How 'The Dude' Came to Love the Lebowski Fest

In the spring of 2003 I got a call from Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt (that's them below) inviting me to the 2nd Annual Lebowski Fest in Louisville, Kentucky. They described it as a two-night affair, the first at a movie theater and a bar and the second at a bowling alley.

They were thrilled that 150 people actually came to the first take -- an idea they hatched when they ran into each other standing in line at a tattoo convention and started trading lines from “The Big Lebowski” to pass the time.

They hoped if “The Dude” showed up for Round 2, and they added a few fun activities throughout the weekend, they might be able to draw hundreds more.

I instantly flashed on that classic William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, skit on “Saturday Night Live,” when he appears at a “Star Trek” convention and the Trekkies (all in costume and socially ill-at-ease) ask him one question after another as if “Star Trek” were real.

Shocked by this parallel universe, Shatner asks the mostly male audience if any of them have ever gone out with a girl -- to be answered with dumbfounded stares. Exasperated he says, “Get a life.”

So I was a tres dubious about being surrounded at Holiday Inn in Louisville by a bunch of “Achievers” -- as Scott and Will referred to themselves and their cohorts.

Let’s flashback for a little back story with the help of Roger Ebert:

“Everybody knows somebody like the Dude -- and so do the Coen brothers,” Roger wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times. “They based the character ‘The Dude,’ played by Jeff Bridges in ‘The Big Lebowski’ on a movie producer and distributor named Jeff Dowd, a familiar figure at film festivals, who is tall, large, and shaggy and a boil with enthusiasm. Dowd is much more successful than Lebowski (he has played an important role in the Coens’ careers as indie filmmakers), but no less a creature of the moment. Both dudes depend on improvisation and inspiration.”

I picked up the moniker “The Dude” when I was in sixth grade, and my friends Dave and Danny riffed on Dowd and turned it into Dude -- a nickname that others would apply wherever I moved, without any hint of its past use.

When I helped Robert Redford start the Sundance Institute in 1981, something happened that first June that was either by chance, destiny or both. A man from Minnesota, who supported some of Redford’s environmental causes, dropped by Sundance and mentioned that he had invested some money in a little indie picture by a couple of whacked-out, yet brilliant intellectual brothers, who hailed from the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

He asked Bob if he had any advice, and Redford brought him over to meet me. The two brothers were Joel and Ethan Coen. He said that he would put them in touch with me when they completed the film.

A few months later, I stepped into a Hollywood screening room and saw “Blood Simple.”  It was clear that cinematic genius was at work. The writing, directing, acting, cinematography, music and editing all had both a sense of classic film noir tradition, with the unique Coen brother’s touch of irony, satire and black comedy.

I became the producer’s representative for the film, which meant I was charged with finding a distributor -- a task that would prove challenging because “Blood Simple” defied simple categorization and that scared all the distributors so much so that they would all pass on it three times.

It wasn’t until we showed it to distributors in a packed house at the Toronto Film Festival that they observed how well the black comedy played. As often is the case when so-called experts are wrong, audiences and critics were excited by Joel and Ethan’s unique filmmaking approach. They got behind the movie and helped distributors understand that there was a market out there for it.

I was lucky enough to be there at the right time to help build a bridge from Joel and Ethan to the audiences that would cherish the films they would go on to make twisting, bending and combining genres populated with great actors and extreme characters.

The character of the Dude in “The Big Lebowski” was somewhat inspired by what they thought I might have been like for a short time in the ‘70s, after my intense activist years and Seattle Seven jail time (for talking about the Viet Nam War) when my friends and I were doing a fair amount of hanging out, imbibing the drink of the month, Tequila Sunrises, White Russians and Maui Wowie. I did that for a year before I went to work in the film biz.

Joel and Ethan also liked riffing on the name: “The Dude, Duder, Duderino, if you aren’t into that whole brevity thing.” The body language is all me, the plot is Joel and Ethan dosing Raymond Chandler with laughing gas and acid.

John Goodman’s Walter, the about-to-explode Viet Nam vet who the Coens also froze in the past, is the crazed buddy who drives the film always getting his best friend, the Dude, in trouble in the tradition of Tony Curtis in “Some Like it Hot” or Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon” or Butch with the Sundance Kid (to tie this blog room together).

 

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