The Rewatchables - 'The Big Lebowski' With Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, Jason Concepcion, and David Shoemaker

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, Jason Concepcion, and David Shoemaker lace up their bowling shoes and make themselves a batch of White Russians to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1998 cult classic ‘The Big Lebowski,’ starring Jeff Bridges and John Goodman and directed by the Coen brothers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to the rewatchables. Sometimes there are podcasters. I won't say heroes, because what's a hero? But sometimes there are podcasters, and I'm talking about Sean Fennacy, Jason Concepcion, and David Shoeemaker, and myself, Chris Ryan, and we are here to talk about the 1998 classic,

The Big Lobowski, this is the rewatchables. I received this ransom note. Big men. They want you to take the money. And that is curry. Why are you? Big crime. Why should we say?

settle for 20 grand when we can keep the entire million. Big trouble. Where's my money? Where's the money? We chase the money. The Big Lebowski. On March 6th from the creators of Fargo comes the story of a ransom gone wrong. You got any leads? Leeds. And the two

friends who will do anything to solve. Laffable, man. The Big Lobowski, rated R. Guys, this one really means a lot. I think for the people at this table, I would get, I would

venture to say that this is the most rewatched movie among the four of us. That's a great call. You're already throwing rocks. Let's go. I just, I wouldn't be surprised. If we put it all together, I asked Jason today, how many times do you think you've seen this movie? 700. 700 times. I think that this movie has literally been on in some for another in my various homes,

in various cities, and various countries for 20 years. The Big Lobaski was released in 1998. 20 years ago to this week, we're recording this on March 7th. He was released yesterday. Written produced, edited. and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen. It stars Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Steve Bouchem, John Titoro, David Thuleau, Sam Elliott, Ben Gazzaris,

Peter Stormar, Tara Reid, and David Huddlestone, in one of maybe the best ensembles I've ever seen assembled. Yeah. Cinematography by Roger Deacons, who just picked up his Oscar after losing out on 13 different nominations. That's right. Carter Burwell did the music, but the music supervision, the soundtrack was music supervised by Teabone.

It is one of the iconic movie soundtracks of the 1990s, along with Dase and Confused, Goodfellas, Juice. It's a mystery. It's a comedy. It's a stoner philosophy text. It is probably the most purely enjoyable Cohen Brothers movie, I would say, even though at the time it was viewed as something of a failure.

I think it immediately found its audience, and that audience grew. So I found a small core audience. and the audience grew. But it was coming off of the back of Fargo, which had been the Cohen brothers' critical and commercial sort of high watermark. And I think a lot of people expected them

to sort of keep moving towards the prestige, keep moving towards awards fair. And instead, they made this weird comedy, this weird movie, set in the early 90s about a stoner, unemployed, like, bowling philosopher, his buddies, a missing woman, the porn industry

modern art and everything else you could possibly think of. It was obviously influenced very much by Raymond Chandler. The fiction of Raymond Chandler, mystery fiction of major channel. It's also influenced by the adaptions of Raymond Chandler's work like Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. I want to hear from you guys.

When was the first time you saw it? And do you remember if it was immediately connected with you, Jason? In 1997-98, I worked at a movie theater. So I saw every movie released that year. Every movie. Great year to be working in a movie theater. From the hits to the smaller movies, Run Lola Run, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan. I saw this at the Nickelodeon movie theater, and I was, like, I was blown away.

I remember thinking being semi-disappointed in the ending, but I was like, that was incredible. That was one of the greatest, funniest movies I've ever seen. Jeff Bridges also, we forget now, did not look like this. That was like a shock to see. him like this. Also, no movie, no piece of culture has done more to damage the resume of the Eagles than this movie. Or prop them up as this sort of like nightbird flying over Los Angeles. What do you think? What was your first experience with this movie, Sean? It definitely wasn't in a movie theater. I remember being a very avid Entertainment Weekly

reader at this time and the response in Entertainment Weekly to this movie being like, man, and the Cohen's really misfired after Fargo. They screwed it up. They had all this momentum, and then they made this dumb bowling curio. And I was like, okay, I guess I'll wait for VHS. And I did wait for VHS. And I think I'm almost certain I rented it from Blockbuster

that week came out and didn't get it. And then watched it a second time. And the second time I was like, top five movie ever made. Yeah. And I have basically felt that way for a long time. Yeah, and you've continued to watch it. It's been on cable.

I think this is one of those movies that gets purchased on every, format as it comes out. It doesn't matter. How many times you've owned it? I learned last night that my DVD, which I purchased in 1999, no longer works. Oh, no. So I think I burned it out.

Is there a Blu-ray of this? Is there like a good Blu-Rae with this? I just don't own it. Shoemaker, what about you? I saw this in the theater with my dad. It was just the two of us. And I'm sure I was home from college, you know, just like a summer thing. Was it a summer movie or winter?

It was a, I guess it came out. This is spring. March. I guess I was home for some reason. Spring break for David Shoemaker. Yeah, this is a great journey. But I just, you know, this was obviously the first time. This was among the first movies that I was kind of cognizant of on a slightly elevated level.

But this is definitely one of the first movie, probably the first movie going experience that I remember were a movie just sort of washed over me, like in a good way, like a, you know, oncoming cloud of smoke. And just sort of involved me. And, like, my initial takeaways were, were almost entirely, like, emotional, you know? I mean, it was not in, like, it was an emotionally intense movie, but I remember just feeling like, like, I was, like, just being of a peace with the movie, you know? It was just such a, just such a, like,

a beautifully constructed little simple world that was totally foreign to me. Well, we'll talk a lot about the world that this movie builds. I actually saw this movie. I think it was Easter. weekend in Vienna. And I was like, I was doing my year abroad, my semester abroad. And we were on a, we were on spring vacation. I was going to school in Cork, Ireland.

And we were on our spring break, which is actually quite long in Ireland. Shout out to, shout out to Ireland. It's an incredible three sentences so far. You're like the protagonist in a Graham Green novel. I know. So we, there's not a lot to do in Vienna over Easter weekend. Most of you are like shuts down. And, but this movie was out and I was like, I like, I like the colonel.

brothers. And I got me and my friend went and saw it. And let me tell you, the nihilist jokes. Play a little different in Austria. But I was like Robert De Niro in Cape Fear. Just like, ah! Ha! Ha! Ha! In the back of the theater and everybody else is completely quiet. It does bring me to this idea, though, that

you know, for what the Bill Murray classics of the early 80s were to people of a young, like a slightly older generation than us, I think. that this movie is one of the great lines movies. And we'll get to the best quotes, but one of the things that rewatchable movies start to do is they become indistinguishable from the way you talk and the way you think and the, like, you start to see situations as that's over the line or, you know, like you start to kind of articulate things as if you were a character in these movies.

I think it's like this. What else would it be like, you know, obviously stripes and caddyshack and Ghostbusters were movies for. Yeah, I think Dazin Confuses like this too. Yeah, with all right, all right, all right, and stuff like that. There's a... Pulp Fiction's kind of like that. You know, like some of the early Tarantino stuff is kind of like that,

but I always love lines movies. Do you do have one of those where you just like find yourself uttering dialogue? No, I'm not a lines quota. And that's actually one of my biggest problems with this movie is I mean, I don't know if it's just a... I think the movie, the movie's brilliantly made. Yeah. But I think that my opinion of the movie goes, like, overall is affected by the amount of people I

hear quoting the lines throughout my life. And it's become... positive way. It's taken on this whole second life as, you know, as conventions. You know, there are people who sort of like model their life around what the dude says in this movie for better or for worse.

