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Big Lebowski - I get the worship (1 Viewer)

Joe Bryant

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Staff member
I'm not sure how I missed it all these years but just finally saw the Big Lebowski.

I liked it quite a bit. Bridges was good. And Goodman and Buscemi were great. Although I would have liked to see a lot more from Buscemi. But the dialog when all 3 were together was top notch.

The Dude was tiresome with the hippie shtick but it was ok. As I said, I liked it a lot.

I'm just not sure I get the love I see for it by some. Can you help me understand?

J

Edit to add - I get it.

 
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Different people like different things?I am pretty sure there's something that you "worship" that others aren't particularly fond of...
Yes, people do like different things. That's sort of why I asked here. For the people that loved it, what about it do they love?J
 
Maude Lebowski: Do you like sex, Mr. Lebowski?

The Dude: 'Scuse me?

Maude Lebowski: Sex. The physical act of love. Coitus. Do you like it?

The Dude: I was talking about my rug.

Maude Lebowski: You're not interested in sex?

The Dude: You mean coitus?

 
Different people like different things?I am pretty sure there's something that you "worship" that others aren't particularly fond of...
Yes, people do like different things. That's sort of why I asked here. For the people that loved it, what about it do they love?J
It's funny, eminently quotable with unique characters, great dialogue and a great soundtrackAlso wasn't a huge hit when it came out so it became a "cult" phenomenon that went mainstream
 
:yes: You're out of your element?
:blackdot:You have no frame of reference here Joe, you're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know....
:yes:Am I wrong?J
I just really like the dialogue, and the bizarre situations that these characters get themselves into. What I think hurts it for many people is what you hit upon with the hippie schtick thing: the main characters aren't especially likeable. The Dude is a lazy bum and Walter an irritable and violent sociopath, but I think their unlikely friendship and respect is really entertaining. :shrug:
 
Joe, I am in the same boat as you. I don't get the movie at all, it was painful for me to watch. Steve Buscemi is great, but the "dude" was painful. I guess if we don't get it we will never get it.

 
:yes: You're out of your element?
:blackdot:You have no frame of reference here Joe, you're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know....
:yes:Am I wrong?J
I just really like the dialogue, and the bizarre situations that these characters get themselves into. What I think hurts it for many people is what you hit upon with the hippie schtick thing: the main characters aren't especially likeable. The Dude is a lazy bum and Walter an irritable and violent sociopath, but I think their unlikely friendship and respect is really entertaining. :shrug:
Plus it's got Sam Elliott.
 
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:yes: You're out of your element?
:blackdot:You have no frame of reference here Joe, you're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know....
:blackdot:Am I wrong?J
I just really like the dialogue, and the bizarre situations that these characters get themselves into. What I think hurts it for many people is what you hit upon with the hippie schtick thing: the main characters aren't especially likeable. The Dude is a lazy bum and Walter an irritable and violent sociopath, but I think their unlikely friendship and respect is really entertaining. :yes:
Insisting on everyone calling him the Dude was :shrug: And I do suppose it was less so before Dude got to be so tired. I did love the friendship thing though. That was funny.Was there anything significant about the white russians? Is there some hippie connection there?J
 
Joe, I am in the same boat as you. I don't get the movie at all, it was painful for me to watch. Steve Buscemi is great, but the "dude" was painful. I guess if we don't get it we will never get it.
I don't think he's saying he didn't get the movie. I think he got it, and liked it, but just didn't understand why some people place it in the Caddyshack stratosphere as an all-time classic comedy.
 
Joe, I am in the same boat as you. I don't get the movie at all, it was painful for me to watch. Steve Buscemi is great, but the "dude" was painful. I guess if we don't get it we will never get it.
Hold on a second there shiz. I liked it a lot. I got it and thought it was good. I just didn't get the worship for it. I know some people who put it on the "change your life" level. And that's cool. Nothing wrong with that. I was just trying to understand where they're coming from.J
 
Because Donny loved bowling as do I.

By the way I'm in the Miami airport typing this on my BlackBerry pearl.

2 hour layover

Entrytain me!

 
Joe, I am in the same boat as you. I don't get the movie at all, it was painful for me to watch. Steve Buscemi is great, but the "dude" was painful. I guess if we don't get it we will never get it.
I don't think he's saying he didn't get the movie. I think he got it, and liked it, but just didn't understand why some people place it in the Caddyshack stratosphere as an all-time classic comedy.
You are correct...I should have said, I watched the movie, understood the movie, don't understand the following and love for the movie.'I stand corrected.
 
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Joe, I am in the same boat as you. I don't get the movie at all, it was painful for me to watch. Steve Buscemi is great, but the "dude" was painful. I guess if we don't get it we will never get it.
Hold on a second there shiz. I liked it a lot. I got it and thought it was good. I just didn't get the worship for it. I know some people who put it on the "change your life" level. And that's cool. Nothing wrong with that. I was just trying to understand where they're coming from.J
I'm in your camp, I really like it, but it didn't change my life. Have had a lot of fun exchanging lines with buddies though.
 
