By Erin Free
“Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place,” intones grizzled westerner Sam Elliott on the voiceover for The Big Lebowski. “He fits right in there. And that’s The Dude. The Dude, from Los Angeles. Even if he is a lazy man – and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in all of Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin’ for laziest worldwide.”
Though The Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski is a film of many and varied treasures – with its wildly entertaining, ridiculously convoluted plot; absurdist dialogue and bizarre but recognisable characters – its greatest and most blearily shining jewel is Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, a dope smoking, White Russian-drinking sixties throwback who likes things laid waaayyy back. As played with hilarious abandon by the brilliant Jeff Bridges (in a role written specifically for him by The Coens, but based on independent film producer Jeff Dowd, who helped raise financing for Blood Simple), The Dude is all shaggy hair, baggy clothes, bent philosophy and zero motivation – he’s the human equivalent of an unmade bed. “Oh, the usual,” he replies when asked what he does for recreation. “I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.” The Dude’s life takes an unwanted turn, however, when two crooks break into his house and piss on his favourite rug after mistaking him for a similarly named LA millionaire, whose wife owes a big debt to some very unsavoury people. When The Dude hits up the aforementioned millionaire to pay for his piss-stained rug, things get even weirder.
One of the many joys of the film is watching a quintessential stoner like The Dude (before filming a scene, Bridges would ask, “Did The Dude burn one on the way over?” and then rub his knuckles in his eyes before doing a take if The Coens’ answer was yes) dragged kicking and screaming into the middle of a plot that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Raymond Chandler novel. He’s a scion of slack as the plot caterwauls around him, and Bridges captured The Dude’s peculiar brand of sloth to perfection by growing his hair and letting his usually trim figure go decidedly pear shaped. “The physical thing is one of the first things that you do to figure out a character,” Bridges once said of getting out of shape for the role. “The Dude is not the kind of guy to be doing a lot of sit-ups, and he gets most of his nutrition from kahlua, vodka and milk; he doesn’t mind looking the way he does. He eats pretty much whenever and whatever he wants. I drew on myself a lot from back in the sixties and seventies, and also from some of my own friends like that. But to be honest, it’s mostly just me.”
All hail The Dude!