I'm sure they're very happy, but... This is anecdotal, but hanging out with musicians in the late 90s and early aughts, this was like in every van and on every bus. Yeah. Big Lobowski was like the movie people watched. That and Spinal Tap was the movie band people watched.

Yeah, absolutely. The one thing that's interesting about movies when you rewatch them, especially at the clip that we've probably all seen this is that the actual narrative arc of the movie starts to become opaque to say the and this movie really lends itself to that

because I was surprised about the order of scenes like I watched it again last night and I was like oh that happens this early or that happens this late oh the Larry scene is like way later than I thought it was and you know the end of this movie does get a little bit murky and kind of but it

It's funny how it is kind of like a stoner dream in a way. There is really no end to this movie. No. And then stuff happens multiple times. The Jackie Treehorn thugs come to his apartment, the dude's apartment like three or three times, and it's hard to tell which time happens when the ferret happens. And that's the nihilists.

Actually, yeah, there's just a lot of stuff that kind of interweaves. Yeah, I have a theory that the whole movie is about like echoes and acid flashbacks. You know, there's this great tick in the movie where whenever the dude hears a someone's, say something like right at the top when he hears George H.W. Bush say, this aggression will not stand in Kuwait. And then later he's talking to the Big Old House and he says, this aggression will not stand, man. He keeps like taking sentences that he hears and then misplacing them out of context in the same way that, you know, the nihilist, the, the thought, the Jackie Treehorn thugs come back, the nihilist come back. There's all of these like,

did we already see this? Didn't this already happen? Like, where am I? Where am I in the story? This like intentional confusion that feels the way that a 48-year-old stoner would probably feel all day. Yeah, and you have no idea what time of day it is when they're in the bowling alley. Like they're all smoking and drinking Miller, but you're like, but it could be like 10 in the morning or it could be like three in the morning. It wouldn't be surprised either way. Absolutely.

That brings me to an interesting point, which is that this, for as much as it spawned conventions, it's spawned obviously, like, countless guys thinking they're hilarious at parties by quoting it. It also has a couple, there's a couple of theories about what's happening in this movie, what the movie is ultimately about. And I thought before we got into

the nitty-gritty into the awards and everything. I wanted to hear if you guys had any ideas about what this movie is really about. Shoemaker, we were chatting a little bit about this. Yeah, well, you were, we were like texting last night and I told you I was trying to talk myself into the theory

that Donnie didn't exist. Well, that Donnie and Walter don't exist. The more popular one is that Donnie is a figment of Walter's imagination, but I was trying to wrap my head around. What if neither of them actually exists? And they're just sort of like the id and ego or whatever, or like the good angel and the bad angel

sitting on dude's shoulders. I mean, I think ultimately, obviously the Cohen brothers have dismissed any like, you know, brought any sort of, like, fancy interpretation of the film. But I think that, like, their intention doesn't matter. I, for some reason I was thinking about Game of Thrones

who watched Concepcion perk up because people always try to do these, like, giant meta readings of it. Like, this is just based in Norse mythology or it's The War of the Roses or whatever. when in fact, probably what happened is George R. Martin's just taking, we'll just like read a paragraph on Wikipedia and be like, yes, that'll help me drive this chapter of my book.

And then sort of weaves its way into the rest of the story. And I think a lot of Labowski is just like these little snippets of ideas, be it like absurdism and Camus or, you know, the first Iraq war or like whatever. I mean, I think there's just lots of little pieces that, and at the end of the day, going back to what Sean said, I think it really is just a, kind of treat us on sort of the creative process, you know, in movie making. I mean, that's what you could say about a lot of them. But even that, I don't think, is like, was their intention.

I just sort of think that that's, that they just sort of looked at, like, the literal absurdism of something like the Big Sleep, and they just, and through that, they sort of ended up telling a story about, you know, making that movie. Yeah, Jill Cohen on the DVD extras for one of the, versions of this movie said the plot is sort of secondary to the other things that are going on in this piece. I think that people get a little confused. It's not necessarily going to get in the way of them enjoying the movie. You know, that kind of harkens back to William Faulkner frantically wiring Raymond Chandler to ask like, who kills somebody at the end of the big sleep?

And Chandler's just like, I don't know. Sean, do you have any theories about what this is about? The Cohen Brother movies, they're a blank slate. You can put what you want on them. Yeah, I don't have like some big metaphorical. theory, but I do think it's an interesting ode to the capital of unemployed people with nothing to do. Los Angeles is just full of people

who work in these transient industries, and they're just like not working. And no one's working in this movie. No one has a job. Everyone is either wandering about bowling or making porn. There's just no... There's no work at. Where is that, Los Angeles?

Can we get back to it? That is totally true. And one of my biggest, I mean, being a relatively new Los Angeles transplant, one of the most shocking things to me was how all of the things that I would see in TV and movies that I thought were just fabrications of the movie industry. Actually, that's how they exist in Los Angeles? Yes. Like you'd see, like, I remember how many TV shows and movies have I watched?

I'm just like, that's not what a sports bar. That's not what a dive bar looks like. And then you go out like your first night and you're like, oh, this is what a dive bar looks like here. And it's true. The movie definitely takes on a different relevance when you're in L.A. and you see these people around all the time. Yeah, I found myself being like, where on the 210 is that in Simi Valley?

Like, it has a new residence too if you're a Los Angeles resident. I think that's also what you're saying is why it speaks to people who are in and around college when it came out. Because, I mean, I had a job that was literally stand in a record store for upwards of six hours.

I had no phone. There was no phone to look at. I listen to music and watch people and stare out the window. And that was it. And that, like, that was a kind of, that you could have, and I think that this movie really captures that, this kind of, like, ambling, aimlessness. Do you have any, any, like, readings of this movie? I do. It reminds me a lot of

Cutter's Way. You guys see in Cutter's Way? Another Jeff Bridges' neo-nouar movie. And to me, both those movies are about, like, the shrinking ambitions of the baby boomer generation. You know, they were like, we're going to change the world, we're going to destroy sexual moors, free love, a wide open political system, and then it's just like, actually, we're just going to get high and bowl, and the people who make money are still going to win. They're going to, they're going to sell bodies and make porn, and I'm going to sit around and complain about the Eagles smoke weed. Yeah, maybe steal a rug. Yeah, maybe steal a rug and bowl. Like, that's it. Yeah. It's interesting. Cutter's way is a lot like that. The Cutter character in that movie is a lot more strident and

racist and like mean, but it's kind of the same movie about like the failure of that generation to really do anything of substance. I don't know why they made this movie. There's a lot of, you know, when you can read stuff about Barton Fink or about Hell Caesar even recently where you can do these deep sort of symbolic readings. There's like an entire theory that Barton Fink is about the rise of fascism. There are theories that the Big Loboski is an allegory about U.S. foreign policy.

And I guess I have been convinced that it could be, but I don't think that they're such nomic filmmakers. They're so hard to read. They don't give you anything in the press. They don't come out and say this is what this movie's about. And they're so prolific, so hard to chart what they're doing, that, you know, there's a popular theory that Lewin Davis is about the cat. You know what I mean?

There's like an entire thing where it's like it's a dream the cat is having or something. I don't really think that they would make a movie about a dream that a cat was having, but that's what's sort of cool about Cohen Brothers movies that does what make a lot of them so rewatchable is that there's so many different ways to read them. Yeah, I think there is at least, this is part of a triumvirate of Cohen Brothers movies with a serious man and Lewin Davis that is essentially about the 60s and the 70s and everything that happened in that era and what the consequences are. And essentially what happens to people who aren't ambitious enough, you know,

and how they're victimized by society, whether that's like intent, it's impossible to say. Like you said, they're so gnomic, they would never clarify. Like, that's, of course,

what I mean. But if you look at the protagonists of all three of those movies, they just kind of let things happen to them. Yeah. And any time they try, they get punished for it. Right.