I'm not sure how I missed it all these years but just finally saw the Big Lebowski.I liked it quite a bit. Bridges was good. And Goodman and Buscemi were great. Although I would have liked to see a lot more from Buscemi. But the dialog when all 3 were together was top notch.The Dude was tiresome with the hippie shtick but it was ok. As I said, I liked it a lot.I'm just not sure I get the love I see for it by some. Can you help me understand?J
watch it againthe first time I found it amusing, the second time I found it hilarious
 
Definitely watch it a few more times before rendering your final verdict. I thought it was kinda funny the first time I saw it, too, but didn't really "get it" until probably the 3rd time. Plus, the more you watch it, the more you get to know the characters, and then things that didn't seem that funny at first, suddenly become hilarious.

 
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Definitely watch it a few more times before rendering your final verdict. I thought it was kinda funny the first time I saw it, too, but didn't really "get it" until probably the 3rd time. Plus, the more you watch it, the more you get to know the characters, and then things that didn't seem that funny at first, suddenly become hilarious.
Cool. Thanks.J
 
There is also the "right man for the situation" element that often gets lost within the tale. Dude is absolutley a f-up and every sense of the word, yet turns out to be the perfect foil for this scam. It is his utter incompetence that attracts Mr. Lebowski to choose him to be the patsy and it is his utter incompetence that allows him to foil it.

 
Help me understand the point of this thread. Couldn't we do this for every popular movie? :confused:
No big point really. I know that the Big Lebowski is one of those "change your life" type movies at the very top of some lists for some people. That's cool. No problem whatsoever with that.I finally watched it this weekend and found it to be good. But not on the worship level. So I did what I usually do here - ask the people that know to help me see their side of it better. Not too deep and no ulterior motive.J
 
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If you like a film, is it that big of a stretch that someone else would love it?
Of course not. :whoosh:Help me understand the point of this thread. Couldn't we do this for every popular movie? :confused:
I suppose you could but I think JB's point was that this movie gets a lot more "love" and "worship" than most popular movies. This movie has a huge following, Louisville holds a Lebowski fest every year (it may be in other places, Louisville is just the one I know of off hand) which seems to be obscure given the movie. That said, I've only seen it a couple of times and while I enjoyed it...I've often wondered the same thing :lmao:
 
Louisville holds a Lebowski fest every year (it may be in other places, Louisville is just the one I know of off hand)
There's several places that hold them:http://lebowskifest.com/fests.asp
I guess I just don't understand it. All I've gotten from the most of the people I know that go is pretty much a reason to smoke up the weekend, have a few white russians and go bowling in their bathrobe. Although in the defense of the Big L fest...I have heard there is typically great music.
 
This is pretty good I think:

http://goatdog.com/moviePage.php?movieID=770

J

It started as a pretty funny stoner movie that I watched on video some night. Then it became the default movie to watch when I couldn't think of anything else to put on. The more I watched it, the richer it became: eventually, I smiled admiringly at every nuance. Now, after several years and dozens of viewings, it is my favorite movie, the one I'm most likely to put on when I want to hang out with old friends. It's also one of the hardest to write about: how do you explain why you love your parents or cheese or sex? I love it because it is The Big Lebowski.

Detractors call it a narrative mess, a sprawling confusion with no plot and little to show for itself outside of the occasional laugh. I gaze at them in wonder, in fear, unsure whether they have seen the same movie. It has a plot, which is structured as an homage to 1940s film noirs such as the dazzling The Big Sleep, with its plot so fragmented that the writer, Raymond Chandler, reportedly admitted that he couldn't figure it out. Those noirs pitted a resourceful regular guy against a seemingly endless array of bad guys, interested parties, corrupt cops, bimbos, mysterious women, and assorted other characters. The main character had to solve a mystery, the solution of which was never as important or as interesting as the act of investigation and the personages he ran into along the way.

In this film, the Coen brothers reimagine that structure in their own inimitable way, by making the main character and most of the supporting cast a bunch of incompetents. Their hero, Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, is among the most terminally laid-back, hapless, helpless, and clueless lead characters in film history. He bumbles through the film in a haze of pot smoke and White Russians; the times he accomplishes anything through his own initiative can be counted on one or two fingers. Things just happen to him, and the fact that he arrives at something approaching a solution to the film's mysteries is miraculous. Jeff Bridges, who is in every scene but one or two, plays The Dude in one of the great comedic performances of all time. We first meet him as he is introduced in a rambling voiceover, because this kind of movie needs a narrator. He is introduced as "a lazy man...quite possibly the laziest in Los Angeles county, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide." He's shopping for half and half in a bathrobe; he writes a check for his sixty-nine cent purchase, and it will probably bounce.

