NPR on 'The Big Lebowski'

Back to NPR.

You know, I was going to write something here that would have read like this: “I just happened to be browsing the NPR site this morning when I chanced upon…”

But that just sounded kind of preposterous. And a little pretentious. I love NPR – but while I do occasionally check their website without any particular agenda, this was not the case this morning. This morning I was, of course, looking for potential blog updates.

Add to that the fact that the Coen brothers were on the back of my mind (I having recently seen a trailer for Burn After Reading, which is the title of their next movie), and so an article/on-air piece about the real life inspiration for the film The Big Lebowski caught my eye. You'll find the link here.

The Big Lebowski isn’t my favorite film by the Coens, or even my second or third favorite – there are portions of the film that I think are just not as funny as the Coens would like them to be. The film is uneven. Yet there are aspects of the film that I like a good deal. I like the rambling nature of the film – a quality that suits the film’s central character of Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski to a T. I love the central cast – from Steve Buscemi and John Goodman as The Dude’s bowling buddies to John Turturro as the rival bowler Jesus (notice that his name is actually Jesus – and not Jesús). The film’s chief strength, of course, is Jeff Bridges' performance as the supremely relaxed Dude. You’ll find a brief clip from one the film’s best scenes below.


And next up - below this bit here, you’ll find a trailer for the upcoming Burn After Reading. It features a pretty good cast, and Brad Pitt looks like he might be surprisingly funny. Of course, it’s a trailer, and so one never knows if the full film will be any good. No Country for Old Men was, I thought, brilliant, but the last two comedies to come from the Coens (The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty) were dreadful, and so one never knows. But here’s hoping. Keep in mind that this trailer does feature some profanity. Not a problem for me, but perhaps for some.