And there is something that is totally to Jason's point about what that generation thought it was and what it turned out to be. And these guys are just people, I mean, they make movies about things that they find interesting and amusing. You were talking about borrowing stuff. I mean, a lot of the characters in this movie are composites of guys that they met when financing and producing Blood Simple, their first feature.

Walter, there's a lot of Walter is based on John Millius, the filmmaker. The best. A Gunnut filmmaker who wrote a version of Apocalypse now that Francis Ford Coppola, he picked and chose what he used from. But if you ever seen the making of Apocalypse now, it's called Hearts of Darkness. Milius is amazing in this. It's just like an amazing, amazing person. But these are just guys that they met and they kind of like pulled these little strings together

and did what they did with it. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I mean, you can see, I mean, I went obviously down a rabbit hole like in preparation for this as I'm sure we all did. But there's lots of videos of the, you know, the characters that these people were, I mean, it's almost, like my reference is like the Kramer reality tour that happened in New York after Seinfeld took off.

But yeah, it's just all these little, all of these just threads. that they pull together into this, you know, one pseudo story, I guess. I mean, it's, like you, like you said, the story is totally secondary. Yeah, I mean, there's stuff about O'Rourth there where it's like, oh, this is, this is Homer, this is the Odyssey. It's like, yeah, well, most stories are, you know what I mean? This is Alice in Wonderland.

Well, most stories are Alice in Wonderland. Without detouring too far into O'Brother, which is my favorite Coen Brothers movie. Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah. But that actually is the one that puts the lie to all of their sort of, the Coen Brothers denial that any of their movies mean anything because it's so clearly based on source material.

But I don't think that that's necessarily one thing or the other. I just love the existence of this movie in their body of work. Where does this rank for you among their films? Definitely top five. Probably fourth, I would say.

It's a little harder to do off the top of my head. A serious man's always been my favorite since I saw it. I think that that's like the sum total of what they're driving at, which is like, we're fucked. Even in their funniest moments, That's the overweening thesis. But it's top five for sure.

I've definitely seen it the most. Yeah, I think I've seen this in Miller's the most. And I think it goes one, two, these two for me. Yeah, I think it's top three. Like the more kind of screwbally, Preston-Sturg-y stuff that they do, like Hudson, Hudson, Hudsucker. And this are my favorite Cohen Brothers stuff. That's my favorite stuff that they do.

Hutzucker, I think, is one of those movies that's like so underrated down. I totally agree. All right, we're going to get to the awards, and let's start our awards with casting what ifs brought to you by ZipRecruiter. This is casting what ifs brought to you by ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Talent is really important in films and for your business. And ZipRecruiter matches the right job, secret of the right job, just like an actor, finds the right part. ZipRecruiter is the ultimate casting agent for your job, and ZipRecruiter makes it so that you don't have to wonder what if. So let's do casting what ifs for the role of Jeffrey Lobowski and the Big Lobowski.

There's not a lot of what ifs for the Big Lobowski, but there's one role that the Cohen brothers considered a bunch of different people for it. And it's kind of fascinating to imagine what would have happened. The Goodman role was written for Goodman. The Bishemey role was written for Bishemey, but the part of Jeffrey Lobowski, not the dude, but Jeffrey Lobowski.

The big Lobowski. Their dream part was Marlon Brando. Their dream actor was Marlon Brando. I can't imagine what would have happened if Marlon Brando is like get a job, sir. Yeah. It would have been really incredible. It would have been a very different movie.

And also, Brando's so notorious for changing things on the set and for improvising and for somewhat slowing down production. That I'm sort of glad that this movie didn't get, you know, way laid the way the island of Dr. Moreau did by Marlon Brando. Totally agree. This whole script for this movie was very deliberate. It was filmed. It's apparently filmed, like, word for word from what they wrote. I have to imagine. They're pretty tight with it.

So the other guys considered for the Jeffrey. LeBowalski role, Robert Duvall, apparently didn't care for the script. He would have been great. He would have been awesome. Anthony Hopkins didn't want to play an American. Would you consider, I guess Hannibal Lecter is not technically an American. I don't really know. He's post-land of origin, as far as I'm concerned.

Anthony Hopkins would have been pretty wild. Gene Hackman was also considered, but he was taking a break from acting. Then they had this B-list, apparently, that included these interesting names. Norman Mailer. Famous American novelist I actually think this would have been he would have been an incredible Jackie Trehorn Oh yeah

Norman Miller He would have been very good at that George C. Scott Wow okay Jerry Falwell That great guy I go like that Speaks for himself

Gorvadol which I think would have been perfect Yeah Is it what these okay Are there other ones Andy Griffith All right William F Buckley

I don't under like These are just guys they had on a list that they were thinking about Oh my gosh George Plimpton feels so left out right now And Ernest Borgnein is the last one. Oh, man. I mean, Ernestborg 9, I think, would have been fine.

I think they landed at the right place. They ended up with David Huddlestone. So, like, a good employer finds a good employee, the Cohen brothers found their Jeffrey Labowski. The casting what if segment is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. 80% of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate through the site and just one day. You can try it for free today at ZipRecruiter.com slash rewatch.

That's ZipRecruiter.com slash rewatch. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. That was casting what ifs brought to you by ZipRecruiter. And we're going to go into most rewatchable scene now, guys. This is one of the hardest categories I've addressed since I have been doing these podcasts. I don't know if any scene, any movie has more scenes that are rewatchable. Also scenes that bleed into another scene that's rewatchable. So I don't know really where to draw the line on certain things.

I want to just throw a couple nominees out there. You guys obviously come with your own. The pre-credit credits and credit sequence. basically the first time the guys come to his house, piano's rug, and then that's the hard cut to the man and me, Bob Dylan, and the slow motion bully. I mean, you are immediately drawn into this, like,

dreamlike state of this movie. It's like you're completely in the world of this movie as soon as that credit sequence starts. Another one is over the line. Obviously, the smoky scene, Jimmy Dale Gilmore. You don't fuck with the Jesus The Titoro Just like the full Tataro scene

Let me tell you something, Pandeyo You pull any of your crazy shit with us You flash a piece out on the lanes I'll take it away from you And stick it up your ass And pull the fucking trigger Till it goes click Jesus

You said it man Nobody fucks with the Jesus The scene at the bowl Allie, fuck the tournament, but then the dude's conversation with the stranger with Sam Elliott and the forget about the tow diner scene. There's so many others, so I just almost want to hear what you guys would nominate before we vote. When the dude tells Walter and Donnie about the guys coming to his apartment and peeing

on his rug and there's that, Walter, the Chinaman peed on my rug and Walter goes off on that whole thing about, there's the over-the-line thing, and then all of a sudden he's like, dude, Chinaman is not the accepted nomenclature anymore. And the dude has, maybe my favorite line in that piece is we're not talking about the guys who built the railroad or something. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, dude. Across this line, you do not. Also, dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian American, please.

Walter, this isn't a guy who built the railroads here. This is a guy. What the fuck? Are you talking about? he peed on my rug. They peed on the dude's rug. Donnie, you're out of your element. Dude, the Chinaman is not the issue here.

