organization, confusingly seems more a victim of his poor retain control over what they produced. Hence their initial desire to circumstances than a force to be reckoned with. The plot is make and rather than continue working in an otherwise dependent upon unbelievable characters and unlikely industry where Joel was already beginning to be established. twists and turns. Some elements of parody are present, but are not A hit with many on the /independent circuit but well integrated into the film’s structure, indicating that the Coens also a commercial success in art houses and cable release, Blood were uncertain about how to proceed, whether to make a gangster Simple was the perfect choice to achieve this aim. Here was a film film or send up the conventions of the genre. that succeeded because of its individual, even quircky vision. Using The other films share a different representational regime, a the conventions popular with American audiences for half magical realism that does not demand versimilitude or logical a century, the Coens offer a clear narrative, solidly two-dimensional closure, but has the virtue—for the Coens-of permitting more characters, and the requisite amount of riveting violent spectacle stylization, more moments of pure cinema. Raising Arizona and The (including one scene that pictures a dying man buried alive and Hudsucker Proxy offer postmodern versions of the traditional another featuring close-ups of a Hollywood madcap ; in white-gloved hand suddenly both films, a series of zany impaled by a knife. Blood adventures climax in romantic Simple, however, is by no means happiness for the male and an ordinary thriller. The plot female leads. Raising Arizona turns expertly and unexpectedly concerns the ultimately on a number of dramatic ironies unsuccessful attempt of a zany (no character knows what the and childless couple to kidnap a spectator does and even the baby; The Hudsucker Proxy spectator is sometimes taken by sends up, in mock Capra-corn surprise). Unlike hardboiled style, he triumph of the virtuous, narratives à la Raymond if obtuse, hero over the evil Chandler, the narrative delights system that attempts to use him in its Aristotelian neatness, in its for its own purposes. Barton depiction of experiences that Fink, in contrast, is a darker make perfect sense, climaxing in story, heavily indebted to a poetic justice that the main German Expressionism (an character and narrator, a venal private detective, finds humorous influence to be noted as well in the elaborately artificial sets and even as it destroys him. Thematically, the Coens offer a compelling unnaturalistic acting of The Hudsucker Proxy). The film’s main analysis of mauvaise foi in the Sartrean vein as they develop character is a thirties stereotype, a left-wing Jewish playwright characters doomed by bad intentions or a failure to trust and committed to representing the miseries of what he calls “the communicate (an existentialist theme that results perhaps from the common man.” Hired away from Broadway by a Hollywood studio, fact that Ethan majored in philosophy at Princeton). Blood Simple’s he embarks unwittingly on a penitential journey that lays bare the most notable feature, however, is an expressive stylization of both forces of the id both in the apparently common man he meets (a sound and image that creates an experiential correlative for the salesman who is actually a serial killer) and in himself (abandoning viewer of the characters’ confusion and disorientation. These effects his writing responsibility, he finds himself at film’s end at the beach are achieved by a Wellesian repertoire of tricks (wide-angle lenses, with the beautiful woman whose picture he first saw in a calendar). tracking set-ups, unusual framings, an artfully selected score of All three of these films abound in bravura stylizations. A popular music, etc.). The film genre naturalizes the stylization to man dives out of a skyscraper window and the camera traces the some degree, but Blood Simple exudes a riotous self-consciousness, stages of his fall (Hudsucker); a baby’s meanderings across the a delight in the creation of an exciting cinema that offers moments floor are captured by a camera literally at floor level (an elaborate of pure visceral or visual pleasure. mirror shot in Arizona); wallpaper peels off a hotel room wall Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —5 revealing something warm and gooey like human flesh underneath grandee whose young trophy wife has run up a sizeable debt to a (Barton Fink); exaggerated sounds—a mosquito’s flight, a noisy Malibu pornography king. Goons attempt to extort the money from bed, a whirling fan—perfectly express the main character’s self- the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski, and wind up urinating on the Dude’s absorption and