Gender: Male
Status: Single
Age: 56
Sign: Gemini
City: VENICE
State: CALIFORNIA
Country: US
Signup Date: 8/28/2006
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Sunday, May 20, 2007
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Category: Blogging
Interview: Jeff Dowd and "The Big Lebowski" by Ivana Redwine
Joel and Ethan Coen's hilarious comedy "The Big Lebowski," which stars Jeff Bridges and John Goodman, came out in 1998 and became something of a cult favorite. In it, Bridges plays a memorable character called Jeff "the Dude" Lebowski who is based loosely on a colorful guy named Jeff Dowd. Like his fictional alter ego, Dowd was one of the Seattle Seven, who in 1970 were accused of inciting a riot when a political demonstration got out of hand. But Dowd went on to carve out for himself an unusual career in the movie business as a consultant to independent filmmakers. I spoke with him in connection with the DVD release of the Widescreen Collector's Edition of "The Big Lebowski," scheduled for October 18, 2005. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
I.R. It must be interesting to be the inspiration for a character in a movie that's become a cult phenomenon. How did the character of the Dude get started?
J.D. Well, I always had that nickname. It always followed me because of my size. And "Dowd," and stuff like that. And then in the '60's, I was always talking and doing stuff in those days. It [the nickname] kind of spread around. In those days, everyone had nicknames. Joe was "the Dog," Chip was "the Monk" [presumably Joe Kelly and Chip Marshall of the Seattle Seven], I was "the Dude." People tended to have nicknames. And then when Joel and Ethan were working on "Blood Simple," they used to like to riff on that name. And they used to like to get on the phone and go "Dude, Duder, Duderino."
I.R. So it started with the name itself then.
J.D. Yeah. Also, they [the Coen brothers] also kind of knew about my past. There was a time in the '60's in which I was an activist. And in the '70's, after that period, we kind of hung out and hung pretty heavy. We hung pretty heavy for a while, indeed. And drinking White Russians and Tequila Sunrises and any other drink of the moment. And smoking a little of whatever it was. And then there was that idea of that kind of character.Much of this is a buddy movie. Most buddy movies have this one guy who's always getting another guy into trouble. Butch gets Sundance into trouble. Or the guys in the "Odd Couple" or "Lethal Weapon" or you name it. The Walter character [played by John Goodman]in many ways it's his moviehe's the guy who's always scheming to get the Dude into trouble. Or doing things like pulling a gun out in a bowling alley.
I.R. So some of it came out of traditional structure, and other things came out of just knowing things about you.
J.D. It's very much a Raymond Chandler-type story, you know, dosed on acid.
I.R. [laughter]
J.D. Joel and Ethan are incredibly big students of other movies. At one point What's the movie with Fred MacMurray? The Billy Wilder movie? "Double Indemnity." I'm trying to tape "Double Indemnity," and Im watching it with my girlfriend, and I taped it incorrectly, and it came up 15 minutes short. So we call up Joel and Ethan, and they do a blow-by-blow, frame-by-frame, account for my girlfriend Sarah of the last 15 minutes of the movie. I mean, "Edward G. Robinson walks into the room, a low-angle shot." I mean, it's just unbelievable. And it's just bang. And they can do the same thing with any one of 50 other movies. And a guy like Quentin [Tarantino] can do the same thing too. They [the Coen brothers] are real students of film. And they love to do things in various genres. "Miller's Crossing" is in one genre. And they love to stretch them to the extreme and mix genres. That's what they were doing to a large extent in "The Big Lebowski."
I.R. Did you work with Jeff Bridges at all to make sure he got the character down right?
J.D. Yeah, for a while, and that's all it took. I'm a pretty quick and easy study to mimic. And he did do it. And he did gain some weight. In the script, the description reads, "The Dude is a character in which casualness runs deep." Okay. So I think he got that. When my daughter saw a poster of the movie, she said, "Daddy, where did they get all your clothes?"
I.R. [laughter]
J.D. Which, of course, were not my clothes. They were something the costumer and Bridges were good enough to do. The jelliesthe footwearwere actually his. He actually had those jellies and used to wear them.
I.R. But at least as far as your daughter was concerned, they got it pretty much right.
J.D. Yeah.
I.R. In what ways are you like the Dude in "The Big Lebowski"? In what ways are you different?
