Dropped in to see the condition of my rug

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

A 20th Anniversary appreciation by Jerry Saravia

The Coen Brothers have always defied expectations in their cutthroat, very precise approach to genres, making films that look and feel as they were made by nerds who chuckle when people leave frustrated by what they have just seen. Some of their films manage this feat with spectacular results ("Barton Fink," "A Serious Man," "Fargo") and others are plainly bad and highly uneven ("O' Brother Where Art Thou?", "Intolerable Cruelty"). "The Big Lebowski" is somewhere much higher. It is not an easy film to describe but I guess you could call it a stoner noir comedy and even that doesn't fully define it. It is often very funny, has thrillingly inventive visuals, terrific soundtrack, eye-popping performances, is extremely crude and contains Tara Reid's best, liveliest performance. It is slacker porn (my term), basically a movie that is pure pot-bellied humor, emphasis on pot, and has purposely leisured pacing because the characters speak as if they just had a joint.

Well, not all the characters. John Goodman is the boisterous, maniacal Vietnam Vet Walter who is paranoid and sees conspiracies everywhere, and can get you a severed toe by lunch. He screams expletives at every turn, even screaming "Fuck You Donny!" to Steve Buscemi's more mellow Donny. They all frequent the bowling alley, which of course includes the title character, the harmless, White-Russian imbibing Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), the royal Dude, the righteous Dude, or the Dude who Abides or just plain dude, if you are into the whole brevity thing. It is the strangest performance of Bridges' career and possibly his most iconic, maybe even the purest. He not only symbolizes a pot-smoking slacker, he is POT! You could smoke Bridges' character and feel relieved and stress-free. Watching him on screen gives you a relaxed feeling, so that is why I call this film the first real Slacker Porn flick because Bridges epitomizes it.

The plot all comes down to one specific detail - some hired thugs have urinated on the Dude's rug. The Dude wants a new rug from another Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound and grumpy millionaire (David Huddleston), whom the Dude was mistaken for. It turns out that Big Lebowski's wife, Bunny (Tara Reid), was kidnapped and all that is given to the millionaire is her severed green-painted toe as a reminder she is still alive. But was she really kidnapped and was that her actual toe? Eventually, we get more hired thugs, some German nihilists, a ferret attacking the Dude in his tub, a dream sequence involving bowling balls and Saddam Hussein (!), a British Julianne Moore who wants coitus with the Dude, lots of pot ingestion, cremated remains blown away in the wrong direction, odd and memorable music selections from Yma Sumac and Kenny Rogers, a dapper Ben Gazzara, a fantastic Sam Elliott as the narrator, and much more.

"The Big Lebowski" is not just a crazy flick, it is the craziest, wildest, oddest and most insanely entertaining film that the Coens have ever made. Ever since its low box-office numbers in its theatrical release back in March of 1998, the film achieved an understandable cult status and remains one of the most quotable films of the 1990's. Without it, you would not have half of the other alleged noir pot comedies that have come and gone in its wake, like the overrated shenanigans of "Pineapple Express" which never found a consistent tone or the equally tone deaf "30 Minutes or Less" or P.T. Anderson's goofball boredom of "Inherent Vice." I could say so much more but I won't, you know, if you are into the whole brevity thing.