There's also a great callback to that scene in the next scene, which is one of my favorite scenes, which is basically the introduction of Brandt and then the introduction of the Bigelbowski. And then the Bigelbowski says, some Chinaman took them from me in Korea, referring to as a head. So it's like we've got a reference to the word Chinaman

twice in six minutes. That would be my nomination. Like Hoffman is unbelievable. unbelievably funny in this movie. The way he slaps his thighs. So good. Whenever he like raises his arm and like drops his head to indicate something, all of his body movements, his, the repetition he has and his phrasing, all that stuff.

And then when he has the showdown with the Lboskie who says, you know, essentially lectures the dude and the condolences, the bums lost. Get a job, sir. All of that stuff. I was actually going to say the same scene and was surprised that you took it. But mine for a different reason, sort of. All of the performances were incredible. But there's something about the variation in volume in the movie that is, I think if it weren't for characters, I mean, actors like John Goodman and Big Lobowski and everything, that you would goze off, sort of.

So it needs this incredible variance. But that's not my, that's not what I dig about the movie, you know? Wait, so you're saying it's like a pixie song. It's like quiet. Exactly. Without the, without like the, yeah, the crushing chords, you would just sort of, it would be. great background music. But the light, but the really soft parts are my favorite parts.

So, I mean, like, when I think about the movie, I think of, I think of the dude in the bathtub, you know, but that's, but there's not a lot of there there as far as, like, something's the movie. That first scene where he meets Lobowski, big Lobowski, for me, strikes that perfect, it's that perfect balancing act of, like, this incredible volume and anxiety on one side and just a blist out dude on the other side, trying to come to terms with this, like, this is the first time, I mean, the guy's coming to his house and pee on his rug,

but you see him actively trying to make sense of this world to which he's completely alien, right? He's so non-plus to every confrontation. I know. Obviously, you are not a golfer. You know, like, he's so calm at every moment. At least there's housebroken. Yeah, I think my favorite is over the line

just because the violence that's kind of right underneath of that scene and the fact that he pulls a piece and it's just like, Walter, man. Why do you have a piece? Put the piece away, man. And it's like a world of pain. What it did you? This is your partner.

It's the whole world God crazy. I'm not the only one around here. It gives a shit about the rolls. Market zero. They're calling the cops, man. Put the piece away. Market zero. Walter, get the piece away.

Walter? You think I'm fucking around here, Market Zero. I think what's cool about that is it also is like, we've been talking a lot about, like, this idea of like these kind of people and probably we were these people at some point we definitely knew people like this but like a guy like the dude would know a guy who has a piece and calls it a piece and calls it a piece and maybe pulls it when he shouldn't you know what I mean like at bowling because smoky stepped over the line and it's just like all the stuff about like league

bylaws and and like he's like come on man it's smoky it's just like who cares I that's that's still my most rewatchable scene, just the way that thing jumps up a notch. So any other, any strong feelings otherwise, or you guys go for that? I said this to you before we started recording. This whole movie, probably differently than every other movie that this podcast will cover, it just like sort of flows in and out of itself. And it's really hard to pull one scene out, even to pull one line out or one acting performance out because it's all just, it's all just this, like I said before, like this cloud that watches over you.

I have two little quick ones that are fun. that I was reminded of last night. One, when the dude meets Knox Harrington for the first time, David Thulis. I mean, he's like Sandra from Biennale and all that stuff. All of that stuff, whatever the hell David Thulis is doing is like giggling. He's speaking German and laughing. I also just love like, do you want to drink the bars over there? Right.

And for some reason, my wife pointed out to me last night that the bar, they all have toppers on all the bottles. So it's like it looks like a bar, but they're in an apartment. Also, how many people still had Kalua like in the, like in the, their house. Yeah. I grew up in a Klua house, so that was in the resident there. Then the other one is when he confronts John Polito.

Yeah. And, you know, they identify that they're both detectives, so to speak. He's like, I'm a brother Seamus like you. I'm a private dick. And that, that was, I think I saw it like the eighth time and I was like, oh, this is Raymond Chandler. I don't think I really got it until several viewings later. Because John Polito is somehow like, John Polito and Maude Lobowski's accent are trapped in a

Bogart movie and everything else is some Altman reflection of a Bogart movie. Yeah. So I also just really like that as like a very specific callback. All the phraseology that Polito's character uses. There's some fun Reddit threads about the idea that everybody in this movie knows they're in a movie. With the

exception of Donnie. That everybody in this movie is like, I am an archetype you know, and that the dude knows that he is like the Bogart character who keeps getting beat up and that, you know, Walter knows that he is like a war veteran like what everybody knows like what they're doing.

All right. Well, it's almost impossible to pick a rewatchable scene with a movie this rewatchable. But let's talk about what age the best. Because as I said to Jason, before right was we were walking in here, if you told me this movie was made last year,

I would believe you. 100%. Yes. 100%. Which I don't know whether it speaks more to the Cohen brothers are just like so, they just do what they do so perfectly that it never ages. Yeah.

Or this movie was so influential on, how dialogue and comedy and visual comedy is sort of played. Like, I think that this movie is influential on something like stepbrothers. You know what I mean? Like the way in which these scenes play out and kind of like escalate within the moment. And there's lots of masters of three characters sitting together. And it's so artfully done. But it, I never feel like, oh, this is kind of like, you know, this is not, not aged well.

But like, let's talk about what's age the best. The dialogue. Yes. The setting, the music, or the mystery, I guess, you know, the sort of basically the plot itself. This is a really hard thing to answer. Because my takeaway from watching it last night was for the first time I felt very emotionally connected to the story, which I don't think I did as like a college student. You know, the college student, I was laughing.

And it was a great movie to have on in the background while you were pre-gaming before you went out. That was the identity of this movie. And so I think, like, in a way, the characters and that moment, after Walter eulogizes Donnie, and then he accidentally throws the ashes in his face, and they're upset, and then they hug, and then they say, let's go bowling. I was like, really, I really care about these guys.

Yeah. Like, I'm really in, I'm in this, and that feels ridiculous, given the circumstances in the movie, and also the fact that the Cohn brothers, I'm pretty sure, like, you're a moron for caring about these guys. Oh, sure. But I do, but I did feel very, like, connected to the consequences of the story. Yeah, yeah.

I never felt that before watching. the movie. For me, it's just the Cohen's ability to create a story that exists outside of like fads and signifiers. You know, like, if you were going to make a movie and, like, I want people to understand where it's taking place, you'd put a cell phone in there, you'd put a computer in there, someone would send an email. There's none of that in this. It's tied to a time and place, the 90s, you get the George Bush clips and stuff like that. But it kind of floats outside of all of that stuff. There's no gadget or thing in this movie that is like, oh, wow, you know, that's a Motorola razor.

So this took place in whatever. Yeah. You know, the story exists outside of that. I think to me, like the timelessness of the movie is what's timeless about the movie. Totally agree. I mean, it's hard to say anything else than that. You said if you told me the movie came out last year, I'd believe. If you told me the movie came out in like 1988 or something, I would believe it.

And there's something about, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not the filmhead that other people at this table are. But, like, there is a, I mean, I feel like the way the movie was shot was deliberately sort of sandbagging a little bit. Like, especially in the first half, it looks like it has the film quality and some of the shot selection of like an 80s NBC drama. Like, there's not, like, the idea that Deacons did this, you know, and then, and now, and most recently we've seen him doing Blade Runner 2049 is just mind-boggling, right? Yeah. Yeah. But then once you get sort of seduced by the movie and the, and not even the dream sequences, which I could, I'm kind of neither here nor there for me, but the, but the, just the, as the movie kind of expands into the closing acts, you realize that this is like an incredible, I mean, just, it's, everything is very deliberate, I guess. Yeah, the idea of Deacons shooting the bowling alley scene.

are just, it's just so funny to me to think about the guy who is also doing Sicario being like, all right, let's make sure we can get like Jimmy Dale Gilmore's like foot right here. I would agree with you guys. I think there's something about the setting and specifically the places it chooses to be set. So bowling alleys haven't changed in 45 years. There are some new ones that are like, it's trans music and like, you know, you can order your drinks from the screen. These are my kinds of bowling alleys. These bowling alleys, we have all been to these bowling alleys in Texas and large.

