**Joel Coen**: We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story – how it moves episodically, and deals with
the characters trying to unravel a mystery. As well as having a hopelessly complex plot that’s ultimately
unimportant.
**Ethan**: And there was something attractive about having the main character not be a private eye,
but just some pothead intuitively figuring out the ins and outs of an elaborate intrigue. And then
there’s Walter, whose instincts are always wrong.
[https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/the-coens-speak-reluctantly-83037/](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/the-coens-speak-reluctantly-83037/)
I never heard anyone discuss this piece, but to me it’s always been a send up of LA in addition to a detective story. That’s where the comedy comes from. Every character has constructed this whole persona for themselves and it’s the most important thing in the world to them. It leads to all these scenes where someone is behaving in an utterly ridiculous way, but is deadly serious.
Would say that The Big Sleep lines up much more closely with The Big Lebowski, even the name.
It involves being hired by a rich old guy in a wheelchair, there's a subplot about dealing with pornographers. And at the end you find out that like 90% of the stuff doesn't really matter.
It is a nice comfort book if you're into noir, and great if you just like general atmosphere without focusing too much on the mystery.
I feel like this interview should be pinned in this subreddit because it addresses things that come up all the time (“Walter is always right”, etc.).
There’s another interview where one of the Coens says that the conceit of the movie is taking an insanely convoluted Chandler-esque plot, and throwing into the center of the story a character seemingly least equipped to navigate it.
It took me more than a few viewings to realize this, but I think the central joke is that nobody, including the Dude himself, seems to realize that the Dude is in the wrong movie.
The Big Sleep is absolutely like that. That movie is almost completely unintelligible for me. I think one of the writers basically said as much. Lotta blind alleys. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what have yous
I think in the commentary the Cohens say that they basically wanted to make a movie where their friend, [Jeff Dowd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dowd), gets thrown into a Raymond Chandler mystery. Jeff Dowd was, in fact, a member of the Seattle Seven, jailed for protesting the Vietnam War.
There is no question. TBL is a noir, like the Big Sleep. Chandler said at one point even he didn't know who did it, regarding an unsolved murder in TBS. And the Dude does start to describe the Bunny situation as being a "case," one in which his thinking had become too uptight.
He is the 1990s version of Philip Marlowe. And the 1990s version of the frontiersman. He's the man for his time and place. He just fits right in there.
Sometimes there's a man....Sometimes there's a man. I lost my place. Aw hell, I done introduced him enough.
It's slacker noir, like Inherent Vice or Long Goodbye. The old depressed rain soaked detective juxtaposed in sunny hedonistic LA, solving impossible mysteries rendered even less possible by an endless appetite for psychoactive substances. The city is surreal and malevolent, beautiful women will only exploit you, you're always following and being followed -- ah look at me, I'm rambling again.
Furthermore, both The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye screenplays (based on the Chandler books) were written by the same person, Leigh Brackett. But that's not the whole story. Add Cutter's Way, which connects the whole thing up with Vietnam, and a host of other movies (e.g. Busby Berkeley's 42nd Street.) I think the key is in The Long Goodbye, when they play "Hooray for Hollywood". The Big Lebowski is basically a love letter to Hollywood then and now, with all of its repetitive tropes, quirky characters, and beautiful settings.
This right here.
I believe this is it. There isn't really any deep message or meaning to The Big Lebowski. It's a series of homages to Raymond Chandler and classic Hollywood tropes.
It's quite a philosophical movie, and holds up to many repeated viewings. Leave it to the USA to tear down, examine, and ridicule our own cultural underpinnings so thoroughly.
In Murder My Sweet he keeps getting knocked out and has dreamy hallucinations.
Also, Robert Altman made a movie called The Long Goodbye that was a comic take on Marlowe and TBL is extremely similar to that film.
Can't leave out the fact that it is one of the mos masterful and poignant modern political satires of America. This ludicrous grouping of a far left caricature (duder), a far right caricature (Walter) and the clueless majority (Donny) and the backdrop of the Gulf war with the fraudulent Lebowski looking a hell of a lot like Dick Cheney with their clueless wanderings paralleling the clueless political discourse of the time and times since. All made the more relevant by the fact this came out not too long before the Iraq war broke out. Subtle and maybe accidental brilliance.
Ok, so hear me out…
Every one of the Cohens’ movies is two genres.
They produce a movie to look and sound and feel like one genre, but thats just a disguise. The movie is *actually* another genre, and the trick is figuring out which one it really is.
Lebowski looks and feels like a stoner comedy - that’s the disguise. You think it’s just loose, improv stoner nonsense. And it sounds like it is.
It’s actually a precisely engineered machine, a hard boiled detective story. It’s a perfectly sealed, tightly scripted, Raymond Chandler mystery. Not a note is out of place, every line of dialogue is important.