anxiety (Barton Fink again). most beloved possession, a ratty little rug that really tied the room With Fargo, their 1996 release, the Coen brothers return to together. Seeking compensation from his namesake, the Dude finds the crime drama. Set primarily in Minnesota, the film follows an himself improbably recruited as private investigator in a kidnapping immensely likable and very pregnant sheriff (played by Frances scene involving the trophy wife and a nihilist techno band. A slow- McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife) as she pursues a couple of witted cowboy narrator, a feminist artist searching for a sperm dimwitted and cold-blooded kidnappers. A macabre thriller veined donor, a joyriding teenager who is flunking social studies and the with moments of comedy, Fargo features the Coen brothers’ Dude’s bowling partner and best buddy Walter, an oafish and trademark cinematic flair (though the landscape mutes this occasionally psychotic gun-toting Vietnam vet, all in on the act. somewhat) and intelligent narrative focus. But who is actually responsible for the kidnap—or whether there The Coens appear to have abandoned for good the stylized even was a kidnap—becomes less and less clear…Does this tell us realism and Aristotelian narrative that made Blood Simple such a much of anything, except that the film seems designed with success. But in an era that has witnessed the commercial success of deliberate perversity to thwart Hollywood conceptions of the brief cartoonish anti-naturalism (Dick Tracy, the films), their ‘treatment’ and the three-second sell? concern with striking visual and aural effects may provide the basis So let’s presume that the appeal of The Big Lebowski is not for a long career, though difficult films like Barton Fink despite predominantly narrative. The plot does become clearer on repeated critical acclaim, will never gain a wide audience. viewings, but what might be more important is that the film also becomes funnier, richer and more affecting. The Big Lebowski never lets us down no matter how many times we watch it, something that can be said of few from this or any other era. … This is surely an effect of which the Dude would have been proud: if nothing else, his story is a lesson in the boons of good-natured laughter and acceptance. This is not, however, a perspective that has informed all writing about The Big Lebowski. Indeed, critics have not found it easy to write about any of the Coen brothers’ films without descending into mere jokiness on one hand or hyper-pretentiousness on the other. Part of the problem is that investigating why something is funny tends not to be funny, or even productive. The Coens have also pre-satirised their critics. In ‘Introduction: Lebowski Yes and No’, one of many delightful fictional prefaces to their published scripts, they created a pompous pseudo-scholar, Sir Anthony Forte-Bowell, who spoils the fun with his over-zealously academic explanation of the Three Stooges’ comedy. …The Coens have long delighted in sending up such chaff, in facetious and comically misleading interviews as well as a stable of fake fronts that also includes Forever Young Films (whose Mortimer Young’ introduces the supposedly ‘restored’ Big Lebowski special edition DVD) and Mike Zoss Productions, which really is their production company but whose website is a farrago of outrageous misinformation. It was only when he was nominated for The Big Lebowski. J.M. Tyree & Ben Walters. BFI Palgrave an Academy Award for his work on Fargo that it was widely Macmillan. London, 2007. realized that Roderick Jaynes, regularly credited as the Coens’ film editor, did not, in fact, exist. (The hoax was perpetuated in Jaynes’ Since every last scrap of dialogue from the film is now absurd Coen-bashing introductions to the scripts of Barton somebody’s inside joke—oat sodas! What-have-you!—The Big Fink/Miller’s Crossing and The Man Who Wasn’t There, and in Lebowski is now basically a slacker’s bible, to be quoted more or Billy Bob Thornton’s DVD commentary on the latter film. ) less religiously. In fact, the website Dudeism.com elevates the Dude Accordingly, some of the best writing on the Coens, like that of to the status of religious guru, while the forums William Preston Robertson in The Big Lebowski: The Making of a contain photos of Achievers holding up quasi-biblical signs reading Coen Brothers Film, has been done by insiders who aren’t afraid to ‘Lebowski 7:19’ or other chapter and verse markers…. laugh at the film-makers’ foibles as well as with them. So how has a film that slipped beneath the waves critically When The Big Lebowski was released in the UK, one critic and commercially on its first release in 1998 attained such a suggested that ‘comic genius of the Coens’ order is for enjoyment devoted following? An attempt to describe