Island in Philadelphia, like this, these places still exist. They still smell of cigarette smoke and aerosol that you spray on shoes to disinfect them. The supermarket that he goes into is just, it's just a Ralph's. You know what I mean? Like, it still looks like that in there. You know, it's like... That's another joke that I get now, by the way, that I didn't get when the Malibu chief has him and he's only ideas of Ralph's card. I was just like, oh, now I know what Ralph's is. I thought that was a fake thing that they made up. And Los Angeles is changing now. We can see it with our own eyes. But, man, you still drive... down certain streets, you still, like,

if you ever go down to Redondo, or if you drive around certain places, like, it's still there. These weird little apartment complexes. Oh, yeah. Are still, like, that weird fountain in the middle. LA is full of those, to this day. Yeah, and it's, so you can still see this Los Angeles there.

I always sort of regret, you know, everybody always has that feeling like they arrived in a city five years too late. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I wish I was in New York for the CBGBs. And I wish I got to L.A. when you could actually drive back and forth to the beach without having it be a full day excursion. This L.A. is very unpopulated.

It feels like it's either for the very rich or for the people who have kind of come to the end of their loose end. You know, and it's an intoxicating place to live in and to visit for this movie. So, yeah, the setting. Yeah, I mean, I think that, just to spin off what you said, L.A. is still a place where you can still go on a, I mean, you can go on a big Lebowski tour, right?

Yeah, right? But you can also still still. go on a Raymond Chandler's L.A. tour, right? And you can, I'm sure you can go on like a Kardashians tour. You know what I mean?

But like it's all still that here present around us. Yeah. It doesn't. It's not like New York. We're like as soon as, as soon as a block gets hot, then like all of the Chinese laundries are out and bars are in.

You know, and like overnight. It's, there's still room for history here. The one time they tried to do a little bit of, of technology is Jackie Treehorn's talking about. There's still a lot of exciting things happening with electronic erotic. To me,

that actually, That aged beautifully. I know. That's the thing. It's like, we just had this story about how you can put celebrities on porn actors' heads in VR. And that's basically what Jackie Treon was talking about 20 years ago. That's a great scene, too. We didn't mention that earlier.

But it's, but that, I mean, I think part of that, as opposed to the rest of the movie, sort of is, you set it aside a little bit because it's different in a lot of ways. That scene is different. But it does, but it is just a beautiful sort of like just isolated scene. It's very... And you still have that experience here where you wind up at a party and you're like, man,

this is like a little bit above my pay grade. I've been at those parties, yes. We're just like, how did I wind up in this house? Yeah. And like, when are they going to throw me out? Did anything age badly? Does anything age the worst in this movie? I could not personally come up with a nominee for this.

I have a lot of question marks because I was trying really hard to figure this out. Yeah. Of all of the characters, it's sacrilege, I know. But Turturro is a... I asked myself the question if that character in another movie

if we would have been bringing that up as the answer to this. My other question is, and this is not just like aged well or age the worst, but just in general about aging, if this movie were made, were remade today,

how much different would this movie have been if the dude was carrying around a vape pin the whole time instead of a joint? You could have, there would be that joke where he, you know, the psych gag where he drops the joint on his lap, that's gone.

A whole bunch of stuff is gone. But there's a romanticism. of the guy with like the tiny roach in his hand, just like, you know, and it's not, and it would be, that's, weirdly just like, like marijuana is like totally mainstream now in a way that it certainly wasn't back then, but that's the biggest change.

I mean, you couldn't, that, that character, I'm sure that character exists. There's so lots of guys smoking jays. You can go to the med men and buy one, but weed culture is a different thing now than it was. And this movie probably had something to do with that. It's true. This Titoro thing is a little tough if you examine it.

If you keep it unexamined, it's hilarious. Yeah. If you dig underneath. And I feel a little similarly about Bunny Lobowski. That whole, given everything that happened to Tara Reid over the last 20 years, basically the way that that character is positioned in the movie is like, she's a dumb porn actress, trophy wife gold digger. And that's it.

Yes. And like there's nothing else. And that's okay. It's okay to have broad caricature. A lot of the movie is broad caricature. But if we want to like examine the cultural politics of this movie, it's not great. So there was supposed to be, I really don't know if this will ever happen, but there is supposed to be a Jesus sequel, like a spin-off movie that Tatoro was largely kind of behind.

I don't know if I think the Cohen's... It was shot. It was shot. It was shot last year. He wrote and directed it. Terturo wrote and directed it. It's called Going Places. Yes.

It's simultaneously a remake of the 1974 French film starring Gerard de Pardue called Going Places. Very problematic film. Very problematic film. And a sequel. to this movie. It also stars, I think, Bobby Kanavali. I don't know when it's coming out, but it was shot. And it had the Cohen's... Blessing?

Maybe private blessing, we'd say. This is not the kind of thing they would tweet about. Right. Do they tweet? I think the problematic issues of going places comport with what we know of Jesus' character. Oh, yeah. He's a child sex abuse. He's accused of it, yeah.

Wow, this is actually shocking news to me. I was not aware of this. that this movie explains his background and that he is not, that he was like framed for pedophilia. You know. Great. Well, we'll look forward to that.

He'll do that rewatchable 20 years from now. Turturo was also, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, he wasn't a huge fan of his own performance. I think he was a fan of the movie. He was like, I didn't get it at first. Right. Yeah. And then he came around.

Well, I'm sure because everybody he's largely recognized as a character from this movie all for better or for worse. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and we'll be back with more awards for the rewatchables, Big Lobowski. Today's episode of The Rwatchables is brought to you by Filmstruck. Every time you turn around, it seems like there's another new original series streaming

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Visit Filmstruck.com today. You will not be sorry. That is Filmstruck.com for a free 14-day trial. Okay, guys, we are back, the rewatchables, Big Lobowski, and we're going to continue along with the awards. I'll just give you guys a couple of half-assed internet research corner tidbits here that I found. In the original script, Tara Reid's character, Bonnie Loboski, her real name is fought in the movie. name is Fawn Knudsen. But in the original script, she is named Fawn Gunderson, which suggests that she is part of, she's related to Marge Gunderson somehow. So the Cohen Brothers expanded universe, always working there.

Like I said before, Walter Sobchak is partly based on Apocalypse Now Screenwriter John Millius. A lot of these guys are based on people that the Cohen sort of met in their time in Los Angeles, whether it was people who sort of helped finance. There's a USC teacher named, I believe, Peter Exeline, who the dude is largely based off of, but the dude is also largely based of Jeff Bridges and guys that Jeff Bridges knew in L.A. in the 60s and 70s. And Jeff Dowd, too, right? Jeff Dowd is one, yeah. Yeah, there's like, all of these guys are kind of composite figures.

Yeah. Which is, it's an interesting thing. I wonder if they actually got those people's blessings before they went ahead with this. Because for someone like Dow, Dowd, Dowd isn't really made a lot of this. He appears at every Lubowski Fest. He's like a part of the mythology. I was watching that there's a mini doc that I saw on like Uprocks or something about him and going to Lubowski Fest. And I couldn't help but wonder how much he had sort of become the character that was based on him over the intervening years.