J.D. Well, you know, obviously I'm not the laziest guy in the world at this point in history. Even though I asked my girlfriend the other day to hand me the clicker, which was six inches away from me on the bed.
I.R. [laughter]
J.D. But that being said, I'm a very active guy in the movie business: working on scripts, productions, post-productions, and marketing movies. I'm very passionate, and I work with a lot of passionate people. But I'd have to be, to do it right.But you know, I think one of the things that people like about the Dude characteras opposed to the Big Lebowski, the guy in the movie [played by David Huddleston], the other Lebowskiis that he has a certain attitude and a BS monitor that's pretty good. And he's able to see through the bulls**t. Either Walter's bulls**t or the Big Lebowski's bulls**t or somebody else's. And I think in a world full of that, they would turn on the news and listen to our so-called leaders and others. You know, and often tragically so. I think people appreciate somebody who has that sense, because so many people have to go to work every day and put on their costumes, their masks in the corporate world. And I think that they have an appreciation for somebody who understands that a lot of that's not the way it should be, and that that's not who we really are. So in that sense, there's a similarity. You know. I have opinions about things. And, you know, I'm an opinionated guy, and in many ways the Dude is too.
I.R. Do you have any theories as to why "The Big Lebowski" has become a cult film and why so many people find the character of the Dude so fascinating and loveable?
J.D. Yes. And obviously this kind of came to me as a student of it, so to speak, over time. Because obviously it wasn't when it was first released. And then, it slowly became that. One of the ways, just from a personal point of view, was I would channel-surf into this thing. And I was talking to Jeff Bridges, and Jeff says the same thing too. Initially, before owning the DVD, I would channel-surf into this thing. And I'd seen it like three times. They first showed it to me. Then I saw it at Sundance. I think the first time I went to some opening out here. And I had seen it in theaters. And then I didn't see it for a long time.And then I'm watching Showtime or HBO, and like boomI channel-surf into a scene. I started watching it. And I'm thinking, wow, this is really good. And I keep watching it for like 20 minutes, and then I fall asleep or go somewhere, and then watch the rest of it. And then a month later, and I channel-surf and it's the same thing. And I think like wow. And in that sense, what I realized is that it's kind of like an album. Some albums have good songs on them. And there are other albumsthe great classicsthat have like a dozen good songs on them. And this movie has like more than a dozen really good sequences that stand unto themselves. I mean you go right into the opening frame of the Jesus [a Latino character played by John Turturro] sequence, and it's brilliant. It's hilarious. Every frame should be there, just like a great Billy Wilder movie. I wouldn't pull a frame out of "Some Like It Hot." Not a frame. And you look at that Jesus sequence and go, "Wow! That's fantastic!" Or you look at the Jackie Treehorn [played by Ben Gazzara] sequence. Or you look at...You can go on and on. You know, they're wonderful sequences. And just like you'd return to an album, you'd return to this movie. Now, secondarily, one of the reasons is that it's a really fun movie to watch with your friends. And you can't watch all movies with your friends. But you know you can watch this movie with your friends. And this is one you know if you watch it with your friends, you'll have a bunch of yucks. It's kind of like "Austin Powers." I hadn't seen "Austin Powers." I'm not a name dropper, but Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are friends up in Seattle, and they had just seen it. And they did "Austin Powers" for me for about an hour. They did the whole movie in an hour. You might not think of Sean and Robin as the funniest people in the world, but they really are. And they did the wholethey mimicked the entire moviedid their own hour-long version of itin their hotel room, because it's the same way people like to do lines from "The Big Lebowski." Then there's a deeper level. If you go on my Website, JeffDowd.com, there is a letter from a New York fireman, who I met at a Lebowski Festival in New York. And he came up to me with his wife, and they said, "Look, we got to give you a big hug." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well, because you had something to do with 'The Big Lebowski,' and let me tell you a story. I was a New York City volunteer fireman during 9/11, and I had seen people die before, and I had saved people's lives, but I had never seen people choose their own deathjumping out of buildings and stuff. And a lot of my good friends were firemen, and other people died that day. And I was like for months [speaking figuratively] comatose from post-traumatic stress." His wife said he was worthless as a husband and a father. They have five kids. The guy went to doctors, and shrinks, and therapists, and tried drugs, and this and that. Nothing worked. "And then one day, several months later, I was sitting in the living room, and I saw my copy of 'The Big Lebowski' on the shelf, and I put it in the DVD player, and for the first time in months I smiled, and I started laughing, and then I played it again and again." Then his wife turns to me and says, "It totally changed him. It brought him out." And that's kind of interesting. It's like the Woody Allen movie "Manhattan" or whatever, and he goes into the movie theater and sees the Preston Sturges movie "Sullivan's Travels," and he realizes the power of humor. And in a sense, when people take drugs, whether they are recreational drugs, or whether they're alcohol, or whether they're the drugs doctors prescribe to make them feel better or less depressed. I mean, so what's wrong with doing that by watching a movie? It doesn't have the bad side effects of some of that other stuff.