its plot offers little to go rather than analysis’; another commended it to his readers, but with on. The setting is Los Angeles, 1991. As Iraqui forces invade a rider: ‘don’t discuss it afterwards, because there’s nothing to say’. Kuwait, middle-aged Venice Beach slacker, druggie, bowling While keen to avoid Forte-Bowellism, we feel that critical aficionado and 1960s throwback Jeffrey Lebowski—known simply engagement with the picture might yet prove worthwhile. The as ‘the Dude’— encounters unchecked aggression on a more Coens take a wrecking ball to Hollywood movies, and we hope to intimate scale. His name has been confused with that of a local trace some of the patterns in the rubble—in fact we insist that The Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —6

Big Lebowski is a film of ideas, a film whose ramshackle form turns as an archetypal Coen project, an idea of their oeuvre in microcosm: out to be the perfect vessel for a story whose very subjects are the moving picture as moving target. It is a film of constantly disjunction and miscommunication, the abuse of genre convention shifting gears—sometimes the film is literally (and subtly) slowed and the defiance of received notions of heroism and masculinity. down then speeded up, as with the shots showing the Dude arriving But the last thing we want to do is spoil the fun, to treat the film’s at Jackie Treehorn’s beach party or running along the middle of the humour—unquestionably its most appealing attribute—as merely a highway after his nightmare. Visually, too, the movie is relatively vehicle for some ‘real’ or ‘deeper’ meaning. If The Big Lebowski chaotic. ‘I’m not sure I ever really had a handle on what Lebowski has anything to teach us, it is the virtue of humble good humour. To should look like,’ the Coens’ regular cinematographer Roger discuss comedy as merely unserious, rather than seriously Deakins has admitted. ‘It’s such a mix, I don’t think it has one unserious, is to forget that it is one of the most mysterious, valuable style.’ Certainly, no other movie has found space for tumbling and difficult to achieve of all artistic effects. Laughter itself is the tumbleweeds, slo-mo bowling, somber, firelit great-room scenes, main thing…. geometrically choreographed dance routines and VHS porn…. In marked contrast to one of its primary cinematic sources, The Big Lebowski is very much in the spirit of that Bugs ’s The Big Sleep (1946), The Big Lebowski does Bunny cartoon—a lovingly informed parody of a highly codified actually make narrative sense, if you acclimatize to its oddness and established form, whose gleeful subversion of genre expectations is pay attention; more than that, it offers what amounts to a lesson in matched by genuine emotional resonance. The wish-fulfillment set- humanity, if you’re willing to work through the fiddly squiggles of up of the Dude coaching Maude in bowling technique offers the irony and overlays of vulgar graffiti. What emerges from the tangle only instance in the film where he is in any position of superiority is a very funny film about real things and the search for meaning: to her, as well an insight into his rather sweet, harmless and not just the solution to a mystery, but an ethos by which to navigate somewhat pathetic idea of a freewheeling erotic fantasy…. a jumbled place in jumbled times. It’s just that you’ve got your The Big Lebowski’s characters are, then, predominantly work cut out to find it. poseurs of one kind or another, using consciously constructed if not downright misleading personae The Coen picture as a way of going about their A delight in unexpected collage business without having to has always been deeply expose or even acknowledge embedded in the Coens’ their ‘essential’ selves; ‘nobody films….This penchant for absurd knows anybody’, as Tom Regan juxtaposition applies not just to (Gabriel Byrne) puts it in aspects of individual movies, but Miller’s Crossing. It’s to the Coens’ entire career. paradoxical, then,—if further Formally speaking, theirs is an proof of the Coens’ own magpie unusual varied oeuvre for film- tendency—that the lead makers of such critical stature, characters are, in fact, rooted in with works ranging across reality. ‘There are more elements periods, locations, styles and that are actually true in The Big genres from 1940s Hollywood to Lebowski than there were in contemporary Texas, quasi- Fargo,’ Joel has said. ‘Fargo, realism to the brink of the which was allegedly based on surreal, to real events, in truth contains gangland politics. They do like mostly made-up stuff. Whereas crime stories of one kind or The Big Lebowski, which another. Consistencies can also purports to be fiction, actually is be found in their idiosyncratic based on real people and events.’ approach to character, dialogue William Preston Robertson and certain considerations of identifies several individuals as technique, such as the particularly inspirational: Joel predilection for wide-angle recalls a seminal encounter with lenses and other recurring pet Pete Exline, a somewhat touchy motifs identified by William Preston Robertson. But ‘the Coen Vietnam vet who was conspicuously proud of ‘this ratty-ass little picture’ is a considerably harder beast to taxonomies than, say, ‘the rug he had in his living room…and how it “tied the room Hitchcock picture’ or ‘the Sirk picture’. You never know what’s together”’. I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski—a terrific around the corner. The Coen modus operandi of serial homage exploration of the movie’s cult appeal, written by the founders of bears comparison with that of Billy Wilder. As the Lebowski Fest—contains a treasure trove of interviews with notes, Wilder would speak of his ‘Lubitsch film’, his ‘Hitchcock people whose stories found their way into the film. In it, Exline, a film’ and so forth, of trying something ‘in a manner he admired’. film producer and professor at the University of Southern California Wilder, with his chameleon-like adaptability and his style of many whom the Coens have known since the start of their career, recalls styles, was clearly a Coen precursor…. repeatedly mentioning his rug while telling them the story of his car Lebowski, however, is constantly muddying boundaries being stolen and recovered and how—with the assistance of his and shifting shape; here, for the first time, incongruity becomes the close friend, ‘Big’ Lew Abernathy, a bullish Vietnam vet turned basic key in which a picture is played. In this sense it could be seen private investigator—he traced a piece of homework left in the car Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —7 back to a junior high school student. Arriving at the student’s home, just the story of a ransom gone wrong, it’s also a case study in genre they discovered his sick father—a Hollywood screenwriter—in a gone wrong, genre gone wild, gone fishing or gone bowling…. hospital bed in their front room. The kid, Jaik Freeman, was The Big Lebowski is in several important ways a sustained unintimidated, even when Abernathy whipped out the homework in subversion of The Big Sleep (whose screenplay was co-written by a plastic baggie. The character of Walter was also partly inspired by Wiliam Faulkner and Leigh Brackett). The transition from the the gung-ho Hollywood figure of , writer on Apocalypse Coens’ earlier crime films to these later titles is notable for a Now (1979) and director of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Red remarkable range of moods and styles, as well as an increasing Dawn (19840—and also the California surfing epic emphasis on comedy. In Ethan Coen’s 1998 book of short stories, (1978). Perhaps the best-known real-world source for the film’s Gates of Eden, several of the tales are send-ups of the hard-boiled characters is Jeff Dowd, former pot-smoking radical and sometime genre; in ‘Hector Berlioz, Private Detective,’ the PI tells his client ‘I movie producer who goes by the handle ‘the Dude’ and was indeed have a temp in when there’s heavy gunplay.’ a member of the Seven, as Lebowski claims to have been. The Ladykillers, a translation of the 1955 Ealing crime This offbeat concatenation of contrasting yet oddly comedy to the contemporary American South, is the only actual complementary characteristics formed the germ of the film—and Coen remake to date. But in a sense, most of the Coens’ films have had L.A. written all over it. ‘All the characters are pretty much been ‘retro remakes’ of one sort or another, often of classic but emblematic of Los Angeles,’ Ethan notes. ‘They’re all types who discarded Hollywood material from the 1940s. like the fast-talking seem like people you would meet there.’ (What’s more, ‘you newsroom comedy (The Hudsucker Proxy), the screwball (Raising wouldn’t them in New Arizona) or, on a far more specific York’.)… level, ’ idiosyncratic If in real need, swear. This 1941 masterpiece Sullivan’s Travels is, of course, one of the most (O Brother, Where Art Thou?). efficient linguistic methods of Unsurprising, then, despite their achieving maximum impact with greater range of source material, to minimum imagination, and The Big find the Coens linked with Quentin Lebowski is a remarkably profane Tarantino, and other film. ‘Sure, “fuck it!”’ as the Big noir recyclers…. Lebowski says. ‘That’s your answer One wonders what to everything.’ According to the Chandler would have made of The Family Media Guide (a Big Lebowski, which is conservative watchdog website that supersaturated in quotations from itemizes elements of films some and references to his work and style parents might find objectionable), but relentlessly, exuberantly and the movie uses the word ‘fuck’ and hilariously subversive of pretty its derivatives more than 260 much everything he believed in. times—on average, once every Measured against Chandler’s twenty-five seconds—along with other profanities including but not standards of professionalism, the role the Coens created for Jeff limited to, thirty-seven shits, six assholes, two bitches and a bastard. Bridges is a spectacular disgrace, and deliberately so. All in all, it’s quite possible the sweariest comedy set in Los In ‘The Simple Art of Murder’, Chandler famously laid Angeles County, which would place it in the running for sweariest down the law about what kind of guy a detective was supposed to worldwide. Little wonder that the notably strait-laced Stranger asks be: the Dude ‘d’ya have to use so many “Down these mean streets cuss words?’… a man must go who is not himself As the plot unfolds it mean, who is neither tarnished nor becomes clear that the incongruities afraid. The detective in this kind of go deeper than this central story must be such a man. He is the miscasting: Walter’s crucial hero, he is everything. He must be a influence over the plot and the complete man and a common man centrality of his and the Dude’s co- and yet an unusual man. He must dependent friendship means that, in be, to use a rather weathered phrase, Joel’s words, ‘this story is in fact a man of honor, by instinct, by that of a marriage, an odd couple’. inevitability, without thought of it, As Ethan puts it, ‘it is, in a strange and certainly without saying it. He way, kind of a buddy movie’. While must be the best man in his world you wouldn’t expect to find noir and a good enough man for any and the sandwiched into the same film, the genres at least world.” have a shared vision of masculinity, developing the American A segue into the Stranger’s opening monologue about the notion of the hero as ‘a man alone’. But buddy movie and film noir? Dude in Lebowski offers a sense of how wickedly Chandlerism is Are there two genres with less compatible views of human nature— being evoked and mocked simultaneously, even though it comes the one predicated on the durability of social bonds, the other on through the dialect of a cowboy: their fallibility? Now that’s an odd couple. The Big Lebowski is not “Sometimes there’s a man—I won’t say a hee-ro, ‘cause what’s a hee-ro?—but sometimes there’s a man…Wal, he’s the man Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —8 for his time ‘n’ place, he fits right in there—and that’s the Dude, in view, The Big Lebowski could be thought of as mock-noir in the Los Angeles…and even if he’s a lazy man, and the Dude was playful Hawksian mode, although it entails far more explicit certainly that—quite possibly the laziest in Los Angeles undermining, like The Long Goodbye. And yet for all that, the film County…which would place him high in the runnin’ for laziest still manages to convey the characteristic noir atmosphere of worldwide—but sometimes there’s a man…Sometimes there’s a dreamlike disorientation, even if here it is addled rather than scary. man… Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote the script of The Big Sleep, also co-wrote the script of the Long Goodbye. Even the great Hawks’ film adaptation of The Big Sleep doesn’t tower Chandler himself mocked the movie-making industry relentlessly in over Lebowski; rather, it is subtly embedded and structurally his novels and essays; at one point Marlower describes how thugs parodied without becoming an overwhelming or distracting now comport themselves ‘as Hollywood has taught it should be presence. That said, the relationship between the two films, and done’. The Coens, like Brackett, can do crime straight, or they can between various dimensions of each film’s wider story, is sustained do it winking—but they can also do it laughing out loud. Like and intriguing. , who co-wrote the script of the Hawks, and like Billy Wilder, they believe in laughter more Big Sleep, had been an earlier target of the Coens in Barton Fink, in fundamentally than they do in the supposed tenets of noir, although which W. P. Mayhew (John Maloney), a Southern writer turned all of them can ‘do’ noir as a delightfully mannered style. … Hollywood hack, is portrayed as a fraudulent drunk whose great While the Coens’ use of Saddam and a backdrop of war in novels had actually been written by his female secretary. Hawks’s Iraq might seem bizarrely prophetic in light of later events, it also , meanwhile, had provided in one carries a whiff of the fin-de-everything political and cultural of the models for the fast-talking tomboy newspaper writer played atmosphere of the late 1990s America. Saddam’s remarkable by in The Hudsucker Proxy (Katherine endurance as both a national bugbear and a comedic butt, including Hepburn was another). the depiction of the tyrant as the devil’s homosexual lover in the The Coens’ interest in Hawks is interesting insofar as they feature South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), suggests the seem to be diametrical opposites as film-makers. Hawks was sort of limitless self-confidence that accompanied the high-water reportedly a manipulative, sexually aggressive, anti-Semitic mark of American empire. Although some critics have attempted to compulsive liar who, like Faulkner, relied on masculine bluster, read elaborate political symbolism into items such as the ‘Heil phoney self-presentation and a Hitler!’ Goodman’s character series of acquired identities. gives at the climax of Barton Compare this with the Coens, Fink, it seems implausible to who appear to be happily married make much of such political family men with undramatic references in Lebowski. That personal lives and an intense said, there is a certain dislike of autobiographical suggestiveness to the use of the questions. Equally, their working as a framing device, as modes couldn’t be more well as Walter’s offhand anti- different. Hawks notoriously Arab racial slurs about ‘fig loved ‘kicking around’ a scene eaters’ and ‘that camel-fucker in until he got it right. The Coens, Iraq’. As a snapshot of a cultural by contrast, are famously frugal moment, the entire story unfolds film-makers known for their during a war of which the local exhaustive storyboarding, a strict and exacting approach to their squabble is a trivial, decadent and laughably meaningless shadow. budget and the cultivation of a relaxed, low-stress on-set The film also skewers the confused, endlessly self-referential environment. Their scripts are basically sacrosanct, and they culture of the post-Cold War period, the delusions of the End of sometimes retake scenes when an actor deviates from the text even History and the ideas of permanent American supremacy that by one word…. helped induce the jaded, self-consuming feeling of the 1990s. The Dude, like Marlowe (not to mention Chandler and Nearly ten years later, how different the world seems: Lebowski Hawks), loves a drink, but his preference, the White Russian, crystallizes the instant when America was basically The Man…. feminises him with its hint of sugar and mother’s milk. Cahndler The Dude is pretty hard to shock: think of the nonchalant, once described in a letter now much Marlowe hated these kind of noncommittal ‘huh!’ with which he greets his reflection in the Big drinks: ‘He will drink practically anything that is not sweet. Certain Lebowski’s Time magazine mirror, news of Quintana’s pederasty or drinks, such as Pink Ladies, Honolulu cocktails, and crème de the sight of Maude’s splatter-art. The Dud is also consistently menthe highballs, he would regard as an insult.’… averse to confrontation, opting out of aggressive situations by Although Lebowski is obviously a send-up of The Big walking away or other means. During times of stress or impending Sleep in many ways, there is an intriguing sense in which the violence—when Treehorn’s thugs shove his head down the toilet or intentions of Hawks and the Coens are surprisingly similar. The the Big Lebowski rants at him on their first meeting—the Dud great complication is that Hawks himself was making light of simply puts his shades on. noir….It’s easy to see The Big Lebowski as a logical progression or These two early confrontations establish the Dude as even a kind of culmination of this notion. This places the Coens as uninterested in competing with either macho or materialist descendants of Hawks, not merely his satirists or imitators. They conceptions of manliness. Treehorn’s goons, with their well-coiffed are teasing Hawks in the way that Hawks teased Chandler. The film hair and ripped biceps, seem to represent a porn version of is an exaggerated and extreme version of the 1990s retro/camp masculinity; it would hardly be surprising if they performed for tendency, but it is more parodic and deliberately subversive. On this Treehorn on camera as well as enforcing for him. Their presence Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —9 calls to mind the hired muscle of Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) in about having fun than keeping score. Walter’s unhappiness and The Long Goodbye—ersatz versions of sex and violence for hire, violent aggression is further emphasized, and undercut, by the potency by the pound designed to flatter the male consumer’s absurdity of taking bowling so seriously, whereas the Dude’s own delusions of mastery. Augustine literally has his men—including relaxed attitude towards life is perfectly attuned to this particular future Governor Schwarzenegger—strip to illustrate his pastime. He expressly tells the Big Lebowski that he won’t allow puissance…. his detective work to take precedence over