He returns to his apartment, where, in a colossal case of mistaken identity, two thugs, thinking that he's a wealthy investor, accost him for money owed to a major pornographer by the other Jeff Lebowski's wayward wife Bunny. On the way out, one of them pees on his rug, which "really tied the room together." On the advice of his obnoxious bowling partner Walter Sobchek (John Goodman), he approaches The Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), a wealthy paraplegic, for a replacement rug. He's dismissed with a tirade of insults, but Lebowski calls him back soon afterwards because his beloved wife, the bimbo Bunny (Tara Reid), has been kidnapped. The Big Lebowski wants him to act as a courier, thinking that the rug-pissers might have something to do with it. This embroils The Dude, and sometimes Walter, in a web of intrigue that includes pornographers, fascist cops ("Keep your gold-bricking ### out of my beach community!"), teenage car thieves, angry German nihilists ("We believe in no-zhing!"), amphibious rodents, hyperfeminist modern artists, and bowling. Lots of bowling.

Perhaps the complaints about the lack of a plot stem from the fact that the film takes its time in wandering from setpiece to setpiece, and it's not above sitting back to share a throwaway scene or two. Each scene is an absurdist miracle. There's Walter's bowling alley showdown with Smokey (country legend Jimmy Dale Gilmore) over whether Smokey's foot went over the line. There's the encounter with The Jesus (John Turturro), an outlandish pedophile bowler dressed in purple spandex. There's the dropoff of the ransom money, which Walter complicates with an Uzi and his undies. There's The Dude's visit to the home of Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), the daughter of the Big Lebowski, who doesn't believe the kidnapping story. And on and on and on. "Throwaway" is the wrong term, since there are no scenes in this film that are disposable.

There also aren't any uninteresting characters in the film. The key to that is the Coens' dialog, which sounds like nobody else's. In many films, the dialog sounds like the same person talking through many mouths, but here, just about everyone with a speaking part has a unique way of speaking. The Dude's aphasic meanderings; Walter's staccato delivery that relates everything to Vietnam; Steve Buscemi's bewildered good nature; Maude Lebowski's oddly metered patter ("And how proud we are of all of them."); pornographer Ben Gazzara's smarmy glad-handing; the obsequious Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Big Lebowski's assistant—even relatively minor characters, like Mike Gomez as the cop in the impound yard ("They got us working in shifts!"), are distinctive.

Every scene is my favorite, but there are a few that stand out. The best "small" scene—a scene that would be considered a throwaway in a lesser movie—is The Dude's attempt to report his car stolen. What makes the scene is the nearly silent reaction of the older black cop as he surveys The Dude's drug-paraphernalia-littered coffee table; meanwhile, The Dude attempts to include the cash-filled briefcase in the theft report:

The Dude: Oh, uh, yeah, uh... a tape deck, some Creedence tapes, and there was a, uh... uh, my briefcase.

Young Cop: In the briefcase?

The Dude: Uh, uh, papers, um, just papers, uh, you know, uh, my papers, business papers.

Young Cop: And what do you do, sir?

The Dude: I'm unemployed.

This is the most succinct demonstration of the film's charm: the elaborate, wordy setup to a punchline that you can see coming, but that is nonetheless hilarious because of the actors' delivery. It's the actors that make this film: without the perfect casting—many of the parts were written with these specific actors in mind—and without their perfect comic timing, it wouldn't work. But it does work, every minute. With sly references to movies as varied as 42nd Street and The Long Goodbye, this is both a celebration of cinema and one of the best comedies ever made.
 
Donny: Phone's ringing, Dude.

The Dude: Thank you, Donny.

-

Maude Lebowski: What do you do for recreation?

The Dude: Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.

--

Walter Sobchak: I told those ####s down at the league office a thousand times that I don't roll on Shabbos!

Donny: What's Shabbos?

Walter Sobchak: Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don't work, I don't get in a car, I don't ####### ride in a car, I don't pick up the phone, I don't turn on the oven, and I sure as ####

[shouts]

Walter Sobchak: don't ####### roll! Shomer shabbos!

The Dude: Walter...

Walter Sobchak: Shomer ####### shabbos.

The Dude: Oh #### it.

--

The Dude: Also, my rug was stolen.

Younger Cop: The rug was in the car?

The Dude: No. It was here.

Younger Cop: [eager] Oh, separate incidents.

Maude Lebowski: [on answering machine] Jeffrey, this is Maude Lebowski. I need to see you. I'm the one who took your rug.

Younger Cop: Well. I guess we can close the books on that one.

--

Blond Treehorn Thug: [holding up a bowling ball] What the #### is this?

The Dude: Obviously you're not a golfer.

----

The Dude: Dude.

Nihilist: [on the phone] Who is this?

The Dude: Dude. The bag man, man. Where do you want us to go?

Nihilist: Us?

The Dude: [to Walter] ####!

--

The Dude: Yeah, well. The Dude abides.

The Stranger: The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals.

 
I'm not sure how I missed it all these years but just finally saw the Big Lebowski.I liked it quite a bit. Bridges was good. And Goodman and Buscemi were great. Although I would have liked to see a lot more from Buscemi. But the dialog when all 3 were together was top notch.The Dude was tiresome with the hippie shtick but it was ok. As I said, I liked it a lot.I'm just not sure I get the love I see for it by some. Can you help me understand?J
Yah, well, you know, thats just like, your opinion, man.
 

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