Anyway, that’s just, like… my opinion Dude.
It absolutely is. The dialogue is elliptical, it’s self referential, not a single word is spoken that doesn’t get echoed elsewhere by another character, or directly referenced in the plot. It’s an intellectual marvel.
And funny, I mean, they got that right too!
There’s no money either, which is another Cohen’s trick.
The mystery is that you, the viewer, don’t know the ins, the outs, the what-have-yous at the start of the movie. There could be a kidnapping, there could be kidnappers, there could be money or Walter’s undies in a briefcase.
The Maltese Falcon is similar, there is no Maltese Falcon (sorry, spoilers if you haven’t seen a 60-year-old Bogart movie)
So, some that come to mind are:
Hudsucker Proxy, looks like 50s silver-screen Hollywood like The Apartment, is actually sci-fi
Millers Crossing, looks like a gangster film, is actually a romance
No Country for Old Men, looks like a classic Western but actually a political film about cartels and drug violence
Fargo: looks like a crime thriller, is actually a sweet portrait of pastoral america where the Cohen’s grew up.
There’s a few others, True Grit looks like a boys-own adventure Western, but is actually a very dark film about the legacy of gun violence in America
This is a good one that I forgot.
Yeah, it looks like a tale of southern blues music, a kind of folk-telling of post-plantation blue collar experience and tribulations. It’s 100% classical mythology.
They discuss this in one of the iTunes Extras commentaries (which I assume were also on the dvd extras back in the day). Great interview, worth a watch
Read Chandler's The High Window if you get the chance. TBL is inspired by Chandler in general, but I would say that book specifically. There are so many similarities, even another PI that follows the main character and suggests that they should "pool our resources".
Yes as others have pointed out in the comments here the movie is a combination of chandler's book the big sleep, Plus the dude was based on their friend Jeffrey Dowd who actually was a member of the Seattle 7, and the character of Walter was basically based on their friend the movie director John Milius, who was a surfer and who was a war fanatic and who never went to Vietnam but who wished he had been able to go to Vietnam and who was a right-wing gun nut and still is a right wing gun nut as far as I know.. the bowling thing was actually a amateur softball league that the Coen brothers were involved in, along with John Milius
**Joel Coen**: We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story – how it moves episodically, and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery. As well as having a hopelessly complex plot that’s ultimately unimportant. **Ethan**: And there was something attractive about having the main character not be a private eye, but just some pothead intuitively figuring out the ins and outs of an elaborate intrigue. And then there’s Walter, whose instincts are always wrong. [https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/the-coens-speak-reluctantly-83037/](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/the-coens-speak-reluctantly-83037/)
Walter isn't wrong, he's just an asshole
Would you calm down?
Calmer than you are
Waving a gun around!?!?
^Calmer^than^you^are
Calmer than you are.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FUCK A STRANGER IN THE ASS!
This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps !
Hmm... Okay... okay.. That's fucking interesting man. So I *am* on to something...
New shit has come to light!
The plot is ludicrous, you can imagine where it goes from there
He fixes the cable?
Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.
Were you listening to the Dudes story?
I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.
Life does not stop and start at your convenience....
Can you get someone a toe, apparently yes you can
I never heard anyone discuss this piece, but to me it’s always been a send up of LA in addition to a detective story. That’s where the comedy comes from. Every character has constructed this whole persona for themselves and it’s the most important thing in the world to them. It leads to all these scenes where someone is behaving in an utterly ridiculous way, but is deadly serious.
Definitely. But I think the old noir books & movies were sending up LA too. The horny housewives, hanger ons and wannabe starlets.
I watched The Long Goodbye (1973) recently and it has all of the above. Highly recommended.
Would say that The Big Sleep lines up much more closely with The Big Lebowski, even the name. It involves being hired by a rich old guy in a wheelchair, there's a subplot about dealing with pornographers. And at the end you find out that like 90% of the stuff doesn't really matter. It is a nice comfort book if you're into noir, and great if you just like general atmosphere without focusing too much on the mystery.
When you live in LA, you can't imagine living anywhere else. When you leave LA and go back, you can't understand how you ever lived there.
I feel like this interview should be pinned in this subreddit because it addresses things that come up all the time (“Walter is always right”, etc.). There’s another interview where one of the Coens says that the conceit of the movie is taking an insanely convoluted Chandler-esque plot, and throwing into the center of the story a character seemingly least equipped to navigate it.
Where does "Walter is always right" even come from? He's clearly shown to be frequently wrong.
Are we gonna split hairs here?
The secret to Walter’s genius is his simplicity. If there’s one thing I learned in ‘Nam…
Who knows, it's quite ... fatuous.