Yeah, you believe what you believe your own myth. Yeah. This was the part, it was edited out of the movie or it was in the original script or whatever, but these two sort of like parallel facts. One, that the dude's money came from a trust fund because he was aired to the Rubik's queue before show. and two, at the end of the movie, the dude reveals that Walter was not of that at all, that he never went to Vietnam. Oh my God.

And that actually lines up more with the Millius, you know, origin story or whatever. But he was just a guy who read Soldiers of Fortune. Yeah. I'm so happy that I didn't know either of those things the first 30 times I saw the movie. But that was, but that's sort of, those are sort of mind-blowing ideas.

All right. Best T-Chechek Performance by a Roll Player at the Dion Waders Award. This is one of the best. fields we've ever had for this. Philip Seymour Hoffman is Brandt, Tara Reid is Bunny, Peter Stormar as

Uli Kunkle, the Nialist. David Thuleus as Knox Harrington. And Jimmy Dale Gilmore, the country music legend, member of the Flatlanders, as smoky here. I got more.

Hit me. Domirera as the limo driver. Comes in very, very Hot with a spinal tapish moment. Oh, wow. Yes. And then is gone. That's great stuff.

I mean, Flea is in this movie. Amy Man. Amy Man. I think Flea is bad in this movie. Shout out to Flea, but I think that he's like so cartoonish that it takes me out of it. David Hudleston, I think also is the Big Lebowski is so funny. I don't know. Jason, who do you like?

I will go with Philip Seymour Hoffman. This is a study? As you can see, the various commendations, awards, citations, honorary degrees, etc. Very impressive. Please feel free to inspect them. Because he's like almost in a different scene in all of the scenes that he's in,

but it is so good. Like he's, it's rare that a comedic performance works when the actor is kind of winking, and he is kind of winking there, but it's just like incredible, all his little, the little things he does with his body, we talk about the way he, like, he has this incredible laugh.

Hoffman's reaction slapping his thighs. To Tara Reid. Yes. Is one of the great things ever. She's just like, Brent has to pay if he wants to watch or whatever the line is.

Also, there's a good echo in that moment too where earlier he's talking about Nancy Reagan and he says, oh, yes, the first lady, wonderful woman. And then when Bunny Lobowski is talking later, he's like, oh, wonderful woman. He has like 11 things he knows how to say. And when the dude is kind of looking over

the big Lobowski's various plaques and pictures, how nervous how nervous Brandt is about him touching them is just incredible yeah but there's a different I like what you said about him being in a different movie that it's that nervousness is different

than the like the palpable anxiety as when he's sitting in the back seat of the limous yes yeah and just the juxtaposition to the big Lobowski is like it's totally different than when he's like these are the little Loboski urban achievers

oh Hoffing is such a genius good in this I mean like the you know Storm Arbor is probably like has become more of like a cultural figure out of this between this and Fargo he just has Transformers. Yeah right

such a such an incredible reputation but I don't see how you could be better than Hoffman here. Yeah so many people in this movie were sort of playing if not Platonic ideals of themselves or of the character then like a lot they played these roles after this movie enough times that it's hard to really just point at this

role and say I mean Hoffman's a good example Sam Elliott's obviously playing just like San Alliant. You know, Terturo and Thule is the two that just like, that sort of meet the heat check definition for me. But another of those performances are particularly my favorite ones in the film. So it's, I'm sort of all over the place with it. I almost put Terturo in the like, he's actually just like a supporting actor in this movie

rather than even though I think Brant's on screen as much as he is. In two and a half scenes. Yeah, I know. But it feels like he's in this, he's the entire second act of the movie for some reason. Just because of the amount of time they spend. doing the ball washing and just like the Hotel California scene is the Gypsy King's cover of it. Him licking the bowl never leaves your brain for two hours, so that's just that he's always present. I think also Ben Gazzara's Jackie Treehorn is pretty underrated.

You gotta be a particular kind of guy to pull off the white suit, that slick Malibu rich guy mentality. Yeah, he's like a bad guy who's done bad things and he really communicates that very quickly. I love also the Malibu sheriff guy who's just like basically does. Get out of my beautiful. He does the John Houston from Chinatown speech. He's like, draws a lot of water here. Lombowski, you don't, you know. The Jackie Treehorn sight gag where he's on the phone, you know,

and he's very, very studiously scribbling something on a pad, and it's obviously an important conversation. And the dude is watching this. And then as soon as Jackie Trujoon leaves the room, the dude runs over to the pad, tries to, you know, does the old trick where you trace, you kind of scribble on the sheet below. And then it's like a doodle of a guy with a huge erection.

One of the top three moments that I've left, like, hardest looks I've ever given in a theater. Go ahead, John. My favorite part of that is when I, you know, obviously it was coming when I was rewatching it last night, and I don't think I realized quite so clearly how Gazara, after he does the doodle, rips the paper off the pad,

folds it, and puts it in his pocket as if it's an important document. It's so, that whole segment is genius. It definitely feels like the most choreographed scene in the whole movie. I mean, it's from cameras to everything else. He's sitting in the beanbag kind of, and he's impressed to get out of it. Yeah, it was amazing, an amazing scene. All right, I'm going to give this one to Hoffman, but there's a lot of honorable mentions there. Apex Mountain.

This is tough, or is it? Is there anything better in this movie than Goodman? Is there ever been anything better in the world than Goodman in this movie? He's got every line. It's just, you know. You see what happens, Larry? You see what happens? This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, Larry.

This is what happens, Larry. You see what happens, Larry? That's what happens when you fuck a man in the ass as he's destroying a car. The TV version of it is that's what happens when you fuck a man in the Alps? Yeah. What is it? It can't be fuck. What is it?

It's whatever. It's like you screw a man in the Alps or something like that. You know, they are very sure. No, this is what happens when you find a stranger in the Al. Oh, God. That's even better. This is, like, the double reference, because the fuck and the ass thing came from, came from Jesus, right?

And then the stranger is obviously a call, is it called to the stranger from the story. But, yeah, when you find it, when you find a stranger in the Alps, it's just legendary. Every line reading he gives, I mean, they show up at that house because the dude finds, like, the kid's book report, right? And then, so Walter, like, has it in a Ziploc bag in a briefcase? like as if it's actual evidence of something and then they show up at the guy's house and the kid's father was like some

television writer. He wrote branded. He wrote 100 episodes of branded. Just how delighted Walter is by the end. A good day to you, sir! They were originally going to make this movie before Fargo and couldn't because Goodman was shooting Roseanne. It's just such a pure... I mean, he's been in so many Coen Brothers movies. He's given so many great performances in Coen Brothers movies,

but this is really one of the iconic performances, like, of the last 20 years. I heard Goodman on Howard Stern a couple of years ago, and it was just like the most heartening conversation I've ever had where Howard is basically telling him he's a genius the whole time, and John Goodman is, like, surprised to hear that anybody thinks anything he's ever done is good, and he's obviously like a very insecure guy and very thoughtful guy. And in this movie, like, it's such a cliche to say that someone is transformative and that they, like, slip into something.

but I definitely am like, Walter Sobjack is in Ralph's right now wandering around like with peace on his ankle. I just buy it so much. He's in the dairy section with a 22. Right, exactly. All right, so there's Goodman. Bridges.

