The Big Lebowski

"Ethan and Joel Coen's The Big Lebowski was released in 1998 to general bafflement. A decade on, it has become a cult classic, inspiring a thriving circuit of 'Lebowski Fasts' during which costumed devotees gather at bowling alleys and guzzle White Russians. Beyond its superabundance of deliciously quotable lines, how has the movie inspired such remarkable affection? And why does its critical stock continue to rise?" "The film's unlikely anchor is Jeff Bridges' career-best performance as Jeffrey Lebowski, a fully-baked 1960s radical turned Venice Beach drop-out known to his friends as 'the Dude'. Mistaken for an identically-named grandee whose young trophy wife is in trouble, the Dude finds himself embroiled in an impossibly convoluted kidnap plot involving pornographers, nihilists and threats to his 'Johnson'. Worst of all, it conflicts with his bowling commitments." "In part an irreverent pastiche of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (at filmed by Howard Hawks), The Big Lebowski is also a jukebox of film history, littered, with playful and subversive references to everything from Hitchcock and Altman to Busby Berkeley. This riot of addled quotations reflects the film's Los Angeles setting, a discombobulated world inhabited by flakes, phonies and poseurs with put-on identities." "Like many Coen works, the movie plays havoc with the conventions of the crime genre and the absurdities of classical American 'heroism'. But The Big Lebowski is also that rare thing, a comedy that gets richer, funnier and more affecting with each viewing. Beneath its breakneck pacing and foul-mouthed ribaldry, the Dude's story offers disarmingly humane lessons in the value of simple things: friendship, laughter and bowling."--BOOK JACKET.Walters, Ben is the author of 'The Big Lebowski' with ISBN 9781844571734 and ISBN 1844571734.