Belth - The Dudes Abide: The Coen Brothers and the Making of The Big Lebowski

Copyright 2014 by Alex Belth

All rights reserved.

This title was originally published as part of

Amazons Kindle Singles Program.

It has been reformatted by Plympton, Inc.

of San Francisco, California

for library and educational use.

Cover Design by Adil Dara 2016

Book Design by Vivian Xiao, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-68360-047-3

J oel and Ethan Coen were waiting for John Goodman to finish taking a leak. It was just after lunch on December 10, 1996, and Joel, whod turned 42 a few weeks earlier, was looking out a large window at the Hollywood Hills. It was raining again.

Thatd be just our luck, Eth, Joel said. Spend a whole winter in Minnesota and it doesnt snow, then we come here and it fucking rains.

Joel, older by three years, stood with his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. His black hair tied in a ponytail, small round glasses across his nose, he could have passed for the Ramones long-lost brother the one who went to graduate school.

The fucking rainy season, he said.

On this rainy afternoon in L.A., Goodman and Jeff Bridges were meeting for the first time to read through a new Coen brothers screenplay called The Big Lebowski. Bridges was still stuck in traffic when Goodman returned from the can. He sat on the edge of the couch, legs open, his belly hanging so low it looked like he was sitting on the floor, and started quoting lines from Fargo. Goodman, a friend of the Coens since he worked with them on their second movie, Raising Arizona, laughed about the scene where William Macy tried to escape out of a motel window, only to be dragged back inside by the cops.

Macy in his underwear, Goodman said, giggling.

Thats our answer to everything, Ethan said. You need a dramatic fall, put a character in his undies.

Joel told Goodman about re-recording dialogue for the profanity-free television version of Fargo. They rewrote the line, Im fucking hungry now to Im full of hungry now.

Why didnt we write it like that originally? said Joel. Its funnier.

Goodman said, Who else is coming on this show? (In Los Angeles, movie people call a movie a show.)

There was Steve Buscemi as Donny, Julianne Moore as Maude, Jon Polito as Da Fino.

Joel said, Our friend Luis, who was an assistant film editor on Hudsucker, will be playing the enraged Mexican.

Yeah, youll like Luis, Ethan said in a creaky voice. He makes a big statement.

Turturro is coming in to play the pederast, Joel said. He said hed do his best F. Murray Abraham.

Much of the cast was in place save for Bunny and Brandt and, critically, the Big Lebowski. You know, the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the tycoon whose Pasadena mansion is both miles and worlds away from the Dudes rundown bungalow. With just over a month left before filming began, the Boys as Joel and Ethan were known by colleagues and friends werent close to casting the title role.

The trouble was that most of the actors they wanted were dead. Raymond Burr? Dead. Fred Gwynne? Dead. Anthony Perkins, Marty Balsam, Chuck Connors? All dead. Brian Keith was ill (he died less than a year later). Jason Robards was said to be having health problems.

The original Lebowski list was dubbed Mussburger lists referring to Paul Newmans character from The Hudsucker Proxy. It included Tommy Lee Jones (too young), Robert Duvall (not interested, didnt get it), Anthony Hopkins (not interested, wouldnt play an American), Gene Hackman (not interested, wanted a vacation), and Jack Nicholson (not interested, only wanted to play Moses).

Another Lebowski wish list followed, a wild collection of names that included Norman Mailer, Jerry Falwell, Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, Jonathan Winters, and General Norman Schwarzkopf. Also, venerable actors like Fred Ward, Carroll OConnor, Hoyt Axton, Ned Beatty, Peter Boyle, Richard Mulligan, Michael Caine, Jackie Cooper, Bruce Dern, and Paul Dooley. Ernest Borgnine was included, as were Larry Hagman, James Coburn, Andy Griffith, and Lloyd Bridges.

The choices narrowed Rod Steiger, George C. Scott, Charles Durning, Pat Hingle. Then, the impossible dream: Brando. It was a good dream, too, though unlikely. Brando had certainly grown into the role but he was eccentric, expensive, and didnt much like to work. Still, the idea amused the Boys no end, and for weeks they quoted the Big Lebowskis lines in a Brando accent: Condolences, the bums lost, Joel said with his jaw pushed out to look like Brando in The Godfather.

Strong men also cry, Ethan replied.

But their favorite was, By God, sir, I will not abide another toe.

I n New York , the top filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols, Jonathan Demme, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, the Coen brothers had regular crews, and I hoped to break in with one of them. It was 1993 and I was 22 years old. My first job out of college was interning Ken Burns Baseball documentary. When the project wrapped, I waited tables for a year until I got work as an apprentice editor. I broke in on a Miramax movie called Wishful Thinking and then stepped up in class with a Woody Allen confection called Everyone Says I Love You. My experiences with Burns and Allen were enticing but I also understood that even after youd already made it through the door, there was no guarantee youd stick.

I got another gig on a nonunion feature that was cutting in the grubby rooms at the Technicolor building on 44th Street. Thats where I saw Tricia Cooke, who had worked with the Coens on Millers Crossing and later married Ethan. One day, as she took a break from cutting a movie down the hall, she told me the brothers were heading to California in a few months to shoot their next movie. At this point they edited their own movies under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes and there was a chance that I could apprentice on it when they returned to New York the following spring. That was almost a year away. In the meantime, they were looking for a personal assistant. Would I be interested in interviewing with them?

T he Coens arrived on the scene in 1984 with Blood Simple, their independently financed debut. Was it a deadpan noir or a grisly horror movie? Regardless, it had style and the movie was a critical hit. They followed that with the slapstick comedy Raising Arizona, another surprise success.

Their third movie, Millers Crossing, an homage to Dashiell Hammett, inspired yet more good reviews. Then BartonFink, an oddball comedy about writers block, won the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival landing them in the top rank of independent filmmakers, admired for their distinctive genre bending.

In 1994, a decade after their debut, the brothers went for commercial success with their first big-budget, studio-backed effort, a screwball comedy, The Hudsucker Proxy, starring Paul Newman. It flopped. Eleven people went to see it, Ethan told me. Worldwide.

Next up was supposed to be The Big Lebowski, a movie they had written in part for John Goodman. But he couldnt break away from his schedule on Roseanne. Licking their wounds from the Hudsucker failure, the Boys returned to what they did best

Fargo was a vicious little crime drama shot on a shoestring budget. Ethans college friend, William Robertson, begged the brothers not to make it: Youve just had a huge flop, now you want to make a crime drama set in North Dakota? Nobody will watch it, he reasoned. They made it anyway. Released in the spring of 1996,