I guess it's time I got around to writing something about The Big Lebowski, my favorite Coen brothers movie and one of my all-time favorite comedies.
A spoof of crime writer Raymond Chandler and his famous L.A. private eye, Philip Marlowe, this is the story of Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges in the best performance of his career), better known as "the Dude," an avid bowler and dope smoker but otherwise the laziest man in Los Angeles — "which would place him high in the running for the laziest worldwide."
Thanks to a mix up, two of the dimmest-witted bulbs in henchman history rough up the Dude and pee on his rug — no ordinary rug, mind you, but a rug that really tied the room together.
The Dude is inclined to let the rug and matters lie but not his bowling buddy Walter Sobchak (a frothing-at-the-mouth John Goodman, who, like Bridges, should have won an Oscar). He insists the guy the hoods were really looking for — L.A.'s other Jeffrey Lebowski, an aging millionaire with a wild, young trophy wife who owes money all over town — should foot the bill for the rug.
What ensues is the sort of labyrinthine plot that would have done Chandler proud, taking the Dude on a tour of the seamy side of L.A. with its pornographers, corrupt sheriffs, avant garde artists, white Russians, unctuous undertakers, nihilists with nine toes, bowling psychopaths, and fifteen year old kids who make D's on their homework.
The best movie about bowling ever made and a nifty noir to boot.
The cast includes Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Steve Buscemi, Sam Elliott, David Huddleston, John Turturro, Tara Reid, Peter Stormare, Jon Polito, Ben Gazzara, and singer Aimee Mann.
Great fun. Not to be missed.
Note: I probably would have voted for Saving Private Ryan if it had sustained the momentum of the Omaha Beach scene but that's what we have Band of Brothers for. Other good choices: Shakespeare in Love (don't knock it til you've tried it), Out of Sight (one of the best Elmore Leonard adaptations) ... et cetera. No need to list them all — you can read as well as I can, presumably.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ.
Boy, that is a moustache, isn't it.
By the way, I may be one of the few people on Earth who admits to liking Shakespeare in Love these days even if it's not the best movie of the year. I rank it fourth behind The Big Lebowski, Out of Sight and Saving Private Ryan, in that order.
Katie-Bar-The-Door and I saw The Big Lebowski in Paris during a freakishly unseasonable heat wave in 1998. Along with the Cinema Astro in Florence, Italy, any theater in Paris is the best venue for watching a movie anywhere in the world.
By the way, the French call all those ads and previews before the feature film starts the "séance"—a term Katie and I still use. They are (or at least were) also adverse to translating heavy-duty swearing into the French subtitles, preferring the all-purpose "merde," the explanation being that to see anything stronger in print on the screen would be too shocking for the audience. Which may or may not be true, but certainly it meant that the non-English speakers in the audience missed out on the rather delightful tapestry of profanity that made The Big Lebowski such a great film.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Saving Private Ryan (prod. Steven Spielberg, Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon and Gary Levinsohn)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:Shakespeare in Love (prod. David Parfitt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Edward Zwick and Marc Norman) Must-See Comedy/Musical:
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Central do Brasil (Central Station) (prod. Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Arthur Cohn, Robert Redford and Walter Salles)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski)
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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