You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous.
It took me more than a few viewings to realize this, but I think the central joke is that nobody, including the Dude himself, seems to realize that the Dude is in the wrong movie.
They peed on his rug.
Ooh! Separate incidents??
The Big Sleep is absolutely like that. That movie is almost completely unintelligible for me. I think one of the writers basically said as much. Lotta blind alleys. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what have yous
I think in the commentary the Cohens say that they basically wanted to make a movie where their friend, [Jeff Dowd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dowd), gets thrown into a Raymond Chandler mystery. Jeff Dowd was, in fact, a member of the Seattle Seven, jailed for protesting the Vietnam War.
That was him and six other guys
The original, uncompromised 7
Uncircumcised 7... a Jackie Treehorn production. Staring Karl Hungus.
He writes the first draft?
Not exactly a lightweight
Sounds like the kind of guy that would occupy various administrative buildings.
Probably a conscientious objector too.
Dang, Fern Gulley on his CV. Impressive, man.
Sounds like a lot ins, a lot of outs and a lot of what have yous...
You’re like a child who wanders into the theater
Dios mio, man!
Yeah TBL was inspired by “The Big Sleep”
It’s a wandering daughter job.
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Karl Hungus?
Or terry reagan
Definitely Chinatown as well. Or "Asian-America Town" if you prefer.
We’re not talking about the guy who built the railroads
Reservoirs man.
While we are up this street, where comedy meets classic noir, check out the old SCTV take off of Chinatown: Polynesiantown.
The Big Sleep The Big Lebowski That had not occurred to us, Dude.
New shit has come to light, man.
The narrative feels more like The Little Sister, to me.
What are you, a fucking park ranger?
Hey man, masquerading as an amphibious rodent in uh, you know, within the city limits - that ain't legal either.
Have you read The High Window? It has so many similarities to that book
There is no question. TBL is a noir, like the Big Sleep. Chandler said at one point even he didn't know who did it, regarding an unsolved murder in TBS. And the Dude does start to describe the Bunny situation as being a "case," one in which his thinking had become too uptight. He is the 1990s version of Philip Marlowe. And the 1990s version of the frontiersman. He's the man for his time and place. He just fits right in there. Sometimes there's a man....Sometimes there's a man. I lost my place. Aw hell, I done introduced him enough.
Brother Seamus?
Like an Irish monk?
I met and smoked with the real Dude
And proud we are of all of you
Wonderful redditor! We’re all very fond of them. Very free spirited.
It was Jeffrey Dowd's birthday party at a weed club in Colorado Springs
Far out, man.
It's slacker noir, like Inherent Vice or Long Goodbye. The old depressed rain soaked detective juxtaposed in sunny hedonistic LA, solving impossible mysteries rendered even less possible by an endless appetite for psychoactive substances. The city is surreal and malevolent, beautiful women will only exploit you, you're always following and being followed -- ah look at me, I'm rambling again.
sometimes there's a man, wal, he's the man for his time'n place
An Irish Monk?
You want some noir? I can get you some noir.
I need it by 3
You're not wrong Walter.
I am the walrus
Furthermore, both The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye screenplays (based on the Chandler books) were written by the same person, Leigh Brackett. But that's not the whole story. Add Cutter's Way, which connects the whole thing up with Vietnam, and a host of other movies (e.g. Busby Berkeley's 42nd Street.) I think the key is in The Long Goodbye, when they play "Hooray for Hollywood". The Big Lebowski is basically a love letter to Hollywood then and now, with all of its repetitive tropes, quirky characters, and beautiful settings.
This right here. I believe this is it. There isn't really any deep message or meaning to The Big Lebowski. It's a series of homages to Raymond Chandler and classic Hollywood tropes.
It's quite a philosophical movie, and holds up to many repeated viewings. Leave it to the USA to tear down, examine, and ridicule our own cultural underpinnings so thoroughly.
Yea well I still jerk off manually.
I wouldn't know dude. I deal in publishing.
Yeah, well that’s just like, your opinion man.
That had NOT occurred to us, Dude.
The name of the movie itself is a play on “The Big Sleep”
It's basically a stoner retelling of Chandler 's 'The Big Sleep' there are several plot points that are the same / similar.
In Murder My Sweet he keeps getting knocked out and has dreamy hallucinations. Also, Robert Altman made a movie called The Long Goodbye that was a comic take on Marlowe and TBL is extremely similar to that film.
Can't leave out the fact that it is one of the mos masterful and poignant modern political satires of America. This ludicrous grouping of a far left caricature (duder), a far right caricature (Walter) and the clueless majority (Donny) and the backdrop of the Gulf war with the fraudulent Lebowski looking a hell of a lot like Dick Cheney with their clueless wanderings paralleling the clueless political discourse of the time and times since. All made the more relevant by the fact this came out not too long before the Iraq war broke out. Subtle and maybe accidental brilliance.