I.R. Any idea as to why some ordinary people had an easier time connecting with "The Big Lebowski" than many critics?
J.D. Actually, I do have an idea, and it's expectation. The expectation is everything in the world. [Dowd opines that since earlier Coen brothers' films like "Barton Fink" and "Fargo" had been favorites of critics, their expectations were set in a way that made them unreceptive to "The Big Lebowski."] Anyway, the point is, coming off of "Fargo," which won an Academy Award for writing [Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen]. And by the way, I would venture almost all criticswell, most criticssaw "The Big Lebowski" without an audience. And just like "Blood Simple" was passed on three times by every distributor, until we showed it at the Toronto Film Festival, and all of a sudden the black humor worked. Black humor definitely does not work in a screening room. "The Big Lebowski" obviously plays much better with an audience than it does with six critics in a room. Or worse yet, if they were slipped a DVD or a video, which is often the case. And also the story is, you know, you kind of have to be in the mood to appreciate it. And if you are going there as a critic, it's easy to criticize. As Joel and Ethan say themselves with Sam Elliott [in the role of the Stranger] at the end [of "The Big Lebowski"], "Good story Parts of it, anyway."
I.R. [Laughs at Dowd's Sam Elliott impression.]
J.D. And it doesn't have the strongest third act in one sense. You know. It kind of drifts off in a certain sense. But it's a very sweet and funny ending. And you know, I think a lot has to do with expectations. Interestingly enough, a lot of critics have caught up with it, and re-seen it themselves, and some of them have rewritten their opinions about it too.
I.R. Jeff, it's probably a good time to wrap up. You probably have another interview scheduled after this.
J.D. Let me say a few things in closing. One, for people who haven't been to a Lebowski Festival. Which I was pretty leery about going toI was thinking it was probably a bunch of Trekkies the first time. It's really, really, really fun. I mean I'm not paid to go to these things, to show up at shopping centers and sign things. And they are having one of those things in a couple of weeks in New Yorkthats the 21st and 22nd [of October, 2005]. That's on LebowskiFest.comyou can look at pictures there of how happy people are. It's really a lot of fun. And secondly, I think that this DVD is for people who scratched through their old DVD, just like you do with an album you love, you figure it's time to get a second copy. It has some pretty cool stuff. I mean interviews with Joel and Ethan. And the coasters for drinks and stuff like that. [Here Dowd is referring to "The Achiever's Edition" that in addition to coasters, which hardcore fans will no doubt set their White Russians on, also includes a collectible bowling towel.] What's interesting is that it's also a chance to do a favor for friends who haven't seen the movie. You know, turn some friends on to it. Those friends who have to put on their corporate masks everyday will indeed enjoy the film. It's interesting who the audience is for this. You might think that it's just college kids getting stoned. If I were to show up in Iraq tomorrow, believe me, ten thousand soldiers would be thereit's huge with soldiers. It's huge with sports players. It's huge in the corporate Wall Street world. All these people who are in group situations, who have a little bit of leisure time, tend to watch this movie together a lot. There's a family I met at a Lebowski Fest in San Diego. Three generations of a Latino family, they watch it every Christmas instead of "It's a Wonderful Life." Because they have more fun. Now I watch "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas. I wouldn't cross that line. Because "Lebowski"I think that's heretical. But they watch "The Big Lebowski" together. As François Truffaut says in "Close Encounters [of the Third Kind]," "It's a phenomenon sociologique."
I.R. [Laughs] Well, it is.
J.D. It's a sociological phenomenon. And that's why people seem to like it so much.
5:12 PM
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