Wait, let me explain something to you. I am not Mr. Lobowski. You're Mr. Lobowski. I'm the dude. So that's what you call me, you know? that or his doudness or uh dueter or uh you know el duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing are you employed sir employed employed it's hard for all of these for all of the actors in this film because of the way that our perception of this film changed their careers but i think that it's

really easy to overest to overlook how much this was transformative for bridges and how like he this was a yeah like he he you know got to play himself in a lot of ways, but he sort of just like called his shot and embodied the role to such a degree that you don't, that it's, you don't even get credit for it half the time. Has he done a movie with short hair since then? Some of the stuff where he just like turns up in a movie to be like the captain of the firehouse for two scenes, like he's in only the brief and he's just like just a dude in jeans and he's like, you got to get out there and get it done.

One thing that did happen. That's it though. I think the Shoemaker makes a great point. Like, basically, if you look at every performance he gave before this, he was the handsomest guy in the movie. Yeah. And he enunciated and he was never seemed like dippy. Even in Starman where he's like a kind of a floating alien figure, like he still is connecting. And this is the first movie.

And basically almost every performance since then is he sounds like he's from Oklahoma. Yeah. Even though he grew up in Los Angeles. Yeah. He is, he mumbles his words in a strange way. Some real John Fugherty, like I thought you were from Bakersfield. So why are you from the bayou now kind of? Yeah.

And like, why did he adopt that persona? And also, like, he seems more comfortable acting this way than he did in like jagged edge. If you watch him in jagged edge now, you're like, what's going on here? This isn't Jeff Bridges. And his time, I mean, his, obviously I wasn't paying a ton of attention to the career arc of Jeff Bridges and like the 90s or whatever. But I don't think he wasn't doing a lot of like, it was something he was like lining up the Oscars before this movie happened. He had a good run and then sort of there was a dip. I mean, when I saw this movie.

John Goodman was the most famous person in it by far. Like when it first came out, just because of Roseanne. He was on TV every week. Yeah, he had done, like, I think that, you know, Jeff Bridges is earlier in his career. He has a couple of, like, sort of really cool thrillers, like A Million Ways to Die and Jagged Edge. And then, you know, he did Tucker, the man in his dream,

that famous Coppola disaster. And then after that kind of kicks around. He does, like, fabulous Baker Boys. And Fisher King was a big deal. Sure. He was a B-plus movie star. Yeah, Vanishing was supposed to be a big deal. it wasn't. Fearless was like actually a great movie but kind of underrated. Blown away. Simmons

like enjoys that a lot. While Bill was supposed to be this incredible sprawling epic, it wound up being kind of like not that great white squall. Like it's just like a lot of near misses and then Lomboski. Yeah. Shots against all odds. Against all odds. And then after Lobowski, you know, he still has some misses like Arlington Road, but it's more like the contender and, you know, C-Biscuit. And he's just showing up and like does his job. I have this. theory that I can't quite articulate that so Jeff Bridges and Harrison Ford are essentially on the same career path for a while there and you know Harrison Ford gets to be in Raiders and Star Wars

been Jeff Bridges winds up in Tron and like that that's where the roads to deviate yeah that Harrison Ford is actually more like the dude in real life than Jeff Bridges is but Jeff Bridges is now like forced to adopt Harrison Ford's private persona publicly So is this like, is he tortured by this? No, I don't think either of them are particularly tortures. They're both, like, incredibly rich guys who have, like, multiple ranches. But I just think it's interesting that Harrison Ford, every once in a while, us to get a haircut and stop smoking,

we all day long and take the hearing out and, like, show up for Blade Runner or, you know, or, like, the morning show movie he made with Rachel McAdams. It's funny. I mean, just based on interview, obviously Harrison Ford is incredibly, like, not insular, he's very much in his own head. He's a thoughtful person but doesn't reveal any of that. But just based on my fan fiction, I think Bridges seems like a much more thoughtful, you know, introspective guy. Whereas crashing a plane on a golf course seems like something the dude would do if he ever got to fly.

I think he probably would have struggled with the Harrison Ford career arc. But I like the, I like thinking about him as a leading man, Bridges, before this, just because obviously the Cohen brothers have a sort of their own little fascination with taking the clonies of the world. putting oil all over their faces. Yeah, it's making them look ridiculous. And bridges of all of them, he embodied this part to such a degree that you don't, it's not a gag. You know, I mean, this is, it's really great stuff. Is it Apex Mountain for Bouchemey? It is for the consciousness of Bouchemmy, you know?

Like Bouchemey, I think before this was Mr. Pink and he was a guy who was in a lot of Indies. This is actually a pretty big role for him at the stage of his career. And then basically from this point forward, you know who Steve Bouchem. is. You know what his name is. You know how to pronounce it. He's not just that guy. He's Steve Bouchemmy. I remember discussing the pronunciation of his name with friends. Like that was, when we figured it out, that was big for Steve.

It was Steve Bouchimi at times. Like, people get it wrong. This is also an against-type movie when it came out for Steve Bouchemy because he was like the tough guy. Yeah, he was Mink from Miller's Crossing. Yeah, yeah, and then all of a sudden he's this very sincere, slightly dopey guy who does not understand what is going on around him. Taturro. Is it his Apex Mountain?

I'm a huge, I'm a big Kanish guy from Rounders. Maybe this is a game that can be beat. So, no, not for me. Cohen Brothers. No. There are movies that I think are better than this. It's hard for me to say it's that

when they don't think it is. I don't know what they think is their best movie, but they're sort of a little dismissive about this one. Yeah, I think that they saw it as a small movie or as just a way to kind of fill the time. I'm sure they loved every little twist and tournament they were creating it, but, you know, they have, they would rank it.

They would not rank this at the top. I don't have a lot of nitpicks for this, for this film. I guess the dude's landlord is like an extra thread that I don't know if we need, but it's not like a nitpick. I don't really, do you guys mean, yeah. They do go to the dance recital. I know. I guess they need to be at the dance recital.

There's that great conversation there. One of the best lines in the movie, though, is can you give me notes? I'd like you to come and give me notes. It's just worth it for that. That's also just some L.A. shit that you don't hear in any other town. It's true. Do you do nitpicks? No, no.

I actually like that scene. I mean, this is, again, doing too much research. You sort of can reverse engineer so much of the movie, and I read that Thulis' character was brought in solely because they realized the scene was all exposition and was just going to go and was just going to be boring. So they just wrote a character in to make the scene not boring. To make the, to make, oh yeah, right. So, and I feel like it was a similar thing.

I mean, the dance recital was just a setting for other things to happen, but also a beautiful contrivance. And you can just sort of see that, like, see the thought process. It's an incredible bit. Shoemaker said earlier that he's not super into the, you know, sort of the big dance sequences slash like the hallucinations. I wonder if that stuff, like, I like, I like it as an acknowledgement of like, We're also super into Busby Berkeley movies, and this is an acid flashback.

Like, I like it as a referential idea, but re-watching the movie, it's like one of the few things I can skip. Yeah, it's like Anchorman. It's like you just skip past the flute section. Or it's like what I say to you before, it's like the italics chapters in crime novels. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is sort of just masturbatory. And for me, it's kind of like the ending, which is, I remember being shocked that the movie

was over when all of a sudden it was just over. Yeah. I was not sure where we were in terms of the. various mcuffins, is the dude going to have a child? Where is, where is Bunny Lobowski? I didn't, I didn't, I had no closure on what was happening. So I think at the time, that bothered me, but that's grown on me since. It just makes more, it makes sense within the context of the film.

But that said at the time, I was like, wait, it's over? Yeah, yeah. That's a good, that's a good nitpick. Would this movie have been better with Danny Trejo, I think unequivocally, yes. Who's he playing? Jesus? No, I just mean add him in in any scene.