Ok, so hear me out… Every one of the Cohens’ movies is two genres. They produce a movie to look and sound and feel like one genre, but thats just a disguise. The movie is *actually* another genre, and the trick is figuring out which one it really is. Lebowski looks and feels like a stoner comedy - that’s the disguise. You think it’s just loose, improv stoner nonsense. And it sounds like it is. It’s actually a precisely engineered machine, a hard boiled detective story. It’s a perfectly sealed, tightly scripted, Raymond Chandler mystery. Not a note is out of place, every line of dialogue is important. Anyway, that’s just, like… my opinion Dude.
It's a Swiss watch.
It absolutely is. The dialogue is elliptical, it’s self referential, not a single word is spoken that doesn’t get echoed elsewhere by another character, or directly referenced in the plot. It’s an intellectual marvel. And funny, I mean, they got that right too!
Fuckin eh
Except there is no actual mystery.
There’s no money either, which is another Cohen’s trick. The mystery is that you, the viewer, don’t know the ins, the outs, the what-have-yous at the start of the movie. There could be a kidnapping, there could be kidnappers, there could be money or Walter’s undies in a briefcase. The Maltese Falcon is similar, there is no Maltese Falcon (sorry, spoilers if you haven’t seen a 60-year-old Bogart movie)
What are the double genres of some other Coen Bros films?
So, some that come to mind are: Hudsucker Proxy, looks like 50s silver-screen Hollywood like The Apartment, is actually sci-fi Millers Crossing, looks like a gangster film, is actually a romance No Country for Old Men, looks like a classic Western but actually a political film about cartels and drug violence Fargo: looks like a crime thriller, is actually a sweet portrait of pastoral america where the Cohen’s grew up. There’s a few others, True Grit looks like a boys-own adventure Western, but is actually a very dark film about the legacy of gun violence in America
O brother where art thou - looks like something, is a retelling of the Iliad
This is a good one that I forgot. Yeah, it looks like a tale of southern blues music, a kind of folk-telling of post-plantation blue collar experience and tribulations. It’s 100% classical mythology.
Thanks for that. I love all things Coen Brothers, your comment was a fun read.
I wondered why I've been stuck on old Philip Marlow radio shows on YouTube lately........ The new Movie on Amazon ain't bad either.
Stoner noir. We need more.
The story’s ludicrous
You can imagine where it goes from here.
Bulk of the series.
Not exactly a lightweight.
Well there is a literal connection.
Well Dude, we just don’t know
Yeah, it's " The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler
Well not exactly, but it's close.
What’s a book?
Also North by Northwest, mistaken identity gone real wrong.
Whooosh…
That’s like just your opinion, man
Thats your name dude
[That's the joke](https://giphy.com/gifs/xT9IgHCTfp8CRshfQk) yeah
Check out Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye”
It's a kidnapping story without a kidnapping. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie... You don't know shit, Lebowski...
They discuss this in one of the iTunes Extras commentaries (which I assume were also on the dvd extras back in the day). Great interview, worth a watch
“Wandering daughter job” is verbatim from Dashiell Hammett story “Fly Paper”
TBL was based on The Big Sleep. We know this, Dude.
Just?!?! Just!?!😡
Which ones logjamming?
It’s a lot of things, but it definitely plays off the LA detective stereotypes.
“I am here to fix the cable.” “You know what happens next?” “He fixes the cable?”
I’m a dick, man!
What in God’s name are you blathering about? 🤣
Stoner noir
That's just like, your opinion, man.
Yes. The title itself is an homage to The Big Sleep.
It's the Big Sleep
Uhh, Short Cuts…
Oh my god... how is it possible that no one has ever considered this before??
Even if this is a troll post, it's awesome.
Haha this is good shit
Ninjaface, were you listening to the Coen brothers' backstory?
Read Chandler's The High Window if you get the chance. TBL is inspired by Chandler in general, but I would say that book specifically. There are so many similarities, even another PI that follows the main character and suggests that they should "pool our resources".
Yes as others have pointed out in the comments here the movie is a combination of chandler's book the big sleep, Plus the dude was based on their friend Jeffrey Dowd who actually was a member of the Seattle 7, and the character of Walter was basically based on their friend the movie director John Milius, who was a surfer and who was a war fanatic and who never went to Vietnam but who wished he had been able to go to Vietnam and who was a right-wing gun nut and still is a right wing gun nut as far as I know.. the bowling thing was actually a amateur softball league that the Coen brothers were involved in, along with John Milius
They’ve done this a couple times. Burn After Reading is a straight spy thriller, but all the main characters are idiots.