bowling commitments— In stark contrast to the Dude’s avoidance of conflict is at once preposterously unprofessional and yet somehow just right. Walter’s line-in-the-sand mentality of picking fights over the Bowling brings people together: it’s the basis for an otherwise broaching of more or less arbitrary boundaries and working himself baffling friendship between a flaky ex- peacenik and a up into apoplexy simply to prove his intransigence. ‘Over the line!’ bitterly unbalanced Vietnam vet, as well a the odd pairing between he bellows at Smokey (Jimmie Jesus Quintana and Liam, his Irish Dale Gilmore) over a perceived bowling partner. It wouldn’t be foul. ‘This is not Nam, this is farfetched to suggest that in bowling. There are rules!’ Having Lebowski bowling seems to stand pulled his gun, he demonstrates his for the American dream of real constitutional inability to back friendship between people from down from a confrontation, different backgrounds and screaming as he breaks Lord ethnicities, even if the point is knows how many federal laws: disguised by absurdity. The ‘AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO bowling alley is a place where GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE people can be themselves—among RULES?’ This exchange perfectly the film’s most beautiful sequences exemplifies the curious tension in is the one in which we simply Walter’s personality between a demand for structure and a wrathful watch folks bowl. This is the Dude’s natural habitat. To nab a incontinence. In many ways, his faith in brute force (‘I grab one of remark of the Stranger’s, he fits right in there; so at home does he ‘em and beat it out of him’) and ferocity in combat (biting the lead seem that we barely register the fact that he is never actually seen nihilist’s ear off) verge on the bestial. His substitution of his bowling. ‘whites’ for the Big Lebowski’s ransom bag is an exercise in high …These mortals may be fools, but they actually love each alpha-male face-rubbing only one step away from the rug-pissers’ other. This makes them—and arguably the Coens—very different territory marking. from the characters in and film-makers of the typical camp …The film actually takes seriously all of the themes that it postmodern mode, which generally ends in cynicism and showy mocks….Ethan’s claim that Lebowski is a ‘happy movie’ is not a surface-effects rather than affirming life and ultimately choosing throwaway remark. The notion of a ‘religion of laughter’, first real feelings. applied to Sterne’s eighteenth-century satire Tristram Shandy, could If there is a larger claim to be made about the importance be used to describe the Coens’ purpose in Lebowski: the classic of the Coens as film-makers, it involves the dimension of their convention-shredding anti-novel meets a gem of post-modern anti- films, of which The Big Lebowski is probably the finest example. film, both works finally and resolutely humanistic for all their put- All of the characteristic postmodern tricks are on display—the ons and vulgarity. subversive mockery of narrative, the method of inhabiting a genre …In Lebowski, the to expose its artificiality, the bowling alley is obviously a satirical thrust of its allusions to the location in which classics, its disbelief in the old get together for no other reason structures, tropes and systems—but than to have a good time. It’s they are not the ultimate purpose of impossible not to notice the the film. Irony, that slipperiest of camera’s loving relation to the all terms is not discarded by the place, its way of caressing surfaces Coens; if anything it is being and lingering on the craftsmanship amped up. But what might be that went into the ‘Brunswick’ called ‘ironic effects’—verbal style. Consider, above all, the shots irony, dramatic irony and from the opening credits, featuring intertextual irony that brings in all kinds of different people whose other works of art in order to tease faces light up when their ball strike the pins. Bowling is among the them—are not the only effects that the Coens achieve. If there cheapest American fun to be had, where anyone at any level of skill might be new horizons to be glimpsed beyond the postmodern, in can play without any degree of physical fitness or any of the typical which neither the old ‘naively’ realistic narratives, the experimental trappings of ‘jock’ sports. Bowling is probably one of the least modernist techniques nor the postmodern recycling jobs reign judgmental activities ever invented. At least for amateurs, it’s more supreme, the Coens seem like important precursors.

Coens—THE BIG LEBOWSKI —10

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2010 BUFFALO FILM SEMINAR November 30 Chan-wook Park Oldboy 2003 December 7 Deepa Mehta Water 2005

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