In 1998, when all the world wanted from Joel Coen and Ethan Coen was another Fargo, they got The Big Lebowski instead. The Coens recently repeated this trick by fol­low­ing up another mas­ter­piece, No Coun­try for Old Men, with the happy-go-lucky Burn After Read­ing. The Dork Report won­ders if this com­pul­sion is by design or if the Coens just can’t help themselves.

Viewed with some puz­zle­ment upon release, The Big Lebowski is now the sub­ject of pop art, annual con­ven­tions, and action fig­ures. The far­ci­cal film noir is ulti­mately an extended “wrong man accused” pas­tiche in the spirit of Alfred Hitch­cock and Ray­mond Chan­dler, but The Coen Broth­ers infuse it with their trade­mark anar­chic spirit and pop­u­late it with char­ac­ters with low (or oth­er­wise chem­i­cally impaired) I.Q.

We don’t roll on Shabbos

The film’s 10^th anniver­sary was recently cel­e­brated in a Rolling Stone fea­ture arti­cle, The Decade of the Dude by Andy Greene. John Good­man, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, and Sam Elliott reveal a wealth of anec­dotes and all seem gen­uinely delighted at the film’s cult sta­tus. Good­man, how­ever, alludes to hav­ing had a kind of falling out with the Coens after Oh Brother Where Art Thou. The arti­cle also states that The Coen Broth­ers decline to dis­cuss the The Big Lebowski at all any­more, for unspec­i­fied rea­sons. How­ever, the DVD edi­tion screened by The Dork Report includes the orig­i­nal 1998 con­tem­po­rary elec­tronic press kit includ­ing an inter­view with the Coen Broth­ers in which they gamely dis­cuss the pro­duc­tion (Joel is cred­ited as direc­tor and Ethan as writer, but in truth they have always shared the duties equally). The DVD also pro­vides a peek at cin­e­matog­ra­pher Roger Deakins’ spec­tac­u­lar fan­tasy sequences and unique bowl­ing footage actu­al­ized with a motor­ized cam­era capa­ble of run­ning up to 20 M.P.H.

Jeff Bridges reveals the extent of his actorly craft in prepar­ing for each scene: he would sim­ply ask The Coens, “Did the Dude burn one on the way over?” Most often, the answer was yes, so he would rub his eyes to approx­i­mate the degree of red­ness appro­pri­ate, and pro­ceed. The Dude copes with the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of life with the motto “The Dude abides,” but the cir­cum­stances in which he finds him­self dur­ing this mis­ad­ven­ture leave him less in a state of zen than one of para­noia. No doubt a life­time of pot abuse has harshed his mel­low somewhat.

You don’t &$%# with the Jesus!

Despite hav­ing only barely more than a cameo appear­ance, John Tur­turro nearly steals the movie with the unfor­get­table char­ac­ter Jesus Quin­tana (that’s “Jesus” with a hard “J”), a sex­ual preda­tor and cock­sure bowler. The Coens speak about want­ing to write a Latino char­ac­ter for Tur­turro, but where did the rest of his out­ra­geous char­ac­ter­i­za­tion come from? Did they just wind Tur­turro up and let him go? Other notable cameos include David Thewlis (Naked, Harry Pot­ter) as a gig­gling asso­ciate of Maude (Moore), and musi­cians Aimee Mann and Flea as hap­less nihilists.

Offi­cial movie site: www.biglebowskidvd.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.