It's so weird because there's so many people in this movie playing against type, not as actors necessarily, but their characters are sort of deliberately inverted, right? Like the thugs in the very first scene are just... It's like...

Surfer guy. Yeah. Yeah. And Trejo is like so fully is like this self-aware parody that it would have graded a little bit to me. But I love him, I don't know. Yeah, I think it would have worked fine.

The Mark Ruffalo spotlight... They knew Robbie! Yeah, it's hard to do that. Overacting award. I'm gonna go with Julianne Moore Very Like jacked up performance Yeah

She came in basically like right off the set of Lost World Of Jurassic Bark Lost World She comes into the movie Full Frontal Nude on a harness So I'm saying Based on a real person Yeah

Right based on a modern artist from the 70s And Yoko Ono apparently And Yoko Ono But also Carole Vandenhorn I'm not I can't I can't recall the artist's name. She, but I do, I said it a little bit earlier,

but I do like that she's basically just doing Mary Aster in this movie. You know, she's just doing, like, the dame who wanders into Bogart's office, but is smarter than Bogart. They have a type. It's the Marsha Gay-Hardmuller's Crossing. It's Jennifer Jason Lee and Hudsuckers. It's Judy Davis and Barton Fink. It's the Femphital.

Exactly, yeah. And also she has the key to unraveling the mystery, but that she, for whatever reason, doesn't reveal until the climax of the movie. Right. She's also got that great line where they're watching the porno movie. And, you know, there's some dialogue goes by and she goes, the story is ridiculous. She also says, there's another call back there where she says, in the parlance of our times, she's banging Jackie Trehorn. And then later the dude is in the Big Lebowski's limo.

And he says, in the parlance of our times, you know, like about something that is not in the parlance of our times. Let's go to best quote Did you guys have any other Mark Ruffalo nominees? It's too hard for this week All right, let's do best quote And this is like we could just stay here for another hour Just reading the movie script Sean you mentioned this before

Obviously you're not a golfer is So good Unfucking believable how good that line reading is It is so good What fuck is this? Obviously you're not a golfer The fact that it's actually all the lines in that where he's like, does this place

look like I'm fucking married, man? The toilet seat is up, man. Do you see a wedding ring on my finger? Does this place look like I'm fucking married? The toilet seat's up, man. And the fact that there's no toilet paper on the roll. It is like such a guy's apartment

where it's like the toilet paper has not been put in the roll. This is an obscurity, I guess, from the sub-check collection, but 3,000 years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Kofax, your goddamn light living in the fucking past is a really good one. I love his Judaism. I love Walter's Judaism. Militant Judaism.

Yeah. Life does not stop and start at your convenience, you miserable piece of shit. That's a good one. That's just a really good Walter line. Obviously, really tied the room together. Careful, man, there's a beverage. And nobody fucks with the Jesus. Did you guys have a specific one from this list or another one that you wanted to highlight for best quote?

There's so many. The problem with this is this podcast already runs the risk of being four bros in a dorm. Yeah. Quoting lines to each other, right? Now, I'm very conscious of that. I wonder if there will be any audience for this. Yes, there probably will be. But I still found myself laughing at the most hackneyed overused, overrepeated, like, shut the fuck up, Donnie, V.I. Lennon, Vladimir I.

Oolianoff is like just something I have probably said out loud like a thousand times for no reason I think you say it every time we've ever played golf you've probably said it to me what I guess so that's a big one I think also the room

that rug really's had the room together you know there's a few hallmarks I don't know what do you what do you like I like life does not stop and start of your convenience I think the one I mean the lines that I came back to when I'm watching it last night were the ones that I struggled, mostly in vain, to find deeper meaning in

and to tie the whole movie together. There's a scene where Walter says, like, those are the fucking rules. There's a lot of reference to rules. The way in a movie that clearly is just thumbing its nose at them. And then in the very beginning, there's the, there's where the guy's pissing on Lobowski's rug. There's the, like, ever to the deadbeats, Lobowski,

which is like a reference to Sixth Emperoranus. And there's, and there's, just like, the amount of time I spent trying to tie this into the, of the movie made it meaningful. Like the actual, whether or not at Tide End was totally, like the plot of the movie, totally secondary to the journey I went on trying to make it mean something.

And now I'm just sort of obsessed with it. For me, it's Maude and the dude watching log jamming. And Bunny's like, you must be here to fix the cable. And Maude goes, Lord, you can imagine where it goes from there. And the dude goes, he fixes

the cable? Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey. I love that part. Fixes the cable. That's incredible. I'm going to go with, I think we could probably all agree with, I really tied the room together, but there are so many that we would want. You're entering a world of pain? You're entering a world of pain.

It's really becomes quite, you hear that a lot. Yeah. All right, this is probably the hardest one. Who won the movie? It's Bridges, is it Goodman? Is it Tuturo? Is it the Coens? Or is it the makers of Kaluah?

The Kaluah lobby, definitely. They get a two-hour commercial. Yeah. That has been seen like a million times since then. Did you guys drink white Russians after you saw this? Were you like, I should take them up? I drank white Russians before I saw this. That was my, I mean, I was like, whatever.

In college. I don't think I've ever had a white Russian. Oh, they're good. They are excellent pound-adding drinks. Yeah. Because it's just sugar and milk, right? And you put on six pounds. Yeah, I definitely had a white Russian phase after seeing this.

Did you ever have, what was your? your like most self-consciously like difficult drink that you would order a lot oh it's this this the white Russian

did you guys ever have like a Tom Collins phase where like everybody else would be getting like bud lights and you'd be like I'll have a a whiskey sour sir

no no I feel like the white Russian is perfect for this because one the milk on the mustache is such a memorable visual item also do you want to point out

his like he's the like messiest drink maker but also just like His body's all over the place and he hasn't shaved in a long time. But when he gets the arm pulled behind his back and he's dragged from one limousine to the other, and he's like, I got a beverage here, man. And he gets thrown into the other limo.

He manages to not spill the drink. You know, the one thing he's managed to do in his life is not spill his drink. It's a great, like, sort of call back to what happens in a lot of crime films from the 1930s to say the 1960s, which is just people drink all day. Yeah. Like they are drinking. It could be like, the guy will be like, I have to go meet this widow at 9 a.m. And she's just like having whiskey and is like, do you want to,

like a scotch at 9.45 in the morning, even though you've driven here. There is never any consideration for being completely obliterated by lunchtime in these movies. I like the fact that it keeps this up. Yeah, I mean, the way that the white Russian, I mean, just the way that it could be filmed in a way that other mixed drinks cannot. Right? Just to see it like, you know, splashing out onto the carpet is such a visual thing. That said, the guy they based Lobowski on apparently drank white Russians. So this is one of those like happy accidents that it's fun to read a lot of.

of intentional meaning into. So who won the movie? I'm going to go with Bridges because it really defined this last part of his career. He is that guy now. I'm going to go with Turturro because he got an iconic character. I think this is weirdly a more iconic character

than Bridges' character. Nobody fucks with the Jesus is more in the imagination of people. And also he got to make a whole, other movie out of this character. I mean, he got to have a huge segment of his career because of this character. So, Totoro. Shoemaker? It's Bridges for me. Guys, it's Goodman. It's definitely

Goodman. It's definitely just like one of the funniest performances I've ever seen. So I'll go with Goodman there. Thank you to Jason Concepcion to Sean Fennacy to David Shoemaker for joining me. I'm Chris Ryan. This has been The Rewatchables, The Big Lobowski. Today's episode of The Rewatchables is brought to you by

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