1 post tagged “the coen brothers”

Baby attended her very first Lebowskifest this weekend, in the beautiful city of Seattle, Washington. For those of you just tuning in, Lebowskifest is a frequent, traveling celebration of the 1998 Coen brothers cult classic The Big Lebowski. For those of you who've really been living under a rock for the last 10 years or so, The Big Lebowski tanked at the box office but its popularity has grown by orders of magnitude since its video release. It doesn't hurt that the explosion of DVD technologies, and this little set of truck-like tubes we call the Internets, followed shortly thereafter. A YouTube search for "Lebowski" reveals a startling number of tribute films, from the brilliant (The F*cking Short Version, Requiem for a Lebowski) to the bewildering (clips from foreign films that sort of remind you of certain scenes from The Big Lebowski) to the banal (how many people need to upload the Jesus' dance from the actual film? Plenty, if YouTube numbers are any occasion). My favorite are the clips that succeed in fulfilling all three of these categories: for some reason, I can't get enough of the varied re-enactments of the Jesus' dance. Wii Jesus? Bocce Jesus? Foozball Jesus? Pathetic underachieving Jesus rolling a basketball down his hallway to knock down two pop bottles? Wrap 'em up, I'll take the whole set.

You're safe in assuming at this point that I did not attend Lebowskifest as an impartial journalist (though that was my ostensible excuse -- to cover the story) but as a hardcore fan. Of the movie itself, of course. Like most people, I'm fairly certain I didn't like or get Lebowski the first time I saw it. My mind being as, you know, limber as it is, I don't have a clear memory of this experience, however, though I do recall seeing the film as a sophomore in college, when I was either drunk, or had the flu, or was perhaps experiencing the mild narcolepsy that non-interactive backlit screens induced in me at that time. Whatever the cause, the effect was that I drifted in and out of sleep, taking in a few minutes of nap, then screwing up my eyebrows for a few minutes of film, then drifting quietly back into sleep again. In retrospect, this set of circumstances was ideal, or at least prescient: the plot of this ostensibly plot-driven flick is never, ever going to add up for me. And I've wasted countless horus of my life on it. I've hunted down its sources of inspiration (Chandler's The Big Sleep, for instance). And storywise, it just doesn't work. Yet the movie works anyway. It really is one of the miracles of cinema, like a house of cards that stays intact after 40 whacks with a cricket bat.

So why does it hold up? Personally, I'm satisfied with "magic." You have to understand that after four years and change of a liberal arts education, I'm pretty relieved to find any film or book that still manages to thrill me despite intense crutiny. But looking around at the costumes this weekend -- these were easily the main event -- it occurred to me that the film has an unbelievably rich visual landscape. Amid the anticipated Dudes, Walters, Maudes and Jesuses (and even one Lebowski, in a latex mask and wheelchair), there were numerous outside-the-box costumes. One woman (who I ran into in, of all places, the bathroom) dressed up as the ill-fated rug. Rumor had it another dressed as the line "Certain new shit has come to light," though I didn't find her. I saw no fewer than two men dressed as monks, referencing the exchange, "I'm a brother shamus, like you!" "What is that, like, an Irish monk?" (For the uninitiated, no, a shamus is a private snoop, a dick.) Several people dressed as pigs in blankets, a menu item ordered by nihilists at the pancake house in one scene. Even people who were actually dressed as characters from the movie were tough to recognize: two dressed as the Dude's landlord during his interpretive dance debut. I've seen the movie God knows how many times, and it took a good couple of hours (and a pitcher of oat soda) to place him. For all the outside-the-box characters, all the people dressed as single lines, there is a hell of a lot going on inside the box, in the visual landscape of the film itself.

But a lot of films have a multitude of weird-looking characters and a rich visual landscape. One of the reasons I came to Lebowskifest was that I'm obsessed with pop culture cults in general, but don't qualify for membership in most of them. I grew up in the sticks, then went to college in another isolated outpost, so Rocky Horror passed me by, and anyway, I'm pretty young for that. And science fiction? Just not my thing. Lots of films are funny. Lots of films address the heady themes Lebowski addresses (ever notice that all three of the main characters are poignantly irrelevant, each in their own way?). Lots of films have their own universe -- just ask any pointy-eared sci-fi con geek. And even then, lots of films have their own vocabulary, their own clever lines and catch phrases. So why is Lebowski different? How does it manage to turn non-geeky, non-con-attending types like myself into total drooling fan types? Copious meandering discussions with fellow Achievers (as Lebowski cultists are called -- and proud we are of all of them), and my last several viewings of the movie, have yielded this theory:

What makes The Big Lebowski different from anything else, ever, is not just that it has its own language. It's about language -- and specifically, the language of the movie. It's been noted by YouTube posters of varying degrees of astuteness (see the aforementioned f*ckin' short version, as well as the inferior but mildly amusing "dude" version) that certain words and phrases are repeated over and over throughout the film. But the characters also spend a great deal of time talking about those phrases -- special attention is called to a particular word or phrase at several points throughout the movie. And the word or phrase in question is almost invariably repeated by another character a few scenes later -- sometimes this person was party to its earlier discussion, sometimes not. The Dude soaks up language like a sponge ("This aggression will not stand, man" and more significantly, the addendum, "In the parliance of our times"). But more curious, and funnier, are scenarios like this one: at the bowling alley, Walter chides the Dude for referring to the guy who, uh, soiled his rug as a Chinaman. "'Chinaman' is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please." Two scenes later, the big Lebowski rants that "some Chinaman took (my legs) from me in Korea!" Maude Lebowski, addressing the ever-bewildered Dude, laments that the word "vagina" frightens some men, "whereas, without batting an eye, a man will refer to his dick, or his rod, or his johnson." Dude blinks: "Johnson?" Two scenes later, guess what the nihilists (again, not present at the earlier exchange) are threatening to cut off? The Dude's johnson. In the parliance of our times, that's fucking brilliant.

That out of the way, here's my wishlist for future Lebowskifests:
- I've read that some Lebowskifests have included an academic component, as in panel discussions and people reading papers. Given the wankery above, it should not surprise y'all that I'm totally jealous and totally want to go to one of these someday.
- The screening should be held in a sit-down theatre, not in a stand-up concert venue that used to be a movie theatre.
- The screening should employ a 35mm print of the movie, not a DVD. (Maybe I'm wrong, but this really looked and sounded like DVD quality.)
- People who hate the opening bands should be asked to go out and have a smoke. Oh, also, the opening bands should not suck. Might I suggest that the Fucking Eagles, who opened at this year's event, lend their name to an awesome Creedence cover band?
- Jeff Dowd's appearances should also be a little more formal, sit-down and panel-discussion-y. And this year's event should have discussed the Seattle Liberation Front in more detail.